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Messages - Lashiec [ switch to compact view ]

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 95next
1
General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 15 Preview
« on: May 29, 2013, 12:18 PM »
It's still way too early to evaluate the product, there are tons of things left to do before it can even rival Chrome in functionality, much less Opera. There are a couple of things I like though, like the "Discover" feature, which is much a visual version of Newspond, begging to be improved (Google Reader replacement ;)), or the fact that at long last we have a proper adblock extension (a side effect of the Chromium underpinnings). But not being able to install additional dictionaries, and thus, spellcheck this block of text, emphasizes the character of this build as an early preview, and not the next-gen version of Opera. I guess it's not as easy as say, getting Presto out and Chromium in, and the conversion requires rewriting big parts of the codebase from scratch.

Or maybe I'm being too optimistic, and Opera's big plan is still pulling a Nokia, and moving much of its effort to other more juicy things.

2
DC Gamer Club / Re: Rogue likes for PC
« on: March 13, 2013, 10:18 PM »
No love for DoomRL? For shame DC, for shame.

3
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Google Reader - Mini-Review
« on: March 13, 2013, 09:42 PM »
To add insult to the injury, Nick Bradbury killed FeedDemon too. Holy fuck, stop killing things I use! Gosh, what I am going to use from now on? I have to either go for a pure web service, which I'm not very keen on, or buy a smartphone :o

Also, I am the one to blame for Reader's demise. Just this morning, while taking a shower, I thought what would happen if Google killed the service. Well, there you are :(

4
I'm a bit more skeptical there.

I read that as "better life conditions usually mean lower birth rates".

5
Living Room / Re: CyberNetNews - Still alive?
« on: February 14, 2013, 07:44 PM »
Ryan is probably too busy eating everything Ashley cooks, I know I would ;D

6
General Software Discussion / Re: 2013 Version: Browser Wars
« on: February 14, 2013, 06:11 PM »
Well, this explains why they stopped releasing new test builds.

I'm going to adopt a wait and see approach until they unveil the final product. From the press release, it isn't much clear what Opera is actually going to do with the desktop product. It does suggest that all they're really going to do is to integrate WebKit into Opera, something that potentially has few drawbacks.

But the mention of Chromium got me thinking that maybe the higher ups are redirecting the company focus on other, more profitable interests, moving manpower from the Desktop Team to other projects and transforming the desktop browser into little more than an Opera-branded Chrome, effectively pulling a Nokia, which does sound like a colossal bad idea... unless brand pull and user inertia is strong enough to only lose the most dedicated users, all two of us :P

The browser market is getting more and more hostile to the likes of Opera, with some opportunity windows closing fast, so you gotta do whatever you can to stay relevant. Even though one of them windows can't be jailbreaked ;)

Speculation aside, this change is akin to Opera Software throwing the towel. Years and years of effort, laid to waste. Precisely now, when things were so much better than in the old, much difficult days. Business is business, I guess. I hope the future brings along open source versions of Presto and the various incarnations of their JavaScript engine, preferably BSD-licensed, if only for preservation and research purposes.

The competition angle is interesting too. The browser wars have gone cold. Everyone is on WebKit now. Apple, Adobe, Google and now Opera. It's quickly becoming the de facto rendering engine, specially for embedded development. People bemoaned the lack of a reference HTML engine for years and now they pretty much have one, and as open and portable as it can be. Does it make sense for Microsoft and, above all, Mozilla to keep developing Trident and Gecko?

7
Unite was killed months ago. An interesting idea for sure, but there really wasn't a market for it.

Does this mean opera will actually work now?!? No more broken pages?

What? Still having those problems?

8
General Software Discussion / Re: uTorrent alternatives?
« on: February 23, 2012, 07:58 PM »
You can disable all the nagging around the UI. My version looks almost exactly like 2.x

I would personally recommend Halite, if Eóin still kept working on it. As it is today, it is at a disadvantage because it doesn't support as many features as the others. Plus, it looks pretty snazzy. The competition tries its utmost to be the ugliest option available. At least we're still much better off than a couple of years ago, when both Mac and Linux roundkicked Windows' ass when it came to the number of options available. Now they just simply kick its ass.

BitTorrent is a dead concept, made with centralized trackers in mind which has been proven a very bad design idea.

Indeed, DHT seems to be faster locating peers than most trackers. A torrent directory is not the same thing as a tracker, though ;). ed2k and KAD still have the upper hand when it comes to decentralization, but they're working on solving that for BitTorrent. Are both networks still having enough activity, anyway?

9
Looks like Rafael didn't pay much attention when updating Daemon Tools. I just updated it and the program asks you whether you want to use MountSpace or not. To my knowledge, there's no silent updates of any kind, just a mere update check, which can be disabled as well.

Checking "Don’t allow MountSpace to use my mount statistics" doesn't disable MountSpace but the only thing it does in this state is to fetch up information from the MountSpace servers about the images you add to the Image Catalog. To disable it completely you have to uncheck the "Enable Media Info panel" option:

2012-02-13 21 40 37.png

This way the program won't establish any connection with the remote servers. Additionally, you may check the "Send anonymous usage statistics" option, which comes disabled by default. This is very bad.

Daemon Tools sure could use some competition here. It's a shame all the other tools still are not up to its standard, save for Alcohol, which isn't much more worthy of anyone's trust.

EDIT: Aha! In the newer versions they expanded the update process, so now you can also update the program without requiring the use of an installer. It seems that the process doesn't ask any question, which may explain why Rafael missed the new feature (I get an "Invalid server error" when attempting to update, so I'm not 100% sure).

What's more, the addition of MountSpace isn't mentioned anywhere in the Daemon Tools Lite changelog, while the paid clients get the 'privilege' of being informed beforehand.

10
General Software Discussion / Re: Is WinZip still worth updating?
« on: February 10, 2012, 02:32 PM »
But WinRAR will not allow you to create a Zip archive with more than 4GB of content, so I also use 7zip when I need that capability.

That was finally fixed on version 4.10, so give it a spin. I don't know how it took so long for them to add such feature.

7-zip is good, but the interface is mediocre and the 64-bit version does not show up in the context menu of XYplorer on Windows 7 64-bit systems.

A limitation of XYplorer and a oversight on 7-Zip. XYplorer is a 32-bit application only and 7-Zip only includes a 64-bit shell extension (WinRAR includes both versions). Donald said a 64-bit version of XYplorer is coming but I don't know how he intends to do that given the number of roadblocks ahead.

11
DC Gamer Club / Re: Humble Android Bundle
« on: February 09, 2012, 06:17 PM »
Toki Tori is damn sweet. Just don't be deceived by its innocent look, some of the later puzzles are devious.

12
It's also available on GamersGate, DRM-free.

13
DC Gamer Club / Re: Humble Android Bundle
« on: January 31, 2012, 06:15 PM »
I mean outside the Humble Bundle, as a standalone product.

14
DC Gamer Club / Re: Humble Android Bundle
« on: January 31, 2012, 01:18 PM »
*SIGH*

Well, I hope they provide a way to get a DRM-free copy of EDGE after the sale is over.

EDIT: Congratulations to Deozaan for its five-thousandth post :)

15
Living Room / Re: As a counter-point to the SOPA/PIPA demonstration
« on: January 31, 2012, 01:06 PM »
Well, looks like the government there is looking to delete the evidence...

https://rt.com/news/...les-prosecutors-031/

You have to wonder... Why would you delete the evidence? Hmmm...

Hmmm, I say...

There might a be slight possibility for Megaupload users to recover their files. I hope the three involved parties come to an agreement on doing this, Megaupload isn't even obliged to provide this service to users, and the other two shouldn't really care what happens with the files at this point.

16
Living Room / Re: As a counter-point to the SOPA/PIPA demonstration
« on: January 30, 2012, 08:00 PM »
Well, looks like the government there is looking to delete the evidence...

https://rt.com/news/...les-prosecutors-031/

You have to wonder... Why would you delete the evidence? Hmmm...

Hmmm, I say...

17
Living Room / Re: Steam: Savior or Slayer of PC Gaming?
« on: November 29, 2011, 12:40 PM »
GamersGate has been selling games that use Steamworks for quite a while, thus requiring the use of Steam for installation, authentication, etc. Such requirement is listed on the game's page in the DRM section. If it reads "Requires a 3rd party download and account", most likely it's referring to Steam. Valve isn't taking over GamersGate or anything like that, it wouldn't make much sense either.

18
DC Gamer Club / Re: [BARGAIN] GTA Complete Collection - US$12.49
« on: October 19, 2011, 08:20 PM »
That's the statement.  The gameplay, over the top violence, and over the top language is grating after a while above a certain maturity level in my opinion.

Uh-oh, seems my level of maturity is not evolving with age, but involuting :D

So is Josh's :P

19
Living Room / Re: Real life version of a Half Life 2 map
« on: October 11, 2011, 05:24 PM »
And you call THAT a speedrun? :P

20
Living Room / Re: Anyone here using a standing desk?
« on: September 20, 2011, 06:26 PM »
A brief article from Cornell University, with conclusions extracted from studies done there, and the recommendation of taking a break by getting up once in a while, like many posters have suggested through the thread.

Something that everyone should be doing to avoid the dreaded carpal tunnel syndrome, right? Yeah, me neither :P

21
Living Room / Re: The Boozernet...
« on: September 19, 2011, 02:57 PM »
Not drunk, but if you see me logged in on the IRC channel after 7 AM on a Sunday, chances are the whole night was spent with a beer on hand. So, not drunk, just "happy" :D

When actually drunk, my thoughts are all focused on how nice my bed feels ;D

22
Living Room / Re: UI Roast #1: cruel but harmless fun!
« on: September 19, 2011, 02:42 PM »
Badly labeled commands, no separation between commands that operate on different (file/macro) levels, strange shortcuts (drag... to where?), the impression that both vertical and horizontal space is at a premium... you don't encounter many programs that encourage you to shoot your foot just by aiming the gun.

Ah, a new challenger appears! Only 10 levels of priority granularity? Outrageous!

23
Lesson to be learned from Carol's struggle: Don't pay money for a VMware license when the free VirtualBox does the same and much better ;D

FYI, it's the full x64 version running with just one core and 896 MB allocated on a 20 GB HDD, virtualized on a 32-bit installation of Windows XP. I tried it first with 512 MB per VirtualBox recommendation, but it was a slideshow. With the extra 384 MB things are much smoother, though not as good as it could be. Don't really care, I am not evaluating performance improvements. I couldn't get the normal 32-bit version to complete the installation, it got stuck at 11%.

So, first tablet compromise: no Start Menu. All you have now is bunch of tiles acting as shortcuts located at the end of the tiled panorama, and a keyboard operated launcher, similar to the one used on Windows 7, but with a tablet-friendly UI and neutered capabilities. It's activated by either typing on the tiled panorama or by pressing Win + F. It's no replacement for the old Start Menu at all, since its indexing capabilities are pretty paltry, either by design or by the virtue of this being an early version, and you can't find anything that is not installed nor any document by name or content. If you download a program that comes in a ZIP file, you'll need a shortcut for it on your desktop as the launcher won't find the executable if you search for it. You can pin it to the Start Menu, but no new tile is created.

More tablet compromises: you're constantly rocking back and forth between the tiled panorama and the desktop, and the switch not only is jarring, but it also needlessly complicate things. If you want to view the control panel and you ignore of the existence of the launcher, you have to go back to the tiled panorama, launch the tablet version of the control panel and scroll down to find the link to launch the desktop version. Parts of the tablet UI creep up everywhere. If you move the mouse cursor to the low left corner (the Windows button), a menu composed of four items appears together with the date and time, and a icon indicating the network is up, all Metro-styled. Problem is the date and time appear directly above the date and time applet of the taskbar. Old bubble notifications coexist with the new toaster messages.

This menu is a complete fuck-up, actually. I don't know how come you can activate it if you're using a tablet, since the clickable area is very small for anyone's finger, and the Windows button is just a giant area to switch back to the tiled UI. There's a Share action (wat). There's a Search action, with invokes the Metro-styled launcher, but it does not search for anything, and the only thing it does if you input something and press Enter is to launch the BUILD app, which I don't know what it is (yet). And there's a Settings button, which launches a sidebar where you can change a few things, including shutting down the system. Yes, shutting down the system is a "setting" alright V_V. Do note this last sidebar is finger-friendly, so if a tablet user wants to restart the system, he has to jump through a few hoops, if he can jump at all.

More things: the UAC seems to be even less annoying than before. Microsoft Security Essentials has been integrated into Windows Defender (do I sense incoming lawsuits?). The new Ribbon in Explorer is as terrible as expected, with a Fax button and color-coded, filetype-sensitive sections containing a single button in some cases. People amazingly know how to use hotkeys (no sarcasm intended), but Microsoft thinks everyone will work better with this aberration. The new task manager is pretty nice, and a good simple alternative to Process Explorer.

Otherwise, the desktop side of Windows 8 is Windows 7, with a few improvements and changes, and that's a good thing. The tablet UI seems to be as good as the reports around the web show, haven't checked much of it yet.

In short, despite my grievances, an excellent tablet OS and a more or less excellent desktop OS, but a really bad mishmash between the two, with a serious disdain for consistency. Desktop users are going to suffer all the tablet compromises, and tablet users are not going to get anywhere close to the desktop "app". Performance-wise, the OS isn't ready for tablets at all, unless you consider a mid-range laptop a tablet. So, Microsoft still has a long road ahead if they want Windows 8 to be anything other than the laughing stock of the computer industry.

Also, don't be fooled by those sheepishly accepting the new state of things, i.e. almost all tech writers. Anything new is automatically better than the old thing, it seems.

24
General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for very light IM (ICQ) client
« on: September 05, 2011, 08:50 AM »
I find curious that you consider tracking status history or visual nudging (why hasn't this been outlawed is beyond me) than Jabber support :)

25
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« on: September 04, 2011, 02:48 PM »
That depends on how much malware the site is going to push. More malware, higher likelihood of a Windows format+reinstall, and thus a faster computer. Until you ran out of disk space again, that is.

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