Topics

76

General Software Discussion / Wanted: Compare contents of two RAR archives as if they were directories

« on: June 10, 2008, 03:18 PM »

Beyond Compare 2 can compare the contents of two ZIP archives as if they were directories. However it doesn't handle RAR archives. I converted the RAR archives to ZIP archives to do the compare this time, but I don't want to have to do that all the time.

Does anybody know of any program that can handle RAR files natively in this manner?

I wonder if v3 of Beyond Compare can handle them? Maybe I should email Scooter and ask them to add it if it isn't.

77

General Software Discussion / Media Player Linux Distro Available?

« on: June 07, 2008, 07:29 PM »

I am very surprised that my searching hasn't been fruitful. I expected such a thing to be easily found.

I have a very old computer sitting around. I wanted to use it as a Media player. It has a CD drive, but no DVD drive. I want to hook up a LCD monitor and my stereo and use it to watch streamed movies and music. I don't want to do a standard OS install and then add the appropriate applications. I want it to be completely dedicated to media with a full-time dedicated interface. Something like a MythTV distro, but not centered around a box that has a TV-Tuner.

If this was a LiveCD, it would be great. I have found many things that come close, but they are all years old and abandoned or focused on emulating a TiVo.

Any thing you folks know of?

78

Living Room / What video player plays audio clearly when video is sped up?

« on: May 16, 2008, 02:20 PM »

I remember, years ago, watching episodes of Star Trek Next Generation on my computer. I was watching them at 2x real time. The player I was using adapted the audio so it just sounded like people were talking twice as fast instead of becoming chipmunk speak.

I have some HowTo videos, for example from ShowMeDo, that I want to watch a second, or third, or fourth time, to remind myself how something is done, but I don't want to do so at the slow pace that is necessary for a first viewing.

A preferable solution would be free or open source. Probably a plugin for something like VLC Media Player.

Anybody know of any such solution?

79

Developer's Corner / What XML editor do you use?

« on: April 29, 2008, 02:25 PM »

If money was no object, I would use oXygen as my XML editor. But at $300 I cannot justify purchasing it. I am curious what XML editors you folks use on the Windows platform.

80

Developer's Corner / Pet Python

« on: April 21, 2008, 06:27 AM »

Another gem from xkcd.

81

Developer's Corner / Scientific Proof The Python Rulz

« on: April 11, 2008, 06:23 AM »

(Thanks to a Creative Common license, I can share it with you here in its entirety.)

xkcd is law.

82

General Software Discussion / Audio Interview Explaining *Why* EverNote is Going to a Service

« on: April 08, 2008, 10:00 AM »

If you are interested enough in EverNote to spend an hour listening to an audio interview, Jon Udell interviews their new CEO Phil Libin.

I found it an interesting conversation and it may even cause me to switch to EverNote for all my info.

IT Conversations | Jon Udell's Interviews With Innovators | Phil Libin

"Phil Libin was the CEO of CoreStreet when he appeared as the first guest on Interviews with Innovators. Now he's back as CEO of EverNote, a company that aims to build the memex, or personal outboard memory, that Vannevar Bush famously imagined in his 1945 article "As We May Think.""

83

Found Deals and Discounts / Finally a Quality 3D Box Shot Maker On Sale !

« on: March 31, 2008, 05:29 AM »

I have been on a quest for, oh, I don't know, two years maybe, for a quality 3D box shot maker that doesn't cost and arm and a leg. This is the first time I have seen a sale on any of the ones that look good. Thanks to Iconico Daily Deals.



I have downloaded the trial version this morning (90 day trial!) and am going to play around with it to see if it meets my needs. I have also signed up to get an email reminder from Iconico the day it is on sale.

There is a pretty good overview of box shot makers that rates Inosoft Cover Commander highly. The only knock it gets is the price, which is not a factor on the day of the sale. (Yes, I know the review site sell software and gets commission, but he sells the ones that do look to be the best and you get one place to see them side by side. The author also does custom box shots, so I assume they did the review while choosing the one use themself.)

84

General Software Discussion / Direct Folders 3.3 Released : Now FREE for HOME use

« on: March 20, 2008, 07:29 PM »

Those of us who have purchased Direct Folders are happy to see a well needed update to 3.3. Hopefully it will bring it some greater stability.

The product has been altered slightly with a lighter version offered free for home use. Users, like myself, that have purchased an earlier version of Direct Folders 3.x can email them for a key to the pro version.

85

Living Room / Mobo Mystery

« on: March 17, 2008, 06:47 PM »

I have a Asus A7V8X-X motherboard that is acting down right odd. I spent two days building a Windows 2003 Server with RAID. All was just fine. I unpluged it from the office and moved it downstairs into the basement. When I turned it on I got beeps and it won't finish post.

It is an Award BIOS.

When I power on it starts up just fine. It gets to the point in the POST just after it has autodetected the HDDs.

At this point I get three short beeps. Then I get 4 short beeps and the 4 short beeps continues until I shut down power. When the 4 beeps start repeating the video also starts flashing on and off at about 1 Hz.

I have stripped it down to just Mobo + CPU + 1 DIMM + video card.

This is the same with three identical CPUs. Two different video cards. Three different sticks of RAM.

CPU fan is fine. PSU fan is fine.

I used a PSU tester and all voltages are to spec and steady.

I cannot find *anything* on the Net about such a thing as this.

Any ideas?

86

Living Room / Wanted: Setting/Option/Group Policy to Force Username On Each Printed Page.

« on: March 17, 2008, 01:43 PM »

At work we have a problem with people printing to printers they shouldn't. Especially the large color plotters. I understand that this can be logged, but what we desire is to force the username to be printed on every page of printouts from the network printers. This way you can just look at the printout and see immediately who printed it. This would have to be at the Group Policy or Print Server level so it can be done once and be in effect on every printer on the Domain.

Any ideas?

87

Post New Requests Here / [request] Taskbar Displayed Only On <Win> Keypress

« on: March 17, 2008, 11:44 AM »

I would like the Taskbar to autohide and not popup when the mouse cursor goes to the bottom of the screen. I would like the Taskbar to popup when I hold down the <Win> key. IOW, I don't want <Win> to activate the Start Menu like it does by default.

Summary:

• Windows Taskbar is hidden by default.
• Moving the mouse cursor to the edge of the screen doesn't activate the taskbar.
• Balloons from the Taskbar Notification Area popup as normal.
• Pressing, and holding, the <Win> key brings up the Taskbar.
• Releasing the <Win> key autohides the Taskbar.

88

Developer's Corner / Looking for freeware/opensource code profiler (C++)

« on: March 13, 2008, 08:28 AM »

Does anybody know of any good code profilers for Windows C++ code that are freeware/FOSS? The developer is using MS VS 2003.

89

Living Room / Suck An Egg RIAA

« on: March 11, 2008, 12:25 PM »

Trent Reznor once again proves that talent alone can make money. The news is all over the music news sites. There's a good summary article on Salon.

1 second summary:

• Price is $0.00 to $300.00 USD
• The $300 version is limited to 2500 and was sold out in less than 24 hours. (hint hint That is $750,000 direct to the artist in one day.)
• people can freely sample the work and it is provided in a lossless format
• You can even buy a good ole CD, but even that has lossless digital version on it as well.

90

General Software Discussion / I'm looking for a Pink Noise Generator for Windows

« on: March 11, 2008, 09:19 AM »

There seem to be a whole bunch of Pink Noise generators and mp3/wav/etc files out there. Does anybody have a favorite app that generates pink noise so that you can listen to it with headphones, like while in a busy office or a coffee shop?

91

Site/Forum Features / Request: Copy Code To Clipboard

« on: February 29, 2008, 10:54 AM »

It would be nice to have a link to copy the code in a [code][/code] as ascii text to the clipboard.

92

Coding Snacks / IDEA: Sex Sells Spider

« on: February 29, 2008, 08:47 AM »

I would like a spider that crawls the web and finds every website that has a headshot of a smiling female with a telephone headset on. I would also like it to keep track of how many of these websites sell anything that is remotely related to females with headsets. Within that set, I would like to identify the subset that not only have products that have nothing to do with females with headsets, yet still feature a headshot of a female with a telephone headset on their virtual software box.

Of course, if you make this program, it must be provided under the Female With Headset (FWH) license that permits use of binary and source code of the program for any purpose as long as the picture of a female with a headset remains on all splashscreens, about screens, help screens, and any virtual software boxshots or marketing literature.

93

General Software Discussion / Are Windows Dynamic Disks Reliable?

« on: February 24, 2008, 01:34 PM »

I just realized that for years and years I have avoided Windows Dynamic Disks because of bad reports when they first came on the market. I have also never worked for a company or known anybody that uses them.

I was wondering if they have become as reliable as any other software RAID solution. Does anybody have any first or second hand experience with them? Is there any clear-cut reason why I should avoid using Dynamic Disks? I understand their proprietary nature and that it takes a lot of aggravation to fix them if they go bad.

94

Developer's Corner / The DC Coders' Breakfast Club

« on: February 07, 2008, 07:01 AM »

I thought it would be nice if the folks here at DC were to start a Breakfast Club. The idea is that once each weekday morning, as you start your day you post to the thread what coding related things you would like to do today to increase your coding skills. It will help to motivate us, I believe, and also help for us to focus on spending a little time each day to learn something new.

I'll start.

Today I am going to research how to manipulate the Setting tab in the Display Properties box via the Win32 API, so I can do it programmatically using AutoIt.

-Tinjaw - 07 FEB 08

95

Living Room / Pen & Paper To Computer Interface

« on: February 05, 2008, 12:04 PM »

I would love to be a Tablet PC, but I can't afford one. I am thinking about getting something like this...

CyberPad Drawing Tablet


Have any of you folks used something like this? I would love to hear from somebody who has used such a gadget for an extended period of time.

Now I am off to research other options...

96

General Software Discussion / Looking for a compression (algorithm) "Best Practices" sheet

« on: February 05, 2008, 10:33 AM »

I understand enough about compression to know that there isn't one compression algorithm to rule them all. However, I don't know enough to know which ones are best for various tasks. For example, it is only elsewhere on these forums that I learned a best practice for when only WinZip is available. What I would like to have is a list of these Best Practices. For example, what if I want to archive a whole directory of files of mixed types, some of which may already be compressed to some degree. I don't care how long it takes but I do want it to be absolutely as small as I can get it.

Does anybody know of such a document?

97

Living Room / Brush the dust from your computer

« on: February 03, 2008, 10:11 AM »

Just a little tip.

For years I have been cleaning my computer components with a simple bore bristle shaving brush. The bristles are stiff enough to get the sticky dirt while not endangering the small parts. It is also static free.

98

Living Room / How do you repair screw holes in computer case after too much use?

« on: February 03, 2008, 09:18 AM »

I have a few trusty computer cases that I have used for years and years. They have been used so much that they screw holes for the screws to hold in the expansion cards are pretty much all stripped. Besides go the hardware store and buying bigger screws, do you know of any way to remedy the problem?

99

Developer's Corner / A Valuable Lesson Learned About Using Program Lanuchers Like DirectAccess

« on: January 30, 2008, 10:12 AM »

Today I learned a valuable lesson that I want to pass on to you all.

I was trying to make changes to my environment - changing my PATH, CLASSPATH, JAVA_HOME, etc. but nothing seemed to take affect. Every time I opened up a fresh shell the changes weren't there. I ran alternate shells like PrompPal and the changes weren't there either. I started up XYplorer and launched some programs, all of them without the changes.

Then it dawned on me what was happening. I brought up SysinternalsMicrosoft Process Explorer and sure enough, I was right.



I was launching *everything* via DirectAccess - including XYPlorer. This means that the environment in place when DirectAccess was launched, was being transmitted to each program it launched and every program launched by those, etc.

So whenever you make any changes to your environment, make sure you restart any of your launchers so those changes take effect.

[added]
And don't forget to restart any applications that were started by the launcher as they will continue to keep the older environment even when you restart your launcher.

100

Found Deals and Discounts / Let's Bundle Our Orders For Software995 Toolset

« on: January 27, 2008, 11:38 PM »

They offer quantity discounts. Reply to this thread if you are interested. If we can get enough, we can get a good discount.

The Software995 Toolset includes 10 products, including the great PDF tools.



So far we have SIX people
29 March

• tinjaw
• darwin
• Perry Mowbray
• cranioscopical
• wraith808
• dcm