Can you recommend any good video capture/editing programs?

My personal favourite is Virtual Dub. It's a tiny download and you can't get any cheaper than free. Ulead's Media Studio Pro is also very impressive, yet extremely bloated in comparison to VDub. A 30 day trial version is available to download for gratis, while to unlock the full functionality of the application you may have to remortgage your house - it costs a small fortu...

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Politically incorrect Yuletide greetings - season's my ar...

Hope you all had a great Christmas and are looking forward to New Year's Eve. Personally I've become very disillusioned with the whole affair - I believe the true meaning of Christmas has been lost amidst the frantic brouhaha of present buying and face stuffing. There used to be a time, many moons ago, when Christmas meant you could expect there to be a sled-load of quality comedies, dramas, Christmas...

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First Operation Fastlink pirate named and shamed

Last Wednesday, twenty six year old student, Jathan (did his mother have a lisp?) Desir of Iowa pleaded guilty to charges of cracking and illegally distributing copyright protected software worth up to $200,000. Desir will be sentenced on 18th March next year and could face up to 15 years behind bars if he refuses to cooperate with the Department of Justice. Typically, where these kinds of trials...

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MPAA turn off BitTorrent's tap

Napster transformed music piracy into a nonchalant, mainstream pastime, and was subsequently snubbed out by the RIAA. Half a decade later, BitTorrent impelled a parallel shift in the habits of the movie-watching public, making this more challenging form of piracy free-and-easy, even for consummate technophobes. This time it's the MPAA putting the boot in, and it's the tracking servers and link sites...

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Share Connector disconnected

Earlier in the year, copyright and law enforcement authorities pulled the plug on Share Reactor, what was then the largest and most popular eDonkey verified links resource. Soon after, www.shareconnector.com emerged to take its place, and was even considered by some P2P enthusiasts to be superior. Like its once-thought-untouchable predecessor, Share Connector attracted its fair share of undesirable...

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How do I play ROMs?

For the uninitiated, ROMs are 'dumped' images of game data. These can be transferred from either games console cartridges or arcade machine circuit boards, but not computers. If a piece of software is extracted from the media of a multi-purpose system such as an Amiga or Atari ST then the data obtained is called a 'disk image' if it is taken from a floppy disk, or an ISO/CD image when taken from a...

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FTP servers like granny used to make

This tutorial is dedicated to all you podcasters and other creative, digital artists wishing to share your original content with an adoring fan base. What better way to thank them for their unwavering adulation than to offer your personal hard drive on a silver platter? While actually giving away your physical drive would be a very friendly gesture, and one which I'm sure would be greatly appreciated,...

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Pop-ups - the uninvited guests of the web

You will soon discover that one of the main drawbacks of browsing the web is the spontaneous appearance of pop-ups. If you've been surfing the net for more than a day or two I'd hazard a guess that you've already been introduced to the exasperating world of pop-ups. I very much doubt you need me to provide you with a definition of a pop-up, but you never know so here goes. A pop-up is a web browser...

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Malware; the scourge of the web

I'll be visiting a web site when all of a sudden lots of links will magically appear in my favourites list and my home page and default search engine are changed without so much as a word of notification or a request to do so. I'm a sitting duck. Is there anything I can do to protect myself from this invasion of privacy? These browser hijack attempts are orchestrated by a variety of malicious software...

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How would I go about uncapping my cable modem?

You can't. Give up now; you're wasting your time! Data transfer restrictions are imposed on your ISP's side of operations, not yours, so there is absolutely nothing you can do to bypass such measures. Even if this were possible they'd likely be alerted to your misdemeanour and terminate your account. For more information refer to this Speed Guide artic...

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How do I play the movie clips I find online?

Because the Real Media format (files with an .rm or .ram extension) offers such a favourable compression ratio you will find that the majority of web movie clips are encoded in this way. To play them I'd recommend using the alternative Real Player rather than the official, bloated, spamware tool. One thing you should know before jumping in with both feet is that the quality of the Real Media format...

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How do I fix my corrupt DivX movie?

One option you have is to use a tiny, freeware utility known as Div Fix. This is designed to enable you to watch partially downloaded DivX movie files, but will also allow you to correct the faulty index structure of complete movie files. Using the program couldn't be any more simple: open the movie file you wish to correct using either the file menu or the 'add files' button and select 're-build...

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How can I transfer Game Boy Advance ROMs from my PC to my GBA console?

The usual disclaimer applies: this entry exists to help you play freeware, home-brew ROMs on your GBA, not commercial ones you've swiped from the net. Software and a bit of old string won't cut the muster (it's not mustard - look it up!) I'm afraid - this is going to cost you real live money! I know, shocking, isn't it? What you need is a hardware kit consisting of two crucial components; the Flash...

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Pesky Deficient Files

...is what Adobe would name their proprietary PDF format if they were honest. The Portable Document Format is designed to provide the means to consistently display images and text in a frozen state. It's essentially a presentation format which doesn't lend itself well to tampering by anyone other than the original author. This makes it a strange choice for the online distribution of application forms...

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Since upgrading to broadband I've become really disillusioned with gaming. Why isn't gaming as good as it used to be?

So you've had your cake, eaten it and now you're sick of the sight of it. Well that's the price of over indulgence whether we're talking about food, alcohol, drugs, gaming or whatever. One of the fundamental problems with today's society is that we want what we can't have, and once we have it, we no longer want it because it isn't what we expected it to be. We're never satisfied; unfortunately that's...

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Shocking news just in - programmers find a use for Internet Explorer!

Hate them or hate them, we all hate viruses. Regardless, far too many people throw caution to the wind, refusing to use a virus scanner on the basis that they are too resource intensive, or because they feel they are somehow immune to being caught out - "I'm a careful surfer", they'll tell you. Careful or not, viruses can come from all kinds of unexpected sources, not just the more murky areas of...

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Life is meaningless

Once you come to terms with this home truth, the next *dramatic booming voice from above* Big Question to clamour for your attention, assaulting your grey matter at every turn, should be, what can I do to while away the hours when I'm supposed to be working and squander my employer's resources? Note the emphasis on the word 'and' - that's critical here - half-hearted, time-wasting digressions are...

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Forum Googleism

If you're looking for quick answers, the best place to find them is on web forums because the questions to those answers are likely to have already been asked a multitude of times. We all have our favourite forums bookmarked and get into the habit of returning to the same ones for information, though being this selective severely limits the scope of the resources available. Typing the same query...

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Why do some sites prevent you from using the right-click function?

Such anti-right-click mechanisms are implemented to prevent visitors from viewing (and possibly stealing) the site's source code, copying and pasting text and saving images. If you want to know how to stop people right-clicking on your own site, visit a free javascript snippet site like Dynamic Drive. Bear in mind though that none of these 'solutions' are totally foolproof. For instance, Firefox's...

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Alcohol 120% is dead... no it's not, yes it is

Alcoholics everywhere began to quiver having ascertained that one of the the top two CD/DVD cloning tools was to be laid to rest owing to recently beefed up copyright legislation. The 'so long and thanks for all the fish' farewell message was posted on Alcohol Software's official home page, so why wouldn't it be genuine? According to Paul Pullen, general manager of Alcohol Software, the announcement...

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Amiga radar detects activity in Camp Winfellow

In April of this year, the developers of Winfellow, the no-nonsense Amiga emulator for the Windows platform, shook the dust from their sorely neglected source code and began the arduous task of converting it to the C programming language in preparation for a new release. The last offering was made available way back in November 2001, and until recently the Winfellow CVS repository lay dormant, leading...

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The whole nation loves him...

...because it feels safe in his hands, like a child in the arms of his mother. Josef Goebbels was referring to Adolf Hitler when he imparted this gem of irony, though if the Republicans are to be believed, it could just as easily apply to our friend in the White House, Mr Bush. Terrorism is Bush's ace card - it feeds his campaign for re-election because his response to it is what sets him apart from...

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If war isn't the solution, what is?

To answer the question you first have to pin down which predicament it is that war is presumed to be able to remedy. Initially the objective was to disarm Saddam Hussein of the weapons of mass destruction the coalition insisted he had in his possession. When numerous intelligence experts revealed that Hussein's surviving feeble arsenal of weaponry posed no threat, the diplomatic, peaceful solution...

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Is it possible to save streaming movies to the hard drive?

Yes - what you need to do is get hold of a program called Streambox VCR. This will enable you to keep a permanent copy of Real Media movie and audio files on your hard drive once they have been streamed to your computer. Tracking down the program via the web is easier said than done as it has never been publicly released, however, it is available on all the popular file sharing networks. For legal...

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"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history"

Left-wing, liberal, democrat... all words vehemently spat at people who refuse to dutifully exalt Bush's reckless, reactionary, and counterproductive policies. By the time these fanatical Bush apologists have finished reeling off adjectives and have us categorically and politically boxed off, they run out of steam and completely forget what their actual point was... if they ever had one to begin with!...

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