Messages

976

General Software Discussion / Re: Überwallpaper!

« on: June 15, 2007, 08:36 PM »

@App103 - I like your daughter's work.  Simple, not detracting from icons, but pretty.  It is amazing to me how many designs miss those points. 

As for my wallpaper, I got it from Desktopography.  I think I heard about it here at DC, but I am not certain.  There are over 140 customized themes available from artists around the world.

977

Developer's Corner / Re: Docoto Defense - DonationCoder.com Game in Development

« on: June 15, 2007, 08:27 PM »

From what I was reading, one way anyone can help would be to post blogs that would add awareness of the contest.  Also, assisting in writing the weekly blogs here and the monthly ones in GarageGames site would free you up to do more programming...

I may be able to assist with Web Design, though my full schedule would probably prevent me from creating it myself.  My skills are in XHTML and CSS.  None of that fancy ASP/JSP/PHP/etc. stuff, at least not yet.  Never the less, it could be a start.  A friend of mine asked me to assist with his pages and I built him the one here if you want a look at some of my work.  It is somewhat basic and was influenced heavily by his previous design (he didn't want to deviate from the original design, just lighten it from a black background and bring it up to date with XHTML and CSS instead of HTML 3 codework).  However, it does show some of what I am capable of.

Ideally, if my help were to be used, I would work with someone who knows PHP so we can finish faster, with better result, and I can learn a bit in the process.  Any takers?

978

General Software Discussion / Re: memory corruption after updating my lappy to 2gb? was: pagefile usage

« on: June 15, 2007, 08:12 PM »

Another tiny app that would do the same thing is MemTest86+.  It is all of about 40kb or something like that, but it does need run from a bootable media from a shutdown.  You can get precompiled versions here.

979

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Application Running and Notification Tool

« on: June 13, 2007, 12:48 PM »

Is there some reason it will not work in the startup folder?  In other words, once the software starts, do you have to do something (such as push a record button)?  If it starts running once it starts up, you can just add an exe shortcut to the startup folder and it will go.  If you need your machine to login automatically (in WinXP for example), you can do that with TweakUI.  Once you login, the startup folder runs any and all programs listed.

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General Software Discussion / Re: does anyone of you believe in defragmentation programs?

« on: June 13, 2007, 09:11 AM »

As for heat generation issues, you should always have a 80 or 120mm fan in front of your harddrives. In normal system use, it means a temperature difference of ~20C around here (Denmark... Scandinavia... aka cold).

-f0dder (February 06, 2006, 10:17 AM)

Yes, it makes a good room heater in the winter too, especially when combined with the GPU fan on high intensity games (though it ups the AC bill if you have that sort of thing).

981

Developer's Corner / Re: Web development best practices for state technology fair site

« on: June 11, 2007, 11:18 PM »

It depends a lot on where you currently are in your knowledge and what you are trying to do from what I know.  If you know pretty much nothing, I suggest you start at http://www.htmldog.com for an extremely good tutorial on HTML and CSS.  This is the core basis of the web and web page management.   Everything else (.Net, ASP, JSP, etc.) are all extensions (read here extending the limitations) of this basis.  Beyond that, I too am curious about what others feel.  I know a lot depends on the server and server extensions available, but if you are wide open, I see a lot of development coming from VB.Net/C#.Net on IIS servers.  C# seems to be the harder of the two to learn, but significantly more powerful due to the strong types from what I have read.  There are many others who can tell you much more than I, but if you are like me, you are looking for a quick answer, so here is a start 

982

General Software Discussion / Re: Returnil Virtual System

« on: June 11, 2007, 10:57 PM »

@Darwin - Download the new FARR and use fcalc -

             $39.95 - 5.99 != 29.96

             $39.95 - 5.99 == 33.96

Though I do now see that the original cost was $35.95 so your total was right.  Never mind, it is almost midnight and the newborn insists on keeping me up to post to you 

983

Living Room / Re: Very Good (Printed) Book Search Site

« on: June 11, 2007, 10:43 PM »

Half the fun of being a student if figuring out how to beat the extortionate book costs!

-Darwin (June 11, 2007, 06:55 PM)

Fun you call it?

984

ProcessTamer / Re: suggestion: taming processes depending on other processes existence / priori

« on: June 11, 2007, 10:39 PM »

Here is my two cents from a user standpoint that would be ideal...Set a way to mark certain files that force all other processes to idle and when those processes open, everything changes automatically.  When they shut down, the processes return to normal.  To handle conflicts of multiple files that force other processes to normal, you could just follow the window focus.  The program in focus would force all other processes idle. 

Don't know anything about the difficulty of making that happen, but identifying a program (process or processes related to the program) should be easy enough for the user, and the programming handling the rest is the way programs should work IMO.

That said, your solution would be a good one if my suggestion is not possible, or as a stop-gap while figuring out the details and programming it into the next version.

985

Living Room / Re: An alternative to Duel Boot

« on: June 11, 2007, 10:26 PM »

That site I posted earlier has links to a few different virtualization software.
That KVM one though uses the linux kernel as a hypervisor and needs hardware virtualiztion support.
I would say that one would be the best in terms of speed.

-hollowlife1987 (June 11, 2007, 07:33 PM)

Thanks for the link, while it isn't quite ready for prime time for a windows user like me (that is why I want this, to get used to Linux), it looks very promising.   I will keep an eye on it as I get more familiar with Linux.

986

Living Room / Re: An alternative to Duel Boot

« on: June 11, 2007, 10:24 PM »

there is a video on youtube where someone has a triple boot of mac, linux, and xp, and to switch between them, all he has to do is push a hot key, I'll see if I can find the video.

edit: here it is windows|mac|ubuntu

-nite_monkey (June 11, 2007, 06:42 PM)

That would do nicely if the performance was as fast as shown on a lower end machine, but I doubt it.  From what I could tell (not much) it looked vaguely like a newer MacBook...maybe even a Pro.  For that kind of price I could build a second mainstream machine and use a hardware KVM like Carol said.  I am not sure I am even looking at doing this realistically, but if I were, it would be on an older machine.  Maybe a "fast" PIII or early P4 processor with no more than 1GB ram and 2 40GB Hard Drives that I already have.

I currently have and use (well at work anyway) VMWare Workstation.  While it is great software that allows for a lot of control and configuration, there is a significant hit when you run even one machine virtually.  Two and it crawls, three and the system basically comes to a standstill.  Perhaps a new machine with hypervisor technology and such may work better, but that isn't what I have available.  Ideally I would like the advantages of having two machines with a KVM between them, but without having two separate machines.  Sounds like it is a dream still at this time though....

987

Living Room / Re: Sony in trouble - again ... this time the Church of England is gunning for t

« on: June 11, 2007, 01:22 PM »

 

988

Living Room / Re: Sony in trouble - again ... this time the Church of England is gunning for t

« on: June 11, 2007, 11:34 AM »

Sorry, I can not go that far...A human error (or humanity's errors as the case may be) does not invalidate the creator any more than a system error invalidates the programmer.  That is as far as I will go with this thought here though...

989

Living Room / Re: Sony in trouble - again ... this time the Church of England is gunning for t

« on: June 11, 2007, 11:15 AM »

Way to call it, Carol.

Church of England demands Sony donation for shoot-out game
from Yahoo news

990

Living Room / Re: An alternative to Duel Boot

« on: June 11, 2007, 11:07 AM »

Exactly.  I fear you are correct about it being a long way off yet.  Why would MB manufacturers want you to be able to virtualize your hardware in such a way?  That gives them enough reason to sell another MB.  Of course if you want to sway me to buy your board over others...

Never the less, it never hurts to ask.  Too bad not all companies think this way.

991

Living Room / Re: Very Good (Printed) Book Search Site

« on: June 11, 2007, 10:45 AM »

Thanks for the tip on Authors.  I never search that way...I typically search by title or ISBN.  I too was surprised about where the books come from cheapest.  When I got my college books, most came either from the UK or Germany of all places.  Going to the US, that kind of shocked me.

992

Living Room / Re: An alternative to Duel Boot

« on: June 11, 2007, 10:22 AM »

I think that steeladept was referring to a Keyboard-Video-Mouse switch when they said KVM.  I don't think that you would be able to do something like that with one motherboard, cpu, set of memory, etc even if you could get a program to switch hard drives on the fly.

Carl

-cthorpe (June 11, 2007, 08:55 AM)

You are right Carl.  I was trying to avoid a boot where I have to shut down one OS to start the other, while still avoiding the bulk of the hit you get using virtualization.  A KVM switch allows you to run two independent machines at the same time using a hotkey combination to switch between the two.  Virtuallization requires a software package to allow one (or more) OS's to run within a host OS environment.  What I was looking for is something where two separate hard drives with separate OS's run independently on a single motherboard/processor setup.  I think this would be impossible without a BIOS specially made for it, though memory and processor management would be problematic even in this case.  That is why I think this does not exist, but I thought I would ask to see if anyone has seen or heard of this.

BTW:  If any of you work for a motherboard manufacturer, it could be a selling point for your company to get a leg up on the competition 

993

Living Room / Very Good (Printed) Book Search Site

« on: June 11, 2007, 09:48 AM »

As requested....

Search and Compare among 40+ sites, 20,000 sellers, millions of books!

I learned of AddAll.com while I was in college and I credit this site with singlehandedly saving me hundreds of dollars (unfortunately I didn't learn about it in my early years of college or it could have been a thousand or more).  This site does what it says, but has now expanded to include music, movies, magazines, and most recently credit card offers.  While I have not used it for anything other than books, I can attest to the value of the searches.  It conveniently allows you to search for books by keyword, title, author, and (most valuable to students) ISBN.

A suggestion on usage for the students out there...Go to the bookstore when the book list is first published.  Get the ISBN numbers off the listings, then search here.  I found on average I was paying about 30% of my school bookstore prices if I could get them used, and about 60% new.  Doing it this way guarantees you get the exact same edition.  The only books I ever bought at the school bookstore were school publications (often handbooks that the teachers put together and published locally only).

Best of all, AddAll will determine the prices for you AFTER calculating shipping.  Very handy for those sites that lure you in with low cost goods, but are actually more expensive because they charge high shipping rates.  Lastly, you can link to the site to buy the book.  Here is an example of the results:

All in all, a VERY useful site.

all pictures from http://www.addall.com

994

Living Room / IE Enhancer

« on: June 11, 2007, 08:36 AM »

This program will automatically maximize new Internet Explorer and Outlook Express windows for you. It includes a function for hiding/closing all IE windows with a userdefined hotkey. It's also possible to open new IE windows and automatically have them sent to the background. The program is also capable of closing popup windows.

I just found out about another great utility that is donationware.  It is called IE New Window Maximizer.  How many IE user's out there find it infuriating when a window is spawned in an incorrect size?  What about when IE doesn't behave correctly and opens child windows a different size than the default?  I am forced to use IE 6 at work and run into these issues all the time.  To resolve this issue, I have learned of this utility that forces all IE windows to open Maximized, even when defined to a different size by the page author.  It also allows you to create rules for IE windows and to just manage the windows a bit easier.

Just imagine it...Your pop-up blocker fails to recognize the pop-up for whatever reason (or worse you don't have a pop-up blocker), yet you can close ALL spawned pop-ups from the same location instead of chasing that little close box.  Best of all (though not so good for your blogging, mouser, I can't screenshot it working), it works seamlessly in the background.  If you have to work with IE (or just prefer it), I definitely suggest this utility or one like it.

I have invited the developer to join (unless he is already a member and my search didn't turn it up properly).  Hopefully we will see him soon.

from www.jiisoft.com

995

Living Room / An alternative to Duel Boot

« on: June 10, 2007, 10:17 PM »

I was just thinking, with all the great software out there for virtualization of everything, duel booting computers, and other similar technologies; has anyone heard of, or had experience with a software KVM?  What I am envisioning is one machine with two hard drives.  Each hard drive has it's own OS and software on it, but it is each independently supported on the same hardware.  It would likely require some sort of BIOS support for hotkey switching, so I am not sure it exists, but I thought I would throw it out there to see if anyone has heard or seen anything like this.

996

Living Room / Re: Links page - suggestions wanted

« on: June 08, 2007, 10:36 PM »

addall looks fantastic.  that deserves a post of its own steel, make one with a pic and i'll blog it.
regarding gizmo's site, well if that's not on the link page i better add it ASAP.

-mouser (June 08, 2007, 10:06 PM)

Good call, why didn't I think of that?

EDIT - Here is the link to the post:  AddAll

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General Software Discussion / Re: DivX Pro for free

« on: June 08, 2007, 10:09 PM »

Guess I am too slow...I can't find anywhere where the offer may be.

998

Living Room / Re: Links page - suggestions wanted

« on: June 08, 2007, 10:00 PM »

I have a few to add:

http://www.addall.com/ - THE best place to shop for books, music, movies, etc.  They just query many different sites and collate the data to figure out your best price...period.

You also seemed to have forgotten Gizmo's site - http://www.techsupportalert.com/

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General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have apps in the System tray?

« on: June 08, 2007, 09:22 PM »

I would like to think there is meaning to life even if the electricity was gone.

-Curt (June 08, 2007, 05:17 PM)

I agree.  In my life it is my girls. Cindy Gwen Heidi (Adelheid for the Germans out there )

1000

General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have apps in the System tray?

« on: June 08, 2007, 03:06 PM »

"Man of many interests"; hmm - at least I think I used to be. But as I am getting older I am noticing my list of interests is narrowing. There has been far too much "chit'chat" in my life; but now I can see that my life too will end, so more and more often I am thinking "get to the point of what really matters", or something like that. But of course not all day yet - then I wouldn't be here at DC, would I.   

-Curt (June 08, 2007, 12:56 PM)

What do you mean, isn't this what it all boils down to anyway