audio recording - how to hide sound recorder in windows 7

I want to record sound on a Windows 7 computer using software called Sound recorder.

My question Is there any way to hide it

even i did that : Open windows Task Manager (Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete) and do a right click on the Sound Recorder task name and then select Minimize!

still not hidden

Thanks any help would be appreciated

Answer

EDIT: forget what I wrote before. After some more investigation I found out that Soundrecorder natively supports this.

Either create a shortcut or batchfile or run directly from the commandline and specify the file and duration and it will silently run without window. It will be visible in the taskmanager under processes for that user but the old solution can even hide that upto a certain degree.

In the shortcut write the following:

soundrecorder /FILE  /DURATION 

for example:

soundrecorder /FILE c:\temp\output.wav /DURATION 0:0:10

Here's a step by step instruction on to creating something that will start sound recorder when windows starts.

1. Press the start orb to open the start menu.


2. Press All Programs to show all programs.


3. Scroll down to where it says Startup.


4. Right click the item Startup and select open

5. Rightclick on an empty area.


6. From the popup menu, go to the menu New, then select Shortcut

7. copy the text I've written above for the shortcut and paste it in the location field.


8. Change the duration time to your liking.

8. Press Next


9. Press Finish

And you're done. Do note that this will overwrite the wave file each time this is started. It can be changed so that everytime its run it will create a new file, but that will quickly create large files on the computer.

To output to a random file, you can set the file to c:\temp\output_%random%%random%.wav or perhaps even better, do this: c:\temp\output_%date%_%random%.wav

The new like will look like this:

soundrecorder /FILE c:\temp\output_%date%_%random%.wav /DURATION 0:0:10

---[ old solution ]------

Start the program as a different user without desktop interaction will completely hide it from windows. In the task manager you can only see it if you choose "show processes from all users".

In order to do this, create a 2nd account on the computer if it doesn't have at least 2 accounts, then use the runas /user:[username] /savecred "%SystemRoot%\system32\SoundRecorder.exe /file c:\output.wav /duration 1:00:00"

The first time you have to enter a password, but then it will store the password and a next time this password is used. You can remove this from the Credential Manager at a later stage if you desire so.

It will then record to c:\output.wav for a duration of 1 hour.

macos - ls -la symbolics... what does that last symbol mean?

Possible Duplicate:
what does the @ mean on the output of ls on os x terminal?

when I type ls -la I get this familiar output...

drwxr-xr-x+  38 kent  staff       1292 Nov  6 11:09 .
drwxr-xr-x    5 root  admin        170 Aug 14 14:11 ..
-rw-r--r--@   1 kent  staff         16 Jun 18 14:13 .AB64CF89
-rw-------    1 kent  staff          3 May  5  2009 .CFUserTextEncoding
-rw-r--r--@   1 kent  staff      15364 Nov  6 11:11 .DS_Store

my question is about the file settings on the far left eg:

drwxr-xr-x+

I know that the first char 'd' means directory. and the next 9 chars I understand as well (permissions) but what is the final char in this field? (empty or + or @ )

permissions - How to allow apache access to a file but prevent others from viewing it?

I have several folders with Magento installations.

e.g.

www/magento1 www/magento2

All of the files/folders inside of those are owned by root:magento1 and root:magento2 respectively.

I have 3755 perms for all folders, 644 for all directories to start with. That prevents anyone but root from writing to any folder or file.

Then I add in group write permissions for folders/files devs should be able to write to. E.g. they cannot write to core files, but they can write to module/skins that are non core.

That's all fine. The only thing that's not fine is that I don't want them to be able to read the mysql database username/password from magento1/app/etc/local.xml. I don't want them to have access to the database, where sensitive information is stored. I also don't want a rogue programmer to delete a bunch of tables or what have you.

But apache needs to have read access to that same file.

Here's a "solution" that doesn't work: Remove read permissions from group but leave them for others. Why? Because that prevents devs from reading from their app/etc/local.xml, but allows them to read all the others.

What do I do?

---

EDIT: Yes, devs = developers and they will have SSH and FTP access.

Answer

Assuming that, like under Debian, the apache runs as user www-data and group www-data, the solution is

chown www-data:www-data www/magento1/app/etc/local.xml
chmod 440 www/magento1/app/etc/local.xml

The root user can always read and write all files.

hard drive - GParted moving partition from beginning of disk to the end of a disk?

Straight forward, as the title says but, I've never moved a partition with GParted and I'm concerned that I will damage the drive. I have a screen shot.

I'm trying to get the sda2 partition to use the unallocated space. I believe that I have to move sda2 to the end of the hard drive but, I'm not sure and I don't know how.

Any help would be appreciated!

Answer

Partitions must be contiguous (you cannot use two separate disk areas for a single /dev/sda2), so you will first need to move sda3 to the end of the disk, using GParted's "Move/resize" function.

|1|------sda2------|           free space           |-----------sda3-----------|

Afterwards, use the same function to expand sda2 into the free space in the middle:

|1|----------------------sda2-----------------------|-----------sda3-----------|

However, since sda3 is your system partition, you cannot move or resize it from the same system. You will have to boot from the Ubuntu CD instead.

Moving (or, in rare cases, resizing) partitions can cause all files to be lost – for example, if the power goes out during moving (it takes a long time to move a partition). It never causes physical damage, however.

Good Text-to-Speech solution for Windows

I am running Windows 7 and I know it has the ability to read me text in my applications, but I am looking for a good utility to save chunks of text as a wav file or mp3. It may already be built into the OS, but cleverly disguised. I know I can write a program to call the API, which is my next step if there isn't a good solution already.

I really like the quality of the AT&T system, but it has some pretty steep restrictions on using the produced MP3. I'd like to use them in my podcast.

Web based is OK too, as long as it easily produces a fairly unencumbered (Public domain or Creative Commons) Wav, MP3 or some other standard audio file. Naturally I prefer free or open source over commercial, but that isn't a requirement.

Answer

I've tried espeak, festival, and MaryTTS. They all generate understandable voices for the most part but they are not very natural. Even with additional voice downloads for these systems (e.g. Mbrola, CMU Arctic) the voices are not that great.

IVONA voices are the best I've heard so far. They give you a 30 day free demo which is enough if you have a one-off task to do. After that they are like $45/voice. Amazon just bought the company so you know it's solid (http://www.ivona.com/us/news/amazoncom-announces-acquisition-of-ivona-software/).

They work with Microsoft's SAPI interface which means the voices are available to any program that supports that (e.g. Adobe Reader). I've been using them with Text To Wav program which is nice for bulk conversion of text files into wave files.

Edit

Actually just re-read your question and I think for non-personal use (e.g. podcasts) the price is probably a lot higher for IVONA. In that case I'd say check out MaryTTS.

windows 7 - How to place SuperFetch cache on an SSD?

I'm thinking of adding a solid state drive (SSD) to my existing Windows 7 installation.

I know I can (and should) move my paging file to the SSD:

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

• Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,


• Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.


• Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.

What I don't know is if I even can put a SuperFetch cache (i.e. ReadyBoost cache) on the solid state drive.

I want to get the benefit of Windows being able to cache gigabytes of frequently accessed data on a relativly small (e.g. 30GB) solid state drive. This is exactly what SuperFetch+ReadyBoost (or SuperFetch+ReadyDrive) was designed for.

Will Windows offer (or let) me place a ReadyBoost cache on a solid state flash drive connected via SATA?

A problem with the ReadyBoost cache over the ReadyDrive cache is that the ReadyBoost cache does not survive between reboots. The cache is encrypted with a per-session key, making its existing contents unusable during boot and SuperFetch pre-fetching during login.

---

Update One

I know that Windows Vista limited you to only one ReadyBoost.sfcache file (I do not know if Windows 7 removed that limitation):

Q: Can use use multiple devices for EMDs? A: Nope. We've limited Vista to one ReadyBoost per machine

Q: Why just one device? A: Time and quality. Since this is the first revision of the feature, we decided to focus on making the single device exceptional, without the difficulties of managing multiple caches. We like the idea, though, and it's under consideration for future versions.

I also know that the 4GB limit on the cache file was a limitation of the FAT filesystem used on most USB sticks - an SSD drive would be formatted with NTFS:

Q: What's the largest amount of flash that I can use for ReadyBoost?
A: You can use up to 4GB of flash for ReadyBoost (which turns out to be 8GB of cache w/ the compression)

Q: Why can't I use more than 4GB of flash? A: The FAT32 filesystem limits our ReadyBoost.sfcache file to 4GB

Can a ReadyBoost cache on an NTFS volume be larger than 4GB?

Update Two

The ReadyBoost cache is encrypted with a per-boot session key. This means that the cache has to be re-built after each boot, and cannot be used to help speed boot times, or latency from login to usable.

Windows ReadyDrive technology takes advantage of non-volatile (NV) memory (i.e. flash) that is incorporated with some hybrid hard drives. This flash cache can be used to help Windows boot, or resume from hibernate faster.

• Will Windows 7 use an internal SSD drive as a ReadyBoost/ReadyDrive/SuperFetch cache?


• Is it possible to make Windows store a SuperFetch cache (i.e. ReadyBoost) on a non-removable SSD?


• Is it possible to not encrypt the ReadyBoost cache, and if so will Windows 7 use the cache at boot time?

See also

Answer

Turns out you cannot put a ReadyBoost cache on an SSD.

When you initially format the drive, and assign it a drive letter, you are given the option to place a ReadyBoost cache on the drive.

But on subsequent reboot, the ReadyBoost driver reports in the event log:

The device (Unknown Unknown) will not be used for a ReadyBoost cache because the ReadyBoost driver is attached to its volume stack.

Full log entry:

Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-ReadyBoost/Operational
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-ReadyBoost
Date:          3/2/2011 10:55:28 ᴩᴍ
Event ID:      1022
Task Category: ReadyBoost
Level:         Information
Keywords:      (16384)
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      Harpax
Description:   The device (Unknown Unknown) will not be used for a ReadyBoost cache because the ReadyBoost driver is attached to its volume stack.

Even though a ReadyBoost would be useful for a computer running on spinning platters, ReadyBoost seems to limit itself to storage devices connected to the slow USB port.

networking - How To: Desktop as Server, Laptop as "Thin Client"?

I am a Computer Science undergraduate student. I have a self-built desktop with more than enough CPU time and Memory to share. I use this for daily computing, coding, and other homework.

I also have a circa early 2000's dell laptop with an old intel celeron and 512MB of RAM. (My cell phone is more powerful than this thing)

The idea is that I want to be able to use my desktop as a "Server" for the laptop and only use the laptop almost as a remote control of sorts for the desktop.

I have used VNC in the past to achieve this kind of capability but was always very slow over the network and cumbersome to use.

What I would like would be an efficient way to either access the host OS from the laptop or give it some way to use the host's resources to drive its OS hosted as virtual machine or something.

Does anyone know of a creative solution or software that does something like this?