We've been hitting out bandwidth limit the last two months, so we decided to start keeping a closer eye on it (to avoid charges). I installed a program called Bandwidth Monitor. It seems nice and keeps good logs. I had another program before this one and the same following problem occurred.

I went to bed at about 1am. I checked my usage before I went to bed and I was at something like 30-40mb (it resets at 12am). I woke up at about 5am and put a youtube video on while falling back asleep. When I got up at 9am, I woke my computer up (sleep after 15 mins), and checked  my usage. It's at 500mb, which is more than I used for the entirety of yesterday and I haven't even done anything. This happened a few days ago too, where it used 2-3GB.

Ideas??

Whenever I set my parameters for my paintbrush (colour, size, brush, etc), as soon as I make a stroke it reverts them back to what they were previously. Does anyone with Illustrator experience know why this is? It's really annoying and it makes it impossible for me to work within the program.

They usually hold a big fireworks display for Canada Day down by the beach in my city. The beach itself isn't that great, and I'm fairly certain Lake Ontario has reached mutation-enabling levels of toxicity, but the fireworks are usually pretty and they hold a carnival of sorts. They usually have a few stages setup and they basically shut down most of the city because everyone heads down there.

Oh, they also hold a Marijuana Day or something. I'm not sure exactly, because I've never gone to it (crazy stoners! lol420), but the police don't seem to care and they just make sure they keep it separate. Maybe I'll mosey on over heh heh.

So what are your plans? Copious amounts of liquor? Roman Candle re-enactments?

Nah, jk, this is even creepier.

http://chatroulette.com/

probably nsfw 90% of the time

Does anyone know of any really lightweight programs that I can use to quickly make notes like "report due on dec 4th". Ideally it would be able to run on startup and should remain somewhat inconspicuous.

windows btw

ATI's HD5000 series was released a day or two ago and the reviews are finally coming in. The HD5870 is the fastest single-card solution and the first DirectX11 card on the market. Reviews can be found here:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/23415-sapphire-radeon-hd-5870-1gb-gddr5-review.html

It is retailing for about $400CAD, but if you were looking to buy a new GPU I'd hold off for a bit, because this will likely shift prices around especially on Nvidia's side.

I've had problems with choppy sound in the past that were fixed with a BIOS flash. Today my wireless card started freaking out. It wasn't the network, because other clients were working fine. I had extremely high ping, extremely slow speed, and eventually it just cutout until I reinstalled the driver. It seems to be working fine now, but while playing WoW I started having graphics issues. Suddenly my framerate dropped dramatically. I checked the task manager thinking it was AVG trying to do a scan or something, but nothing. The problem persists, and is accompanied by the same sound issues I had before. I tried flashing the BIOS, but this had no effect. I used the WD scanner to check my HDD to make sure it wasn't failing and corrupting the OS install or anything, but it passed the SMART test. What else could this be? Or is it time I lay the old gal to rest?

My router (DIR-628) seems to be throttling my internet speed. I noticed this first in WoW, but upon running a speed test from my provider my download was hovering around 1mb/s. Now, this computer is on a wireless connection (over 90% connectivity), but if I use one of the hardlines the download is fine at 9-10mb/s. I reset the router to factory settings trying to fix this, and that ended up resolving the problem... temporarily. It seems to have randomly occurred again. I went in deeper and disabled QOS thinking it might be acting improperly and that seems to have fixed it, again, temporarily, because now it's doing it again!

I like to play games so I use a wired keyboard and mouse. I didn't want to spend a lot of money unnecessarily and mostly rage bought them because my wireless set was dropping signals every now and then. I ended up buying some generic Dynex brand or something. It looked decent, but I guess I was wrong. The glue for the comfort pads on the mouse has started to fucking melt. It's seeping out and making my hand and the mouse sticky and now the mouse 1 button is getting stuck too. I will probably replace the mouse and then the keyboard separately (I would like lit keys for nighttime typing), but what I'm wondering is are things like the Razer or G15 products worth it? What do you guys recommend?

I've decided my next computer will be a Phenom II build (mixing it up), but I'm unsure on which motherboard to select. I'd like to cannibalize certain parts of this computer even if temporarily. I'm unsatisfied with performance gains from DDR3 memory, so I'm going to stick with the 4GB DDR2 I have now (hence the AM2+ socket as opposed to AM3). I currently have an 8800GT which I will be using until I replace it with either a 4770CF setup or a higher end ATI card, either way I'd like to have the option to crossfire open to me. I will be purchasing the Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition CPU.

Okay, so here's the deal. I'm trying to help my friend do some general maintenance on her computer WITHOUT reformatting. It's a terrible computer and has something like 320mb ram and a 1.3GHz processor. She's running Windows XP and seems to have abnormal levels of programs crashing and bluescreens with no apparent cause. I'm going to get her to run Spybot and AVG obviously. I had her run CCleaner. Just trying to think of some general stuff she could do.

I'm using Google Chrome and I like how it has the recent history / most used pages when started up but I don't want REDTUBE to show up there how can I ban that from showing up foreverr

NVM I GOT IT

Not sure where to put this exactly so if one of your guys need move it that's no problem.

Basically I just got CS:S (lolbehindthetimes) and I'm trying to play with just my friend at maybe like 10 bots or something. How can we do this exactly? I've googled around but can't find an answer.

Yeah, I have no idea if such a pocket of music / artists exists outside of like esoteric circles and little known jazz bands but are there any "bigger" pianists / keyboardists from within the last ~decade that you would recommend. I've been downloading some indie stuff and some is alright, but most of it is pretty 'bleh.' Not looking for any particular genre, I just really like the sound of the piano!

Does anyone know of any programs/ways to have a sort of virtual mic that would generally be picked up by other programs and allow me to stream music/audio files into it instead of using my mic with it up to my speakers?

So ever since I reformatted and installed this newest live messenger it signs me out randomly (sometimes not for long periods and sometimes after a minute). Is anyone else experiencing this? Fixes? I have no idea what's causing this. I've forwarded all ports (although it was working before this) and I've tried reinstalling it. Maybe I should just downgrade?

I'm considering buying this game on Steam for $19.99 because I've heard good things about the original but I have a few questions:

1. Does anyone own this and would you recommend this?
2. Is it more RPG or more puzzle?
3. I've heard this game gets stupidly difficult near the end?
4. Did anyone play the original and what did you think?

For the last two weeks or so I've been trying to figure out what's wrong with my cousin's computer but I have failed and so am turning to GW in hopes that someone with more technical expertise can assist us. It is important to note that I do not have access to the PC so testing will be delayed.

Summary of Problem: Random shutdowns. The computer doesn't bluescreen, it will just turn off. This doesn't happen immediately but after about five minutes it will shutdown. Playing games or doing other intensive tasks seems to accelerate this. After the initial shutdown after a 'cooling off' period the computer starts shutting down faster with each subsequent attempt to start it. Of course my first thought was that it must be heat, but Speedfan returned normal values even while running Prime95 in attempt to max out CPU usage and/or get the computer to bum out. This lead me to believe it may be the GPU but problems still continued even when the GPU was removed. Similarly changing around the RAM had no effect. So what do you guys think? I'm now beginning to think that the CPU cooler may have been improperly installed and that there is a hotspot on the CPU despite it returning a cool temp reading, but I'm running out of ideas.

System Main: gigabyte technology co
System Model: m61ome-s2
Bios: award modular bios v6.00pg
Processor: amd athlon 64 x2 dual core processor 5000+, mmx, 3dnow (2cpus)
Memory: 3072mb Ram
GPU: 9800GT
OS: XP 32-bit
PSU: 500W CoolerMaster

Ok, this isn't for me but I'm trying to help my friend and I have no background in statistics except what I've read here and there. Tell me if this is correct.

A particular automatic sprinkler system for high-rise apartment buildings, office buildings, and hotels has two different types of activation devices for each sprinkler head. One type has a reliability of .91 (i.e., the probability that it will activate the sprinkler when it should is .91). the other type, which operates independently of the first time, has a reliability of .87. Suppose a serious fire starts near a particular sprinkler head.

a. What is the probability that any sprinkler head will be activated?
b. What is the probability that both of the sprinkler heads with be activated?

I think that the answers are:

a. (1 - (1-0.87)(1-0.91)) = 98.83% chance one of them are activated
b. (0.87)(0.91) = 79.17% chance both of them are activated

edited because I made some obvious errors!!

I want to overclock my E8200 to ~3.0Ghz. I've been searching around the internet, but I really can't figure out what I'm doing. I can't even seem to find some of the things (like RAM:FSB ratio) in my BIOS. I am using a P5K SE/EPU so mobo specific instructions would help because so far all I've managed to do is increase the FSB to 1400 (unintentional) and drive up the temps 5*C. LOL HELP