What is is.gd?

is.gd is a service that shortens URLs such as web addresses. This is useful in many circumstances (see below) e.g. in email clients that break long URLs.

For example, you can turn

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode
=&q=louth&ie=UTF8&z=12&iwloc=addr&om=1

http://is.gd/1

Our goal is to allow shortening URLs to the maximum extent technically possible.

Uses for is.gd

Here are just a few of the many uses for is.gd's URL shortening service: -

• Shorten web addresses for emails, forum posts, blogs etc. which cannot handle long URLs and might wrap them, making them unclickable
• Lower the character count when texting web addresses to a mobile phone
• Hide the real URLs of affiliate links from visitors to your site
• Obscure your real email address from bots which harvest them to spam (enter an address like mailto:myaddress@myisp.com)
• Circumvent protections on sites which don't allow direct links to a competitor's site (if you are violating a site's terms you do so at your own risk)
• Clean up bookmarks for social bookmarking sites or sites with low character limits like Twitter
• If you dislike a website and have to mention it (e.g. when complaining about it), link via is.gd so that your link does not help the site's search engine positioning

Certain uses of is.gd are forbidden, for example use in unsolicited commercial email (SPAM).

Nice online tool to identify the manufacturer by looking up the Ethernet MAC address.

http://www.techzoom.net/lookup/check-mac.en

To confirm that hardware DEP is working in Windows, use one of the following methods.

You can use the Wmic command-line tool to examine the DEP settings. To determine whether hardware-enforced DEP is available, follow these steps:

To determine the current DEP support policy, follow these steps.

Note To verify that Windows is running with hardware DEP enabled, examine the DataExecutionPrevention_Drivers property of the Win32_OperatingSystem class. In some system configurations, hardware DEP may be disabled by using the /nopae or /execute switches in the Boot.ini file. To examine this property, type the following command at a command prompt:

wmic OS Get DataExecutionPrevention_Drivers

Output sample on my PC:

Do you experience: 

• Suddenly very slow computer
• Constant high CPU utilization during file transfer
• Lame hard disk performance
• The stuttering DVD drive
• Choppy DVD playback
• Your drive is always in PIO mode and you can’t set it to UDMA mode

If you have one of these problems most probably your drive has switches from UDMA to PIO mode.

What does it mean?

DMA is an abbreviation for Direct Memory Access, an access method for external devices where the data transfer is not done by the central processor, but by a small special processor called DMA controller. It uses a procedure called cycle stealing, where the central processor memory access cycles are delayed for very short times to intersperse DMA controller memory access cycles. Some newer, faster DMA modes are called UDMA (Ultra DMA).

The alternative, slow and inefficient data transfer mode is called PIO, Programmed Input-Output, where the central processor transfers data byte for byte or word for word. This requires many processor commands for each data word and therefore causes a high and unwanted processor load.

Solution is here:
1) Download the file from here: http://winhlp.com/tools/resetdma.vbs

2) Despite any warnings click on the [Open] or [Execute] buttons as required to execute the file resetdma.vbs. If you fear to download the file, you can use the manual method instead (see link below). Or you could download, save, and inspect the program with an editor like the Windows Notepad. It is a script text file.

3) If the program found any ATA channel to reset, reboot your computer and test all drives.

4) If the problem is still not solved, set the offending channel to PIO manually, reboot your computer, set the channel back to DMA, and reboot again.

5) Please report your results here http://winhlp.com/node/97.

For more technical background or menual method visit this site:
http://winhlp.com/node/10

DEP - Data Execution Prevention
PAE - Physical Address Extension

DEP is a highly effective security feature that should not be disabled unless you have no alternative. The default settings for DEP and PAE are optimal for most systems. Do not change the default settings unless they interfere with essential processing tasks. This section is included to show you how to configure these features, but it should not be interpreted as a recommendation to change the default settings.

DEP and PAE Boot Parameters

On operating systems prior to Windows Vista, DEP and PAE are enabled at boot time and are configured by using the following four boot parameters:

• /noexecute enables and configures DEP.
• /execute disables DEP and PAE.
• /pae enables PAE.
• /nopae disables PAE.

On Windows Vista, DEP and PAE are enabled at boot time and are configured by setting values for the nx and pae parameters using the BCDEdit /set command.

These boot parameters have conflicting effects. To configure DEP and PAE, use only the parameter combinations that are described in the documentation for each parameter and discussed in this topic. Do not experiment with conflicting parameters, especially on a production system.

The Interaction of DEP and PAE Boot Parameters

There are two types of DEP:

• Hardware-enforced DEP enables DEP for both kernel-mode and user-mode processes. It must be supported by the processor and the operating system.

• Software-enforced DEP enables DEP only on user-mode processes. It must be supported by the operating system.

DEP is supported by Windows XP with SP2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, and Windows Vista, and later versions of Windows.

On 32-bit versions of Windows, hardware-enforced DEP requires PAE, which is supported by all Windows operating systems that support DEP. When DEP is enabled on a computer with a processor that supports hardware-enforced DEP, Windows automatically enables PAE and ignores the boot parameter values that disable it.

The parameter combinations for each Windows operating system are summarized in the following section.

DEP and PAE Parameter Combinations

The following list describes the boot parameter combinations that can be used to configure DEP and PAE.

Computer can be in several power or standby states. It's handled by so called ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) power management specification.
I will skip long storry and in short describe "most important" states:

S0 Working: the normal working state of the computer, the operating system and applications are running. The CPU(s) execute instructions. Within this state, it is possible for CPU(s) and devices like hard drives, DVD drives, etc. to be repeatedly put into and come back from low-energy states. Laptops, for example, routinely power down all currently unused devices when running on battery; some desktops also do this to reduce noise.

S1 (POS) Standby: All processor caches are flushed, and the CPU(s) stop executing instructions. Power to the CPU(s) and RAM is maintained; RAM is refreshed; devices that do not indicate they must remain on may be powered down. Some newer machines do not support S1; older machines are more likely to support S1 than S3. This state can operate when a card or peripheral does not recognize S3. The most power-hungry of sleep-modes. POS means Power On Standby.

S2 Standby: System appears off. The CPU has no power; RAM is refreshed; the system is in a lower power mode than S1. It is not commonly implemented.

S3 (STR) Standby: In this state, the CPU has no power, the power supply is in a reduced power mode, main memory (RAM) is still powered, although it is almost the only component that is. Since the state of the operating system and all applications, open documents, etc. lies all in main memory, the user can resume work exactly where they left off the main memory content when the computer comes back from S3 is the same as when it was put into S3. S3 has two advantages over S4; the computer is faster to resume than to reboot, secondly if any running applications (opened documents, etc) have private information in them, this will not be written to the disk. However, disk caches may be flushed to prevent data corruption in case the system doesn't wake up e.g. due to power failure. STR means Save To RAM. In modern operating systems it's called as: Standby in versions of Windows through Windows XP and in some varieties of Linux, Sleep in Windows Vista and Mac OS X.

S4 Hibernate: In this state, all content of main memory is saved to non-volatile memory such as a hard drive, preserving the state of the operating system, all applications, open documents etc. That means that after coming back from S4, the user can resume work where it was left off in much the same way as with S3. The difference between S4 and S3, apart from the added time of moving the main memory content to disk and back, is that a power loss of a computer in S3 makes it lose all data in main memory, including all unsaved documents, while a computer in S4 is unaffected. A system that's in S4 can also be Mechanicaly Off (no power at all) and still keep its S4 save state information, so that it can resume the operating state after getting back power. This mode is also referred to as Save To Disk, Suspend to Disk, Hibernation in Windows, Safe Sleep in Mac OS X.

S5  Soft Off: The hardware is completely off, the operating system has shut down; nothing has been saved. Requires a complete reboot to return to the Working state.

There may be an occasion where you want to restore the original chronological view for the SMS Inbox rather than the new threaded view.
There is a simple registry fix to turn off threading and restore the "classic" view.
From the registry editor of your choice (PocketPC version of Total Commander for example) browse the device registry for the key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Inbox\Settings]

Under this add a new DWORD value called "SMSInboxThreadingDisabled" and set it to 1.
Soft-reset the device and the regular message view will be used.
Set this registry value back to 0 or delete it to restore the default threaded view.

NOTE that some devices check for value at another key location:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Inbox\Settings\OEM]