HM2K

Device Manager does not have a Save command available for you to save a report to a text file. To save a Device Manager report to a text file, you must install a generic, text-only printer, and then redirect the Device Manager report to this printer.

To print to a text file:
1. Click Start, and then click Printers and Faxes.
2. Click Add a Printer, and then choose the following options in the wizard:
a. Click Local Printer.
b. Click to clear the Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer check box.
c. Click Use the Following Port, and then click FILE (Print to file).
d. Click Generic in the Manufacturer box.
e. Click Generic / Text Only in the Printers box.
f. Name the printer.
g. Click Do not share this printer.
h. Click No when you are prompted to print a test page.
3. When you click the printer in the Print dialog box, Windows prompts you for a file name.

Done!

print_to_txt.txt

I bought this on the 20/08/04 for £179.99, which actually seems quite a lot for such a phone, but it was not bad at the time for a brand new unlocked phone.

I decided to get this phone as I had a Siemens ME45 before and that was great for it’s time.

In my opinion, this phone had a very stylish design. It was one of few non-flip phones on the market as they appeared to be becoming the norm. I have always been under the impression that like small convertibles, they are girlie.

The features I particularly liked when I purchased this phone were the custom polyphonic ring tones, vibrate, IRDA, build-in camera for photos and video, navigation joystick, integrated antenna, loudspeaker, “dynamic lights” for alerts, full colour display, video playback, silent mode and the ability to sync with Microsoft Outlook.

At the time of it’s release cameras were begining to become established in phones and were now the standard, as such this phone even came with an optional flash which plugged into the bottom. Quality of photos and video is reasonable.

Obviously it also came with standard features such as SMS, MMS and Internet/WAP, oh and of course the ability to make and receive calls.

As you can tell, this phone is pretty feature-tastic, the only thing it is missing from it’s elegant design is bluetooth. To begin with this didn’t matter as no one had bluetooth either, but as more and more phones came with bluetooth as standard, this phone got left behind.

Regardless, this is a fantastic phone. One of the best things is the navigation. Finding anything was easy, and once you were in it, it was easy to use. Text messages supported T9, which was really simple to work with, compared to other phones.

I also loved the management options such as copy and paste, and the phone number highlighting so you can dial a number you are sent with ease.

One of my favorite features was the dynamic lights. These are used when you receive a missed call or a text message to continually alert you that you have to attend to it, without continuously releasing a distressing noise like other phones, otherwise known as silent alerts. You are able to turn off the dynamic lights feature.

This phone also comes with some useful applications such as calculator (which is difficult to use), calendar, notes, task, dictating, stop watch, count down, unit converter, alarm clock, media player and all sorts of other software functions I would probably never get around to using, but at least I know they are there.

Another great feature of this phone was its ability to run java. This meant you could easily get hold of, and install new applications and new games to extend the possibilities of this phone.

Although this phone has quite a bit of storage space, for some strange reason, it could only seem to manage 100 text messages on the phone, and the standard 10 on the sim card. I never worked that out.

One thing I did find useful, was the ability to sync with outlook. Although to begin with the software that came with the phone wasn’t very good, Siemens released new software which was far better. Also the data connection was serial not USB, this meant your power was drained very quickly.

The benefit of this though was that I was able to use SCMxx, which is command line based communication software which I used for sending text messages from my computer without having to type with my thumb on my phone or use bulky software.

However, I think this is going to be the last Siemens I buy, and is almost definately the last of its kind, as on 07/06/05 Siemens AG (Siemens Mobile) announced it was being bought by BenQ (formerly Acer), but it all spells trouble for me, and as far as I can see it is a struggling company, and is having difficulty competing in today’s market. It is only a matter of time before its is bankrupt.

Conclusion: This was a great phone and simply lacked bluetooth, it’s time to move on.

More: Siemens CX65

An ISO image usually refers to an archived copy of an optical disc such as a CD or DVD.

You would usually experience such files if you downloaded a full CD copy of an application or a bootable CD.

Other circumstances are if you would like to use a CD without having it physically in the drive, you can do this by creating a virtual drive, using an emulator.

The general term for software that can do this is called a “disk image emulator”, and there are a few out there to choose from.

Read the rest of this entry »

I use contact forms on many websites, and over the years I have discovered many problems with using them, including hijacking, mail injection, server hacks, XSS and platform issues.

The main cause of this is simply due to lack of validation and error checking.

Firstly you must fully understand how forms work with PHP. When you set the form “method” to POST, it sends the data to PHP as a super global variable called “$_POST”. In the HTML each “input” has a “name”, that is used to identify the related data.

For example, there is an input field named “message”, to retrieve this in PHP you simply use “$_POST[‘message’]”, we will be using this method to pass the data between the form and PHP for processing.

This is a fine example of how NOT to do it, so what is wrong with this method you may ask?

Here are some of the issues we need to overcome:

• Data directly input into the mail() function without processing
• Does data from input fields contain malicious code
• Check user input is not empty
• Validation on user inputs
• If the email address the user entered is real
• Whether the email successfully sent or not
• Ensure the correct data is processed
• Which website the form was sent from
• The IP address of the sender
• Display the form at appropriate times
• Append additional fields to the end of the message

Download here: PHP Contact Form by HM2K v1.0.1

The comments I have made within the code explains the reason what it does, and why it is included.

I hope this solves some of the problems people experience with contact forms.

Additional Notes:

• phpro.com offers further details on User Input Validation, ideal for more advanced forms.
• In this example I have not used tableless CSS friendly forms, just keep the focus on the PHP.
• You may also wish to add a captcha security code for added anti-spam protection.

First of all for those that don’t know, Windows Genuine Advantage or WGA is a peice of software released by Microsoft to validate your copy of windows when using services such as Windows Update or Download Center.

Due to the fact that these days you are required to keep windows up-to-date it is a good idea to satify the WGA notification.

However, because of the concerns over whether this application is infact a form of spyware due to the data it collects and sends back to Microsoft, also due to the fact that once you have established that you have a (il)legal version of Windows there is no longer any requirement to have the software installed.

Therefore Windows Genuine Advantage Remover software was created.

Once you have run RemoveWGA.exe and rebooted, before long you will be asked to install new Windows Updates. At this point you can simply choose custom on Windows Update, and de-select the Windows Genuine Advantage update, Windows Update will then ask you if you do not want to install this again in the future, you simply select no. This will be the end of WGA, and your windows updates will continue to function as before.
There are many other ways to remove the WGA however this is the most effective.

If you still have questions the Wikipedia has more information about the Windows Genuine Advantage.