OT: Computer questions

[J Miller]

A: In Ysabel Kids thread about the new palm pistol, at the top of their link was these characters: 
Anybody have a clue what they mean?


B: These darn Yahoo, Google, bots are hampering my computer. Occasionally when I try to go on to a forum I'll see the computer trying to connect with one of the bots at the bottom of the screen. Until this connection gets going I cannot get on my site.

HOW DO I BLOCK THESE INTRUDERS?

Currently I'm using Mozilla Firefox. I know that IE7 has a way to block them. If I can't find a way with Firefox I'll go back to IE.

Joe

[Old Ironsights]

A: In Ysabel Kids thread about the new palm pistol, at the top of their link was these characters: 
Anybody have a clue what they mean?

Nope.

B: These darn Yahoo, Google, bots are hampering my computer. Occasionally when I try to go on to a forum I'll see the computer trying to connect with one of the bots at the bottom of the screen. Until this connection gets going I cannot get on my site.

HOW DO I BLOCK THESE INTRUDERS?

There's nothing to block. Those "bots" are simply how those search engines can find your post on Levergunscommunity about cats & guns - as well as every other iteration of "cats & guns" - when someone types "Cats & Guns" into Google Search.

Nothing to do with your specific PC at all.

[Andrew]

A: I found this...

Yes, "" is the Byte Order Mark (BOM) of the Unicode Standard. Specifically it is the hex bytes EF BB BF, which form the UTF-8 representation of the BOM, misinterpreted as ISO 8859/1 text instead of UTF-8.

Probably what it means is that you are using a text editor that is saving files in UTF-8 with the BOM, when it should be saving without the BOM. It could be PHP files that have the BOM, in which case they'd appear as literal text on your page. Or it could be translated text you pasted into Joomla! edit windows.

The Unicode Consortium's FAQ on the Byte Order Mark is at http://www.unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html#BOM .

B: I have never had that problem and I use FF as well. I do not have dial-up though.

[J Miller]

OI,

If those bots didn't hang this computer up I wouldn't worry about them too much. But they do. Not often, but often enough. And that's too much.
They gotta go.

Joe

[Rusty]

Joe,

I'm using Firefox as well and I've never had a problem.

[J Miller]

Joe,

I'm using Firefox as well and I've never had a problem.

Hmmmmmmm, next time it happens I'll do a screen capture and post it. It doesn't happen often, but once is too many times.

Joe

[AJMD429]

OI,

If those bots didn't hang this computer up I wouldn't worry about them too much. But they do. Not often, but often enough. And that's too much.
They gotta go.

Joe

[dumb question ON] How can you tell it is the 'bots' that are hanging your computer, vs. some other slowdown? [/dumb question OFF]

[Grizz]

Joe,

do you have cookies enabled for the entire universe? you could try blocking those site's cookies.... but if you connect thru yahoo you have a whole 'nother order of issues 'cause it's a virus in its own right...

[J Miller]

OI,

If those bots didn't hang this computer up I wouldn't worry about them too much. But they do. Not often, but often enough. And that's too much.
They gotta go.

Joe

[dumb question ON] How can you tell it is the 'bots' that are hanging your computer, vs. some other slowdown? [/dumb question OFF]

AJMD,

The site I'm refering to is The Ruger Forum. When the bots show up on the progress bar on the bottom of the screen I cannot get on to the forum until they get done what ever they are doing. When they do not show up I zing right on to the forum in seconds.

Grizz,

I'm not sure what the cookies settings are on this box, I'll have to check. I don't think we are connecting through Yahoo, how do I check that?

Joe

[Grizz]

I'm not sure what the cookies settings are on this box, I'll have to check. I don't think we are connecting through Yahoo, how do I check that?

it's a subscription service, you'd know by the monthly charge on your cc. yahoo is an isp, sort of.

oh yeah, one more thing:

are you subscribed to any RSS feeds? 'cause if you are, that could explain the problem you're having.