Topics

76

Living Room / Wiki Democracy

« on: September 28, 2007, 05:20 PM »

While reading the news this afternoon, I came across this interesting and surprising piece of information. An excerpt:

New Zealand will allow citizens to decide what is legal or not via wiki.

New Zealand's Policing Act governs what is legal and what is illegal for its citizens.  Now New Zealand will take a grand, bold step by allowing its citizens to collectively rewrite its laws in pure democratic fashion.

While the idea hearkens back to ancient democratic forums, the medium is decidedly high-tech -- the nation will use a wiki to allow citizens to contribute to the new policing act.  The page will help people organize their thoughts and collectively make decisions.

I think that this is democracy at its purest, just like it was devised in the old Greece, but taking advantage of modern technologies. Of course, one thinks about the Wikipedia, and wonders if they'll need a wiki police squad to watch over the possible vandalism in a page geared to the discussion of new attributions for the police. A bit ironic if you ask me , but I hope everything turns for the best, and this novel idea gets exported to the rest of the world

77

General Software Discussion / CDBurnerXP 4 released

« on: September 22, 2007, 10:15 AM »

Well, it seems September is really bringing a whole new batch of major software updates. This week is the turn for one of the best freeware burners out there, CDBurnerXP (which, as you see, it's dropping the "Pro" suffix). Three years have since passed since last time this burner was updated, and after a long developing phase, which resembled Duke Nukem Forever as various rewrites and a new focus of the project happened in between. It seems to be worth the wait, as the developers wrote new burning components from scratch, bringing the application to modern times in terms of optical media support, and fixed some MAJOR bugs which really were a hit to the usability of the last stable version (one of them almost prevented data burning, as it didn't recognize folder nesting). Some things were dropped from the project as well, like the option to tag your media files (very slow, anyway) and audio ripping, though they said that they probably make a comeback as separate applications. Also, there were some other changes that won't please everybody. First, support for Win9x OS has been dropped. Second, it uses .NET Framework 2.0, although there's a way to avoid installing the complete package which is detailed here. The list of changes:

- Support for new technologies like Double layer DVDs, Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs
- Internationalisation (i18n): Support for multi-byte characters on discs and translations of the program
- Support for FLAC audio files
- disc-to-disc copy for audio and data
- Save discs and compilations as ISO file
- Support for WPL playlists
- XML based project files for interoperability
- fixed many bugs of 3.0.116 and 3.5

They've redesigned the site as well, though the help file is still outdated, and they're looking for volunteers. So, if you're up to the task, ya know where you should head
via File Hippo (yeah, yeah, I know, I should use other sources )

78

Living Room / Flash Game of the Day: flOw

« on: September 21, 2007, 03:44 PM »

This game is a bit old (it was released last year!) but I wasn't aware it was available for the PC (it made quite some headlines when it was released in the PS3's PlayStation Store). The game, as the subject points, is flOw, a minimalistic but very charming Flash game.

FlOw is a game about piloting an aquatic organism through a surreal biosphere where players consume other organisms, evolve, and advance their organisms to the abyss.

As part of Jenova Chen's thesis research, flOw inherits an embedded design of active DDA (dynamic difficulty adjustment), players with differing skill levels can intuitively customize their experiences in the zone and enjoy the game at their own pace. “Addicting” is the most common word its fans use to describe it.

If you want to play the game offline (i.e., you want to play it at the office ), a download of the package is also available. The Wikipedia has some more information about the game mechanics.
via Emu France

79

Living Room / A twist of events by Novell in the PC vs. Mac long running war

« on: September 18, 2007, 08:46 PM »

So everyone and his/her dog has seen or knows the famous ads that Apple made comparing the PC and the Mac using persons to portrait each computer role. The guys at Novell did their particular take on the ads, introducing Linux, this time portrayed by a girl. You have three short videos, each one focusing on different characteristics of Linux, and making some fun of the competitors as well (everyone receives its share of jokes).

Well, if Linux is that sexy, I think I'll change . Besides, the jacket that the PC guy wears does not seem nice (at least is not cheesy like the Mac guy shirt )

80

Living Room / Free racing game - Drive a BMW M3 for once in your life

« on: September 11, 2007, 08:14 PM »

Today seems to be the day of free games in DonationCoder. I just discovered a racing game from BMW and Simbin (Swedish company specialized in racing games like GTR2 for the PC), which BMW is giving away for free to promote his new car model. You can only choose one car (guess which one ), and race in two tracks in Nurburgring. It also allows multiplayer so you can beat your fellow DCers and put them to shame . It's available either from the BMW site or this gaming site. Happy racing!

via ZonaForo de MeriStation

81

General Software Discussion / And you thought you designed a bad interface...

« on: September 09, 2007, 02:28 PM »

Daniel Rutter, hyperactive blogger and writer, and perhaps the only one guy who can compete up there with all the major hardware review sites, had the other day up there in his site, Dan's Data, a somewhat interesting but particularly hilarious article about bad interfaces. It's not that he gave up particular tips about how to design a good one (if he did, I would have posted this in "Developer's Corner"), but he pointed out really bad ideas done through software development history (and some others with home devices), giving a bucketful of links to show even more terrible examples of how people slaps and sells usability nightmares. I really advise you to check some links, because they're mind-numbing. Have fun!

via The Tech Report

82

General Software Discussion / FileZilla 3 gets released

« on: September 09, 2007, 12:57 PM »

So after a really long beta testing phase, that started with the programming team desires to use the wxWidgets toolkit to attain cross platform compatibility and to rewrite the software for the FileZilla 2 codebase was a mess, the new FileZilla is out. So what's new? Well, apart from the new interface and the possibility of running it under other OSs (only Linux for the time, the OS X version is build pending), a bunch of other things. The important ones are summarized in the wiki, and also there is a link to the Development Blog, if you feel like reading through 40+ pages of posts .

The guys at Linux.com wrote a review some days ago, based on the first Release Candidate. Note that some features are missing compared with FileZilla 2, but they plan to bring them back in the next versions.
via File Hippo

83

General Software Discussion / Free Download Manager 2.5 released

« on: August 29, 2007, 09:07 AM »

After a beta testing phase, the guys in charge of Free Download Manager released a new version of their well-known software, including new and surprising features, as well as a nice touch towards clearing the reputation of their software.

What’s new:

• Flash video download
  
• Audio / video files converter
  
• Bittorent support
  
• Easy file sharing
  
• Remote control
  
• Portable mode
  
• Metalink support
  
• General Public License
  
• Multilanguage support (desired language may be chosen during installation)

It seems the guys want you to use their software for all your downloading needs . The most important part is the use of the "General Public License", or the GPL, which means the source code for the software is available, and hosted on SourceForge. So now everyone can take a peek at the code to see if something suspicious is lurking there (the software, or more precisely, the page was flagged as harmful by SiteAdvisor in the past).

via File Hippo

84

Living Room / Interesting article on OSS licensing

« on: August 29, 2007, 08:54 AM »

Now that the software developing world, and OSS in particular, is in a turmoil thanks to the the imminent release of the GPLv3, I thought it would be a good idea to share this article I discovered time ago, but I forgot to post about. His author, byuu, is a skilled programmer, famous for his contributions to the romhacking scene (including his tough but delightful work in the hacking part of Der Langrisser) and his accurate SNES emulator, bsnes, which its license choice prompted him to write this article, where he share thoughts about the two major OSS licenses, BSD and GPL, the freedom that the two give both to the original programmer and those who want to use the code for their own works, the community behind them, and how the compromises you have to made choosing one or other inclined him to use a custom license to accommodate his needs and ideas on the subject.

via Richard Bannister

85

General Software Discussion / New interesting features for Firefox 3

« on: August 27, 2007, 10:39 AM »

As you may know, Firefox 3 is currently undergoing some heavy development towards the possible release of the first beta in the release cycle. Right now, things are looking really great, and it seems the Mozilla team is really up to something with the major version, which will give some work to IE and Opera developers to best it. The most interesting ones, in my opinion, are not being included in the main code tree, but may see a separate release in the form of a extension, or may be included in a future Firefox 4. Alex Faaborg, interface designer at Mozilla, talks in this blog entry about them, and I sure most people around here will agree with me (being everyone a keyboard maniac) that those particular features could be great in a browser, even if they use no one's favourite Enso

via PC Mechanic

86

Living Room / A new technology for optical discs

« on: August 27, 2007, 10:25 AM »

Despite the struggles between HD DVD and BluRay discs for the HD discs niche market, some companies are looking forward to the future developing new discs capable of holding all kind of information, whatever its size may be. This article talks about a particular one that looks beyond today's needs, and developed a new format capable of storing 1TB of data in one disc, and with further optimization could reach 5TB. All of this hosted in your usual-looking optical discs, no bigger and no thicker that any DVD or CD.

The article is fairly long, as it makes a timeline of optical discs technology, explaining how the technology works, and later gives some details about TeraDiscs, as the technique used to record these new type of disk is significantly different from the old combination of pits and valleys. It also includes a interview to a higher-up of Mempile, the company developing the new format.
via The Tech Report

87

General Software Discussion / CastleCops Wiki - A complete malware resource

« on: August 18, 2007, 07:38 PM »

Although it has been mentioned sometimes in loose posts on the forums, I thought I should made a post about it as lately people around here seems to be on a stir about security software for various reasons. The CastleCops wiki, which is the companion to the main CastleCops site, well known through the Internet, houses some amazing knowledge about malware, how it works and (more important) how to clean it. Not only that, but also information on other matters related to security and privacy on the Internet, as well as insight over quite some security software, including comparisons between the most popular tools around. I hope it will clear most of the questions about this tricky part of computing.

Last minute edit: Most of the content is still flagged as 'beta', and some pages need updating.
via avast! Support Forum

88

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Feature request for GridMove

« on: July 27, 2007, 07:32 PM »

So this have been troubling me for years, but 'til I asked Wordzilla about it, I didn't found a possible solution, which would be GridMove. OK, so the problem is that I want to fit in the exact center of my desktop a window of any given size. Yep, no resizing (at least for now). A shot to explain the problem.

See that "Fusion 3.51 - blablabla" window there? I want to move that window (960x720, but should be extensible to any window size) to the exact center of my desktop (1280x1024, but it should be extensible to any other resolution). Essentially, it's a math job that sometimes I did using a ruler (no kidding), but with some other windows it was a nuisance. If all windows could be maximized without side effects, there would be no problem, but giving some of the software I handle, that's no possible, either because the software was designed to have the window like that, either because it looks terrible on full screen (this is the case, for example).

Well, I think that's all. I hope I expressed my problem/request clearly so you could understand what I'm asking. Feel free to flame me if the written expression of my thoughts is terrible, the request is unrealizable, if I'm a tiny little perfectionist.. well, you see the point

89

Living Room / eBay goes shopping...

« on: June 01, 2007, 12:16 PM »

...and in an auction buys a nice thing you guys love.

So maybe you'll begin to see more sponsored results, like mouser feared some time ago.

It seems we're in the shopping season. CBS buys LastFM as reported by urlwolf, Google buys Green Border...

90

Living Room / Encyclopedia of Life

« on: May 18, 2007, 11:48 AM »

Well, these are old news, so you must probably read this in other site, or even you saw it on TV, as it was featured on the news, but I think is quite interesting, and no one mentioned it so...

I'm talking about the Encyclopedia of Life, a quite ambitious project to encompass all the knowledge about know living species in a single page, much more like Wikipedia, but unlike this one, the Encyclopedia of Life is peer reviewed by real experts and funded by powerful institutions, not with donations. For now, you can only view a  few examples of pages, and search around its FAQ and partners page, to find out more on the project's future. You can also register yourself for future involvements. Ars Technica wrote an article on the subject discussing the possible threats to the future of this wonderful project.

Talking about peer reviewed sites, Citizendium is now truly open (yes, finally), unlike the last time I posted about it. There are 19 (yeah, count them!) approved articles, and 1815 more are in the reviewing process. A quick review is showing that the quality is above that of Wikipedia, which is quite logical. Some of the articles include a lenghty one on Life (no, not the retired magazine, life itself), literature, dogs and Linux's mascot, Tux. I'm hoping this starts to gain momentum, to displace the failing Wikipedia, which, as everything that goes mainstream, is slowly transforming into a f****** mess, as anyone who ever contributed to it must know.
via TVE (Spanish public television)

91

Living Room / Choosing a keyboard and a mouse

« on: March 15, 2007, 07:32 AM »

DonationCoder is full of heavy computer users. Between software developers, hyperactive members and prolific writers, one can say this is one of the finest sources of information when it comes to keyboard and mouse usage. After all, Find & Run Robot is (probably) mouser's most used piece of software, everyone and his/her dog is a die-hard fan of AutoHotkey, and it even has its own team of olympic computer users, led by app.

After these words, written for you to have something nice to read before we reach the boring part , comes my pack of questions. I'm completely lost in the task of buying a new keyboard and a mouse. OK, maybe I'm not so lost when it comes to mouses, but keyboards are difficult for me. So I'll be more than glad you'll be able to give me a helping hand. So let's start:

• Should I buy a wireless keyboard + mouse combination? Do wireless keyboards have some caveats compared with their corded counterparts?
• Do ergonomic keyboards really make that difference in comfort? What about Logitech's "Zero Degree Tilt" 'technology'? I know that palm rests are mandatory for a good experience typing
• What about optical and laser technologies for mouses? Is the extra cost worth it?
• Do you have any recommendation on affordable Genius or Logitech specific products? That means no mention of diNovo or MX Revolution
• Finally, can someone explain me how is possible that there's no company capable of making quality non-gimmicky keyboards?

I think that's all. Thanks in advance!

92

Living Room / (His) Microsoft Google Yahoo Stories

« on: March 05, 2007, 10:16 AM »

One always wonder how it will be working for big software companies. Although everyone knows how nice is working at Google (not to mention its level of geekness), and the flexible working routine at Microsoft (letting you finish your work earlier than in most places so you can enjoy time with your family), this blog entry sheds some new light over the working method at those three companies. A light that would make computer-involved folks go: "hey, I choose the right career after all!" and everyone else would cry: "HOLY CRAP! What was I thinking when I choose to study for this pitiful job?!". An excerpt:

During my freshman year in college, I joined and eventually chaired our school’s ACM Windows programming student group (...) I organized xbox tournaments, install fests (bring your computer and get Windows or Visual Studio installed for free), and programming competitions. We could expense meals and took student leaders out to nice italian restaurants. Lastly, we had retreats to Seattle and Brazil. A week in Brazil was the perfect climax, where we partied and enjoyed caipirinhas. We crashed in nice hotels and ordered room service at four in the morning. The cherry on top was taking a private jet to see the Foz do Iguaçu waterfalls.

Now this is a real WOW experience. When you recall Gates and Ballmer's words about open source communists stealing their hard-earned dollars, you ask yourself if they really are stealing something (not that they're doing it, mind you) giving the incredible amount of expenses for this kind of programs (I assume they only exist in USA...). What it's clear now is that Richard Stallman doesn't care about proprietary software. The thing that is bugging him is that the Free Software Foundation can't afford all those luxuries, so he goes mad

I know that the post is not exactly brand-new (the Internet nature, you know) but it's still pretty amazing, and finally explains why Vista took 5 years, and Google apps are in a perpetual beta phase. Only Yahoo! seem to be a hard-working company

via CyberNet News

93

Living Room / Citizendium opens! (Sort of)

« on: February 26, 2007, 07:09 AM »

Yep, the next generation of Wikipedia, the one which will try to replace it as the major source of information and improve its quality in the process is finally "open" to the public.That is, it's open as long as you create yourself an account. In the near future, it'll be open for searching, but following Mr. Sanger guidelines, you'll need an account to actually create or edit articles.

Good guys over at Ars Technica gave a test drive to the site, summarizing its thoughts about it in an small review, which, by the way, I still have to read

via Ars Technica

* Lashiec mimicking KenR posts... *

94

General Software Discussion / Virtual PC 2007 Final

« on: February 21, 2007, 07:11 AM »

Browsing around one of the emulation sites I regularly visit, I found the news of Virtual PC 2007 ready for debut time. And it's completely free! That's a good move, especially for those making the jump to Vista, or even worse, Vista 64 bits, which lacks the automatic file and registry redirection built into Vista 32 bits. That's the price to pay for higher RAM compatibility and new security features.

Anyway, to the point. The main changes are:

• Complete support for Vista: both as a host and virtualized system
• Improved performance, as it uses the Virtual Server 2005 R2 codebase
• Support for 64 bits host systems
• Support for something-PXE (who knows )
• Support for the virtualization technologies developed by AMD and Intel (ya know, the new instructions built into the Athlon 64+ X2 and the Core 2 Duo)

Vista support address one of my main complains about these SO: the possible lack of compatibility with old applications. Although it seems that I still need DOSBox to run LucasArts games, newer games like MDK or Silver will probably run wonderfully with Virtual PC 2007. Great!

You can find more information about it here

As a bonus, on the same site, I found some other news about what it seems like a fairly new virtualization solution, VirtualBox. This one seems more complete than Virtual PC, as it can run a handful of SOs, including Windows, Linux, and several other minor SO, like Solaris or FreeBSD. Best of all, it's open source, so everyone can benefit on it. Don't know how well it fares, though.

95

Developer's Corner / Inside Vista Kernel by Mark Russinovich

« on: January 26, 2007, 06:27 AM »

Mark Russinovich started some days ago a series of articles explaining the new features included in the Windows Vista Kernel on Microsoft's TechNet. The first one looks at changes in the CPU cycle counting, a new scheduler for multimedia applications (which, hopefully, will solve the current problems affecting music players and resource-demanding applications) and file-based symbolic links (a welcome addition), among other things.

The articles, as it's often happens with Mark Russinovich, are interesting, educational and entertaining, and everyone won't have no trouble understanding them. If Mark was not working for Microsoft, the most renowned colleges in the world would be fighting to dead for his services as a teacher

Link to the article

via Sysinternals

96

General Software Discussion / From the makers of CCleaner... Recuva

« on: January 19, 2007, 04:22 AM »

Since the inception and great success of CCleaner, the developers of this piece of software founded a small company, Piriform, to take advantage of the success of its first application, and the development of new tools. Well, here's the first one. Recuva in words of its developers:

Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Windows Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

Lazy guy as I am (and curiously "PrintScreen" is not working...) I can't link any image, but in its web page you can find some shots. It's very much like CCleaner visual style, which, in my opinion, is a good thing.

[ed. by mouser to attach screenshot]

97

General Software Discussion / The experiences of XPLite customized installations

« on: December 20, 2006, 05:59 AM »

I was thinking in buying XPLite to strip my future XP-fueled computer (as it was a car ) of useless components. But first, I want to know what are your experiences with the usage of this tool (if there's someone who uses this tool...). That is, if you had problems after customizing the installation, such as programs refusing to start due to some obscure missing component, or something along the lines.

Besides this, and this other one is very important, I want to know if any you used XPLite as a cleanup tool prior installing upgrades. For example, you removed Outlook Express, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player before installing SP2, to get a cleaner upgrade as possible. And then, you ran into similar problems as the mentioned above.

I wanted to know if XPLite is worth its price tag, because I've been an user of 98Lite during some time now, but I ran into some problems due to its usage, like the impossibility of reading MHT files with Internet Explorer (due to the lack of Outlook Express) and some programs refusing to start due to runtime problems and some other things.

98

Living Room / Lifehacker looking for DonationCoder

« on: November 24, 2006, 05:32 AM »

Ok, not the best topic title in the planet, but I'm not inspired right now. Lifehacker wants to know if "Is there a web site somewhere out there where users submit ideas for things to be programmed and good Samaritans code the ones they like in their free time?" defining the very spirit of DonationCoder (at least regarding Coding Snacks). Wise readers point at DonationCoder in the second comment

99

Living Room / LangaList is merging with Windows Secrets

« on: November 03, 2006, 03:47 AM »

I just received the latest newsletter from Windows Secrets, with the news summarized in this topic title (which, by the way, is the subject of the newsletter ). This makes Windows Secrets almost the ultimate newsletter for those interested in all things Windows, and it makes me wonder how could Brian Livingston could first enroll Woody Leonhard and now Fred Langa... So what do you think? I personally feel that, although it's a good thing, I fear that most of the newsletter content will only be accessible to premium subscribers, and that normal folks will lose lots of information (as it happens now with current Windows Secrets). If this also affects Fred Langa work (that is, his tips and tricks only accessible to premium subscribers), it might be a lose situation for those subscribed to his newsletter.

100

General Software Discussion / A program to tag video files

« on: August 12, 2006, 12:19 PM »

The other day I was wondering about how organize a big collection of videos... and I asked myself if there is a program to tag video files just like you tag music files... I've never heard or seen anything like this, so that's what I'm asking, if such a program exists, or the only way to tag video files is at the encoding phase. Good help to organize all that episodes of "Friends"...  Oh, and this is marks my first topic in the forum