Messages

1001

General Software Discussion / Re: DVD playback software

« on: May 13, 2007, 12:05 PM »

Don't know what you're doing wrong, but I have no problems navigating the menus in Media Player Classic with K-Lite mega codec pack... I just choose Open DVD from File menu, and that's about it. I don't think I did anything special when I installed the software either

-TucknDar (May 13, 2007, 09:42 AM)

i wonder if maybe it was some interaction between anydvd and the players, I will try again just to check.

1002

General Software Discussion / Re: DVD playback software

« on: May 13, 2007, 09:41 AM »

true, and if i had bought a £400 laptop i would have agreed. as it is, this is a £1500 laptop (ex vat) so they could throw something like this in so you are good to go. After all they install stupid things like a 3 month virus scanner and MS works and other crap... the OEM version of things like cyberlink costs only £4 or less!

1003

General Software Discussion / Re: DVD playback software

« on: May 13, 2007, 09:32 AM »

The other night trying to play a dvd in the hotel room I was almost at the ranting level... It shouldn't be possible to get a computer with an OS and a dvd drive that cannot just play DVDs, not at the price we pay for the stuff.
 
I tried just popping the DVD in, up comes windows media player, and up comes an error that i dont have the codec, with links to purchasable software from $9.99 to $29.99.
I also own jriver media center, which I love for audio, so I install that... but it seems it doesn't play DVDs without those same pay-for codecs
I download videolan, no luck, the k-... codec pack, no luck, a tool call al...something... Ah! DVD actually starts playing... no luck, can't do anything with the menu

At that point an hour has gone by and I am thoroughly annoyed, so I download a shareware tool (blaze) and that works. Too tired to watch the film though...

Things like this should be simple. The first people I will rant at are rock, who sold me a top end laptop with no DVD driver/player installed...

PS: when i first downloaded the demo of blaze dvd i thought it might be related to blaze media player, which has been around a long time, but it seems they just share the word.

1004

General Software Discussion / Re: DVD playback software

« on: May 13, 2007, 09:18 AM »

I use K-Lite Mega Codec Pack with the excellent Media Player Classic. (Freeware) Works for me

See http://www.free-code..._Mega_Codec_Pack.htm

The K-Lite Codec packs come in a couple of versions, Lite, full, mega, or something like that. Depends on what you need. I just use the mega pack to be sure I can watch anything... I probably don't need half of the codecs, but...

-TucknDar (May 13, 2007, 09:07 AM)

thats one of the freeware options i tried. I also tried videolan and a tool that started in AL (i think) - but all of them seem to get stuck on a DVD that wants you to choose a country first - no key or mouse action I could think of ever made the selector move to anything

I have used both media player classic and videolan for other things in the past and both are great tools which I always install, so as not to have to install realmedia and other borderline spyware systems. But no luck watching a DVD

The first commercialware demo I tried worked, so I suspect partly its all easier if you use some proprietary libraries

1005

General Software Discussion / DVD playback software

« on: May 13, 2007, 08:56 AM »

As I am on a contract I am stuck in hotels at night, and once thing that occurred to me is that it would be nice to watch DVDs on my laptop to escape from the boredom of TV

I then realised that the standard software installed on said laptop did not include any DVD codec layer.

I tried to find free codecs/players but the results were unsuccessful - couldnt figure out how to actually make the DVD menus work on any of them.

Right not i downloaded a demo and that works, but I am curious as to what people are using since these players are not cheap!

On my other PCs I had something that came with the dvd drive, called cyberlink but for some reason this wasnt sent or installed with this laptop... I am not sure what the licensing would say to my installing those on this laptop or if it is any good.

From what I can see I have 4 options:
* continue to fight with free options until i find one that actually works through the menus to the films
* buy a standalone DVD media player program
* buy a plug in for windows media
* use clonedvd to make files from my DVDs I can watch in a normal player - seems like hard work though just to watch a film

which brings me to the question, what do people use?

1006

General Software Discussion / Re: J. River Media Center: Awesome for music, great for video, and good for pics

« on: April 24, 2007, 03:00 AM »

I have about 60G of music and media center handles it just fine. The dynamic playlists (eg: "50 tunes from genre a, b, or c, which I havent heard for a month" or "50 of my top rated pop tunes but none from artist x") are a good feature, since I cannot be bothered to hand craft playlists

1007

Living Room / Re: Funny small software company names

« on: April 23, 2007, 06:47 AM »

Here's another way to create a website:
http://www.noonebelo...heremorethanyou.com/

-zridling (April 21, 2007, 02:55 AM)

Miranda July  rocks

1008

General Software Discussion / Re: opera 9.2 is out

« on: April 17, 2007, 04:05 PM »

the only times i have had opera jump to 100% is when i had 10 imap folders and 100+ feeds all being checked at the same time, on a dodgy connection

1009

Living Room / Re: Why Linux is better

« on: April 13, 2007, 08:01 AM »

That's quite a generalization you make there. There are actually plenty of quality polished applications available for the GNU/Linux platform.

-Gothi[c] (April 13, 2007, 03:41 AM)

Most of the polished applications on the GNU/Linux platform are the big, cross platform ones.

The only reason it may appear that many projects are unfinished is, because many of them ARE.

-Gothi[c] (April 13, 2007, 03:41 AM)

Yes, but many go through many full release cycles, but they get release

It boils down to why most people get involved in open source projects - to resolve a need they have, add a feature they want, to do something interesting and possibly get some rep too. After all they are all offering work for free.

Less glamorous parts of the job, the ones like documentation and detail work, get less people willing to do them. Only when there is a big push (like a summer of code) or something like it do these get people on them.

1010

Living Room / Re: Why Linux is better

« on: April 13, 2007, 03:21 AM »

If I have to choose something for a server it would always be either linux or BSD, with a preference for BSD or a minimalist linux distribution.

On the desktop I have oscillated a lot, OS/2, linux, windows, more linux, bsd, back to windows

I must say after year and years of mostly windows I have windows tuned out just the way I like it - disabling a lot of features, using Object Desktop, wirekeys and similar utilities, and used to my applications.

I have regularly tried to switch to linux (with dual boot left for games) but I just end up not bothering. I just can't find apps with the level of polish that I get even from the simplest windows freeware. It is a strange curse of the open source products that the desktop tools often aren't ever finished - people start coding them to fulfill a need and usually never do the kind of final tidying up and polish - there is no incentive or recognition for doing that it seems (I think that the tying-of-loose-ends and tidying is something that the open source community needs to start to value and give kudos for, so people are motivated to jump in and help).

When the next vector linux comes out I'll probably give it another try.

1011

General Software Discussion / Re: The End of Support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 and 1a

« on: April 12, 2007, 03:34 AM »

Games and some long loved software is what keeps me on windows.

I don't want to upgrade to vista i strongly dislike some of the features, but that means falling behind on games in about 2 years, unless something changes in the industry to make them develop more cross platform stuff...

1012

Living Room / Re: Why Linux is better

« on: April 12, 2007, 03:27 AM »

What's dishonest about it?
 * it appropriates as "linux" a lot of software and projects which are not part of linux and work just as well on other OSes (and in some cases windows as well). KDE and gnome and the windows managers are not linux, neither are the office applications, or games, or the networking security layers, or the security model etc.
 * it totally ignores what can be achieved under windows with open source and freeware tools, when it talks about "free games" or "customise your desktop" or the applications available
(to be fair he does address most of these 2 points in his faq for geeks http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/faq.php but he still fails to mention the other free oses)

I have used linux and bsd and other unices and windows and os/2 etc. I'm all for linux getting more popular, but i think it will happen simply as people won't want to keep upgrading all the time, will think about green etc. But one things that bothers me is the linux community always implying that all the open source and gnu etc. software is part of "linux". It is a dishonest appropriation of other peoples work, and because linux got a lot of press a lot of people actually believe that things like gimp, apache or gnome are "linux".

1. viruses and 3. security
Will probably start becoming a problem as more "mainstream" people move to linux and probably log in as root all the time. Plenty of worms and rootkits out there waiting to ambush the less sophisticated, and there have been a lot of high profile security flows in the open source products recently. They get fixed faster, of course, and they get found faster, but they do happen.

2. stability
I should agree with that but actually stability is typically down to what the user does with their machine. Install a load of crap and you get an unstable machine. I have seen windowsNT servers that had stayed up forever and I have had redhat servers that just would crash once a month, no matter what we tried (it seemed to be the networking layers, possibly driver...). But in my experience the most stable OSes I ever worked with were BSD and Solaris.

6. why should you need to install more stuff
Well that is one i strongly disagree on. I always do a minimal install of linux and then install just what i need. All the crap that is installed by default for convenience is a security risk for me. And it uses up disk space and resources too

the "international" point
What can I say, that's just the microsoft is the evil american corporation argument. So are the people who make your computer hardware, or car, or breakfast cereal, or clothing, or microwave oven...
A point like that really weakens the whole argument on this page

1013

Living Room / Re: Microsoft is Dead

« on: April 11, 2007, 03:48 AM »

well i do understand his point. But i do think it is a case of apple and oranges.

A few years ago if you were in the tech or software business, then you were scared of MS coming in and stealing your market - by launching their own vaporware, that could be enough!

Nowadays most start ups are in the web arena, and in that market the one to be scared off is google - piles of cash, a brand that is still very strong, and still fast enough to react quickly.

I don't think it means MS is dead, even as a threat. I think its just a sign that most new ventures are in the web arena. If you are in the desktop software arena you probably are still scared of them killing your product with a 2 line press release...

It also shows that most of those startups aren't all that clued up about the industry they are in. If you are a startup you should be wary and informed about a lot of possible threats, not the just the big obvious one. There are a lot of very cash rich high tech giants that are funding lots of internal start ups and buying others and if you are not aware of the risk that people like MS, IBM, Oracle, CA, Adobe, Symantec etc. might step all over your little niche one day... then you are not doing your risk management properly

1014

Living Room / Re: Companies paying people to say good things about their products on forums

« on: April 06, 2007, 08:27 AM »

That's true.

But to me it seems far more cost effective to pay a researcher to go through many communities and identify people who are already positive about your products, then once you have identified them contact them and see if you can turn them into enthusiasts, via freebies and attention. Or risk it and go for people who are opinionated and influential but indifferent to your product, and get them to try it.

Since these people could still decide to be neutral or negative about your product, I don't see why it's so wrong. Or is it that if you are a journalist for a magazine it's ok to review stuff you got for free, and keep some, but if you write on the web it's not?

I suppose the disclosure is all

PS: I alas have had to pay for every single one of my graphics cards

1015

Living Room / Re: nintendo wii

« on: April 06, 2007, 02:58 AM »

Well a lot of retailers in the UK have put up some new stock for the easter weekend. How long it lasts is anyone's guess. Most of the online shops' stock is probably already gone.

When I am ready i will just buy it from, say, a german site or something - they have stock way more often and shipping is not too bad. And they don't force you to buy a bundle with some useless hard-to-shift games, which is what most UK retailers are doing.

1016

General Software Discussion / Re: J. River Media Center: Awesome for music, great for video, and good for pics

« on: April 03, 2007, 07:29 AM »

I use it and quite like it

It has the best workflow I found for ripping a 200CD collection, and the remote server side of it comes in handy

1017

Living Room / Re: The End of the Internet?

« on: March 31, 2007, 03:07 AM »

They have already conned people into buying water !!

-Carol Haynes (February 03, 2006, 07:47 AM)

I think that if you use resources that are shared by everyone but not necessarily renewable with no costs to society, there should be a charge - that goes for wrecking water by pollution as well as using it. Having to pay for it gives people and businesses an incentive to think about what is done and how and possibly find better ways to do things.

The big challenge is who should get this money and what it should be used for.

The water company should get a fee for delivering the water and pressure, but they should be paying for the water they use. Partly they do it by paying for the treatments plants I guess, but still, if they had to pay for the water they probably wouldnt waste it as much.

1018

General Software Discussion / Re: Lightweight alternatives to FeedDemon

« on: March 29, 2007, 11:20 AM »

I must say I use Opera for my feeds. I have about 100 or so...
I keep some feed posts for reference and I find it nice that the global mail search will get feed entries and newsgroup posts too.

1019

General Software Discussion / Re: A programmers notepad w/ syntax highlighting

« on: March 29, 2007, 03:26 AM »

I have pay for editors which i like but obviously I don't install them when on a machine for a few days, on a contract or something. When I need to install an editor for a while, I have used pspad, crimson, context and they're all pretty nice editors.

I have used context quite a lot recently as it is quick and has a lot of useful feature (text snippets, favorites, column select, little things like this). It doesn't seem to play well with unicode, so if i need unicode i get pspad

1020

General Software Discussion / Re: how tidy and complete is your music library?

« on: March 28, 2007, 07:22 AM »

What is all this talk about TAGs?    I have no idea!
I record my music (1 playlist for all)- I click Play > Random - and thats it.

-Curt (March 26, 2007, 10:25 AM)

I tend to do the same thing but sometimes I want Play > Random > 4 or 5 stars
or Play > Random > Jazz or Play > Random > Stuff not played recently.

For some of those you need tags

And sometimes I just want to make someone listen to a particular song or album

1021

General Software Discussion / Re: how tidy and complete is your music library?

« on: March 25, 2007, 05:05 AM »

The only way someone would have a clean library is if all their music had been created with the same tool and the same settings.

I have 2 main sources so it's not too bad - most of the mess comes from relying on CDDB databases when ripping, you get everything from typos to strange capitalization and the one that annoys me the most, micro-genre classification.

It still beats having to type everything in, I have had to type and submit about a dozen and that was dull enough.


The first clean up step I did was reduce it to about a dozen genres. Yes, it's hugely reductionist but I just can be bothered to think about all the sublabelling that goes on.

I also cleaned up most artist names to have the same pattern everywhere

Then i use the "rename from tag" option that my software uses, which also does directories. So I have artist/album  (or more precisely "album artist"/album since i have quite a few "various artists" albums).


I'm currently going through the "various artists" album to put each song's real artist in, so i can properly find what I have by X or Y. And now and then I also drop lyrics in, I like that.

But no, my collection is still a mess - thank heavens for clever tag based search!

1022

Living Room / Re: Calling UK people

« on: March 24, 2007, 12:39 PM »

I agree with you Carol.

Alas although I live in the UK I come from Switzerland and I as a result am not eligible to vote. But it says "British citizen or resident" and I sure qualify as resident so I'll add a line to it.

As far as I am concerned if a school takes governement money, then it should be open to the children of parents of any race/religion/opinion and not place any requirements that the children are taught any particular religion.

It just seems wrong to get money from the government to set up and run a school in an area which needs it, and then use that money to promote an agenda on to children who have no choice...

1023

General Software Discussion / Re: Strange Windows wallpaper trick

« on: March 24, 2007, 04:55 AM »

I suspect it depends whether you have enabled or disabled the "pretty" effects in windows.
It doesn't work on my PC but I know one thing I did was disable all the "prettification" effects, for performance. I suspect one of those might be what does the nice interpolation on the desktop.

For some reason I can't find the options menu anywhere atm, Saturday morning effect I guess

edit: no, even turning on "adjust for best appearance" didnt fix it

1024

General Software Discussion / Re: hosting: moving away from shared, and into Virtual Private Servers (VPS)?

« on: March 24, 2007, 03:29 AM »

I have had less-than-good experiences with godaddy in almost all non-domain services I tried

Of course dedicated is the way to go if you can justify the cost but around here dedicated start at about £49 and a good VPS around £12 so if your needs are actually mostly covered by the capacity of a shared server but you want the control

1025

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Backup4all for U3

« on: March 23, 2007, 09:12 AM »

This is of course different from the backup4all key where the key contains and triggers the backup program and you have one key that can backup the same thing on multiple computers, I suspect... whereas NHB has one computer which can backup on multiple keys