Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by birain

suggestion to prevent duplication accounts

birain — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:02:08 +0800

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i would like to suggest that those who register in this forum be prevented from creating duplicate account using free email host such as hotmail and yahoo,etc. those who would like to register new dupe must furnish their isp email account instead. for those who register before december 2008 can keep using their existing account.

in-active accounts(like 6 months to a year) be prune from the database.

political and religious thread in kopitiam

birain — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:31:11 +0800

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political and religious thread in kopitiam should be moved to RWI to prevent abuse and incite hatred of other race.

user causing havoc in movies and music thread

birain — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 08:28:58 +0800

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this user "Calvin871989" is posting unnecessarily new junk threads in the movies and music section every few mins/hrs. he is using copy and paste from people's website in all his junk thread. mod,please take action.thx.

anyone facing unable to connect to screamyx?

birain — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:26:10 +0800

got disconnected today, sunday(19 Oct 2008) morning around 6.50am, until now(11.24am) still unable to get connected to the stupid screamyx. its getting worse from day to day...

at the moment using ezinet(1315) dial up with my old 56k modem to get connected to lowyat...

More shockwaves on the way

birain — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:13:32 +0800

More shockwaves on the way
Pearl Lee

THERE is more bad news for city folk. Come Monday, they will have to pay more to park.
And the fees are payable from 7.30am to 10pm, seven days a week, including public holidays.

While the rate will be 50 sen an hour in the outskirts, in Bukit Bintang, Jalan Sultan Ismail and other parts of the city centre it will be 80 sen an hour. This means that if you park in the city for eight hours a day, you’ll have to pay RM6.40.

City Hall will also install solarpowered parking meters, similar to those in Petaling Jaya and Subang Jaya. The meters have coin slots and readers to allow the use of MyKad linked to the MEPS system.

City Hall will pay RM1.50 per parking bay as rental to suppliers of the machines, but it will collect RM7.80 a bay in the city centre and RM4 in the outskirts from contractors appointed to manage the bays.

This means that City Hall will be making between RM2.50 and RM6.30 a parking bay. The meters will be installed in four phases, with the first phase in the city centre — covering Bukit Bintang, Masjid India, Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kampung Baru, Chow Kit, Pudu, Kompleks Damai and Loke Yew — where there are 32,232 parking bays.

The electronic coupon parking meters run on solar powered batteries and cost very little to operate.

So, city residents are asking why the increase in fees, operation hours and days especially when the cost of living is soaring? City Hall says the move will help eliminate parking touts but consumer associations have questioned the logic.

Under the old system, it cost 60 sen an hour during regular working hours though in parts of KL, parking fees were also collected on weekends.

Mayor Datuk Ab Hakim Borhan, who announced the new rates, said 50 enforcement officers would be deployed in the four parking zones and they would carry hand-held devices equipped with Bluetooth and infrared services.

With these devices, the officers will be able to print out summonses and snap photos of vehicles whose owners have not paid the fee.

sauce:

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tomorrow(11 June 2008) no water in PJ and KL

birain — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:05:51 +0800

Gangguan bekalan air di Petaling, Kuala Lumpur esok

KUALA LUMPUR Bekalan air di beberapa kawasan di Petaling dan Kuala Lumpur dijangka terganggu berikutan penutupan sebahagian Loji Rawatan Air Sungai Selangor Fasa 1 oleh Syarikat pengeluar Air Sungai Selangor Sdn. Bhd. (Splash), Rabu ini.Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn. Bhd. (Syabas) dalam satu kenyataan hari ini berkata, gangguan itu akan bermula pukul 3 petang sehingga 7 pagi keesokannya (12 Jun) dan ia menganggarkan kira-kira 150,000 pengguna akan terlibat.

Kawasan yang terlibat di Petaling ialah Taman Bukit Mayang Mas, Kampung Cempaka, Dataran Prima, Taman Aman Sari, Taman Bukit Emas, dan Taman Megah Mas (Petaling Jaya Utara 1); Taman Sunway Mas, Eastin Hotel, Phileo Damansara dan Universiti Malaya.

Kawasan-kawasan lain termasuk di Jalan 14/47, 14/48, 14/49, 14/50, 14/52, 14/54, 14/56, 14/58, 14/60; Seksyen 17, SS1, Kampung Tunku; SS2, Seapark, SS6 di Kelana Jaya; SS23, Taman Sea; SS24, Taman Megah; SS25 Taman Mayang; SS26, Taman Mayang Emas; SS19, Subang Jaya dan Subang Airport yang membabitkan MAS Kargo, MAS Catering dan APAC.

Di Kuala Lumpur, ia membabitkan kawasan Setia Murni, Setia Jaya, Setia Rasa, Setia Bakti, Setia Kasih, Setia Puspa dan Jalan Beringin.

Bagi meminimumkan gangguan, Syabas akan menyalurkan bekalan air daripada loji Sungai Selangor Fasa 3 (SSSp3) dengan mengambil alih sebahagian bekalan air daripada loji SSP1 ke loji Dusun Kubung.

Syabas berkata, pihaknya turut bersiap sedia mengaktifkan Pelan Tindakan Kecemasan (ERP) sekiranya berlaku sebarang kemungkinan sepanjang tempoh penutupan sebahagian logi itu.

Sebagai langkah berjaga-jaga, Syabas telah menyediakan 25 lori tangki bagi membekalkan air di kawasan berkenaan apabila diperlukan.

Syabas seterusnya menasihatkan para pengguna supaya menyimpan bekalan air secukupnya serta menggunakan air secara berhemah sepanjang tempoh gangguan itu.

Untuk sebarang pertanyaan atau aduan, orang ramai boleh menghubungi Pusat Perkhidmatan Pelanggan Syabas (PUSPEL) menerusi talian bebas tol 1-800-88-5252 atau lawati laman web Syabas di www.syabas.com.my.

sauce:

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

i've already store extra water for cooking and drinking

alertpay and moneybooker

birain — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 00:50:12 +0800

anyone here uses alertpay? can we withdraw from it?
any moneybooker user? can we withdraw from it?

[addedon]February 3, 2008, 4:12 pm[/addedon]any1 using any of this 2?

Four Must-Have Vista Updates

birain — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:19:01 +0800

Jason Cross - ExtremeTechThu Aug 30, 11:02 AM ET

If you're running Windows Vista, you need to fire up your web browser and install these four updates now. Many of the fixes we've been waiting for in Service Pack 1 are found here, and they significantly improve the performance and compatibility of the new OS. First up is KB938194. This "Compatibility and Reliability" update features a host of improvements, including fixes for these issues: The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver. The computer stops responding, and you receive a "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error message. The computer stops responding or restarts unexpectedly when you play video games or perform desktop operations. The Diagnostic Policy Service (DPS) stops responding when the computer is under heavy load or when very little memory is available. This problem prevents diagnostics from working. The screen goes blank after an external display device that is connected to the computer is turned off. There are stability issues with some graphics processing units (GPUs). These issues could cause GPUs to stop responding (hang). Visual appearance issues occur when you play graphics-intensive games. You experience poor playback quality when you play HD DVD disks or Blu-ray disks on a large monitor. Applications that load the Netcfgx.dll component exit unexpectedly. Windows Calendar exits unexpectedly after you create a new appointment, create a new task, and then restart the computer. Internet Connection Sharing stops responding after you upgrade a computer that is running Microsoft Windows XP to Windows Vista and then restart the computer. The Printer Spooler service stops unexpectedly. You receive a "Stop 0x0000009F" error when you put the computer to sleep while a Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connection is active.

Next, and perhaps more importantly, is the KB938979 update, for "Performance and Reliability." Updates include fixes for these problems: You experience a long delay when you try to exit the Photos screen saver. A memory leak occurs when you use the Windows Energy screen saver. If User Account Control is disabled on the computer, you cannot install a network printer successfully. When you write data to an AVI file by using the AVIStreamWrite function, the file header of the AVI file is corrupted. When you copy or move a large file, the "estimated time remaining" takes a long time to be calculated and displayed. After you resume the computer from hibernation, it takes a long time to display the logon screen. When you synchronize an offline file to a server, the offline file is corrupted. If you edit an image file that uses the RAW image format, data loss occurs in the image file. This problem occurs if the RAW image is from the Canon EOS 1D and 1DS models. After you resume the computer from hibernation, the computer loses its default gateway address. Poor memory management performance occurs.

That last one is rather vague for sure, but anything that improves Vista's memory management is welcome.

Microsoft actually released these updates earlier in August, and I have been using them at home. They certainly work as advertised: Many operations in Explorer are "snappier" and the bug with Estimated Time Remaining for file copies is gone. Feedback across the web from other early adopters shows that a lot of small annoying bugs, memory leaks, and problems have disappeared with these two updates. You can download them from the knowledge base articles, but Microsoft has added them as critical updates in Windows Update this week. So if you haven't run Windows Update yet, now is the time.

Those aren't the only two major fixes, though. A pair of graphics-related updates, not available through Windows Update, are worth grabbing, as well. Continued... KB940105 is a very interesting update that every single gamer using Vista will want to grab immediately. It's not available on Windows Update, so you'll need to visit the Knowledge Base article to grab it.

It addresses a problem with virtual address space in Vista that has been plaguing game developers and game players since the OS's debut. It's a bit complicated to explain, so I'll let the Knowledge Base article do the talking: Existing games and other graphics applications frequently allocate virtual memory for a copy of the video memory resources that the application uses. The application uses this copy to restore the display quickly if the contents of video memory are lost. For example, the application uses this copy if the user presses ALT+TAB or if the user puts the computer in standby. Typically, the DirectX run time manages the copy on behalf of the application when the application creates a managed resource. However, an application can also manage the copy itself. The virtual memory that the copy uses is directly proportional to the video memory resources that the application allocates.

With the introduction of DirectX 10 and Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) in Windows Vista, it is no longer necessary for an application to maintain a copy of its resources in system memory. Instead, the video memory manager makes sure that the content of every video memory allocation is maintained across display transitions.

To virtualize video memory, the video memory manager in Windows Vista assigns a virtual address range to every video memory resource. This range is conceptually similar to the copy that an application might create. However, the video memory manager manages the process more efficiently than the application might. The video memory manager uses the virtual address range to handle transitions or over-commitment of video memory. However, the virtual address range is typically unused on a system that has lots of video memory. As long as this virtual address range remains unused, no physical memory is allocated for it. In contrast, the system memory copy that is maintained in the older driver model is guaranteed to be fully populated with physical memory.

If an application creates its own in-memory copy of its video resources, or the application uses DirectX 9 or an earlier version, the virtual address space contains the WDDM video memory manager's virtualized range and the application's copy. Applications that use graphics APIs that are earlier than DirectX 10 and that target GPUs that have large amounts of video memory can easily exhaust their virtual address space.

To make a long story short: Games were using a lot more RAM than was necessary, sucking up huge blocks of virtual address space copying the large frame buffers of modern graphics cards twice-once by the OS and again by the game. This fix has been available on disc by request for a few weeks now. Our good friends at Anandtech tested the fix and found that many games used hundreds of megabytes less RAM after it is applied. Vista still isn't as lean as Windows XP, but it's within spitting distance. You typically won't see the fix affect timedemos and similar benchmarks, but it can reduce disc thrashing and other memory-related problems during gameplay, especially on games that use a lot of RAM.

The fourth and final fix is a simple one. KB936710 simply addresses an issue with SLI/CrossFire systems running DirectX 10 games, where Vista may only use a single GPU even though you're running two in parallel. If you have two DX10-compatible graphics cards in your system, or might one day, you need this patch. Like the virtual address space fix, it's not yet available on Windows Update, so make sure you go to the knowledge base article and download it.

If you're one of the enthusiasts interested in Vista but you've been holding out for Service Pack 1, you may want to reconsider. Microsoft detailed many of the changes coming in an SP1 white paper just the other day, and these four fixes are most of what typical end users are waiting for. There are quite a few improvements in SP1 that aren't covered by these four fixes, but most of them are aimed at corporate admins and similar business-class users. These four fixes, along with the past few months of driver and BIOS updates for various hardware, may bring Vista up to a level of performance and reliability that most home users and gamers were expecting from a "post-SP1" OS.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/214359&printer=...wi6VY_4Z1JY.3QA

for those who is accessing US website

birain — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:11:01 +0800

Gunplay blamed for Internet slowdown

Robert McMillan 27 minutes ago

San Francisco (IDGNS) - Internet service providers in the U.S. experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire.

TeliaSonera AB, which lost the northern leg of its U.S. network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot. "Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable," said Anders Olausson, a TeliaSonera spokesman.

The damage affected a large span of cable, more than two-thirds of a mile [1.1 km] long, near Cleveland, TeliaSonera said.

The company declined to name the service provider whose lines had been cut, but a source familiar with the situation said the lines are owned by Level 3 Communications Inc. Level 3 could not be reached immediately for comment.

Cogent Communications Inc. warned that some customers may be experiencing disruptions because network lines had been cut somewhere between Montville, Ohio, and Cleveland. "Splice crews are currently doing preparation work on the new fiber cable before splicing begins to resolve the outage," Cogent said in a note to customers.

According to Keynote Systems Inc.'s Internet Pulse Report , Cogent was experiencing significant latency problems on Monday.

The outage caused headaches for Christopher McCoy, a system administrator for a Web hosting company in Atlanta. "This Telia outage is really causing a pain," he wrote in a blog posting. "Telia is one of my company's main network providers, and explaining to your average Webmaster the details and specifics of a fiber break isn't all that easy."

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20070821...zgqcQZyYrEjtBAF

Global broadband prices revealed

birain — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 02:26:52 +0800

CODE

Global broadband prices revealed
Broadband users in 30 of the world's most developed countries are getting greatly differing speeds and prices, according to a report.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report says 60% of its member countries net users are now on broadband.

The report said countries that had switched to fibre networks had the best speeds at the lowest prices.

In Japan net users have 100Mbps lines, 10 times higher than the OECD average.

Japan's price for broadband per megabit per second is the lowest in the OECD at $0.22 (0.11p), said the report. The most expensive is Turkey at $81.13 (�40.56).

In the US, the cheapest megabit per second broadband connection is $3.18 (�1.59) while in the UK it is $3.62 (�1.81).

CHEAPEST ENTRY LEVEL BROADBAND PER MONTH*
Sweden $10.79
Denmark $11.11
Switzerland $12.53
US $15.93
France $16.36
Netherlands $16.85
New Zealand $16.86
Italy $17.63
Ireland $18.18
Finland $19.49
*Source: OECD. Figures for October 2006

Subscribers to Japan's fibre networks can also upload at the same speed they can download, which is not possible with ADSL (broadband over a telephone line) and most cable subscriptions.

Sweden, Korea and Finland also offer 100Mbps net connections, as all four countries have switched to fibre optic networks.

The OECD represents 30 of the leading democratic economics, from Australia to the US, France to Japan.

"Broadband is very quickly becoming the basic medium for sevice delivery on both fixed and wireless networks," said the report.

JupiterResearch telecoms analyst Ian Fogg said: "It's very hard to draw comparisons across 30 countries globally because there are different trends happening in each of them.

However, he said the entry price for broadband was an incredibly important criteria to compare.

"Because the market is very fragmented consumers care about cheap prices."

According to the report, broadband prices for DSL connections across the 30 countries have fallen by 19% and increased in speed by 29% in the year to October 2006. Cable prices and speeds followed a similar trend.

BT (in the UK) has been very slow to switch across (to ADSL2+).
Ian Fogg, JupiterResearch

The least expensive monthly subscription for always-on broadband was in Sweden, where $10.79 (�5.40) per month bought a 256kbps connection. The country with the most expensive entry point for broadband access was Mexico, where it cost $52.36 (�26.18) per month for 1mbps.

Mr Fogg said: "In many of the OECD countries those people without broadband and making the transition are feeling their way and are very conscious of price. They haven't seen the need to go to broadband historically."

The entry-level price points do not take into account bundled deals, such as incorporating free broadband with a TV contract, which are becoming increasingly important to the market.

Mr Fogg said many countries had seen a jump in broadband speeds over the last few years as many ISPs utilising existing telephone lines had started to push ADSL2+.

ADSL2+ is a technology which doubles the frequency band of a typical ADSL connection over a phone line, in effect doubling the amount of data which can be sent downstream to a user.

The theoretical maximum speed of an ADSL2+ line is 24Mbps, still much slower than speeds over fibre optic networks.

"ADSL2+ hasn't happened everywhere and it's happened at different times in different countries," explained Mr Fogg.

"France was the first country in the western world to use the technology, about two or three years ago.

"BT (in the UK) has been very slow to switch across. The only option for UK customers has been to get it from competitors, notably Be, which is owned by O2, and Sky."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6900697.stm

Published: 2007/07/16 13:01:58 GMT

(C) BBC MMVII

p/s: when will we be getting fibre networks that had the best speeds at the lowest prices?

[addedon]July 17, 2007, 2:31 am[/addedon]here's another article that might interest you

CODE

Broadband Britain 'speeding up'
Broadband is getting faster in the UK but some customers are not reaching the speeds that service providers have advertised, shows a survey.

The average UK broadband download speed is now 2Mbps, up from 512Kbps three years ago, says thinkbroadband.com.

The figures are based on more than a third of a million speed tests carried out by the website's users.

But many people who have been sold "up to 8Mbps" services are still getting substantially slower connections.

"Compared to a couple of years ago the average has gone up," confirmed Andrew Ferguson, editor of thinkbroadband.com.

"But the survey shows that whilst a number of providers are marketing products as an 'up to 8Mbps' service, it is clear that some of them have a fair proportion of customers still on fixed 512kbps, 1Mbps or 2Mbps services."

Maximum speed

For some customers the maximum speed they can attain is tied to the quality of the telephone line and distance from the exchange.

But Mr Ferguson said some broadband providers were keeping people on fixed connections to save costs.

"Because the broadband they are giving people still fits into the description of 'up to 8Mbps' that they are selling people, they think that's fine."

Mr Ferguson said people should be told that the connection they are getting is "rate adaptive".

"People see the 'eight' and that sticks in their heads. Rate adaptive ADSL means it runs as fast as the line can tolerate."

He encouraged people to ask their providers exactly how fast their connection was likely to be before signing new deals.

The fastest connection recorded in the UK was a customer of internet service provider Be at slightly more than 21Mbps.

Mr Ferguson said: "That customer must obviously live very close to the exchange. They are within 100 to 200 metres of the phone exchange."

Speed improvements

Be is among a number of firms, including Bulldog and UK Online, who have invested their own money into ADSL2+ technologies, which offer substantial speed improvements.

But these services are often limited to urban areas.

BT Wholesale is currently trialling ADSL2+ technology, which it is expected to roll out to other internet service providers in the next 24 months.

"For those of us who don't live in big cities, that will mean we will get the chance at better speeds," said Mr Ferguson.

While broadband speeds in the UK are set to improve, the country still lags behind Japan and South Korea where speeds of up to 50Mbps are not uncommon.

Mr Ferguson said: "In Japan you will see VDSL services at 50/60Mbps and you think, 'Why can't I have that in Britain?'.

"But in Japan you can roll out whatever you like and you fix problems like interference after. In the UK we like not to have interference."

Faster broadband speeds over telephone lines could potentially lead to interference with radio stations.

The UK regulator wants these problems fixed before the greenlight is given to technologies such as VDSL and VDSL2, which offer tremendous broadband speeds.

[addedon]July 17, 2007, 2:35 am[/addedon]is this what TM is trying to copy ???

CODE

Two-tiered net could be coming
Net providers (ISPs) may start charging some websites for faster access to customers, a report has predicted

It could create a "two-tiered internet" which, while making money for providers would risk alienating consumers, Jupiter Research said.

Charging both customers and websites for access could prove too tempting for ISPs to resist, said analyst Ian Fogg.

He warned it would add another layer of complexity to already confusing broadband services.

Traffic management

ISPs currently operate on incredibly tight margins in order to offer cheap broadband deals to the public.

One way of creating a new revenue stream would be to supply faster, prioritised access to a select group of websites willing to pay.

"ISPs are not getting much revenue from broadband but they can generate revenue from other services or by charging websites for better access. Charging at both ends could be very appealing to them," said Mr Fogg.

Such a system would be easy to set up with the traffic management tools that many ISPs already use to help control bandwidth, he added.

"ISPs say they are using these tools to deprioritise access to bandwidth-hungry peer-to-peer applications but they could equally be used to identify and either prioritise or deprioritise other services such as voice-over IP. The question is, will they be tempted?" asked Mr Fogg.

For ISPs that already offer their own value-added products such as IPTV or voice-over IP, there will also be an incentive to prioritise access to their own services.

"Whether they are doing deals with websites or hindering potentially competitive services, they have to be absolutely clear. Consumers need to know that they have access to everything or not so they can make a fair decision about which service to use," said Mr Fogg.

Pleasing early-adopters

He also called on UK broadband providers to be more transparent about existing services.

There has been controversy about ISPs marketing speeds for services that consumers are unlikely to actually achieve.

A survey conducted by broadband pressure group thinkbroadband earlier this year showed that a number of providers are marketing products as an 'up to 8Mbps' service, but have "a fair proportion of customers" still on fixed 512kbps, 1Mbps or 2Mbps services.

According to JupiterResearch, 16% of net users want a guarantee from their ISP not to restrict access to third party websites while 29% want flat-rate pricing with no usage limits.

It is important that ISPs continue to offer broadband packages that are free of usage caps in order to appeal to the small but influential group of early-adopters, who tend to be heavy users of net video, games or digital music, said Mr Fogg.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6241386.stm

Published: 2007/06/26 13:44:41 GMT

(C) BBC MMVII

http://planet.time.net.my/

birain — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 08:37:34 +0800

SC has block TIMEnet web hosting just because a particular user have use it as an investment scam.

this particular website:-
www.planet.time.net.my/KLCC/danafutures

can't they just removed that user alone, instead banning the whole domain? my website also kena block

SC !@#$%^&*

we the innocent user of TIMEnet have been a scapegoat of SC.

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*updated

as of 3rd July 2007, planet.time.net.my can be access, after writing in to NISER(Cyber Security)