Recent Posts

1026

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: a Self-Contained Archive

« Last post by Eóin on January 03, 2008, 06:56 PM »

I think thinstall is also along the lines you are thinking.

"Thinstall is a robust, self-contained application virtualization solution that requires no client-side agents or supporting server infrastructure. Thinstall’s “clean” architecture makes it suitable to a wide range of deployment scenarios, including environments in which traditional agent-based products would be inappropriate"

-http://thinstall.com/products/overview.php

1027

Living Room / Re: What is appropriate content for DonationCoder?

« Last post by Eóin on January 03, 2008, 06:45 PM »

Ok I'd better mention my previous post wasn't meant to be inflammatory, just to point out how seemingly sensible NSFW tags are really a stepping stone to more pervasive censorship... with an attempt at satire thrown in.

CodeTRUCKER, I like that you say this is more an issue of courtesy and consideration but doesn't that go the other way too where the more conservative (for genuine lack of a better word) tolerate the the openness of others.

1028

Best Text Editor / Re: Some more editors of mention...

« Last post by Eóin on January 03, 2008, 06:34 PM »

A search didn't turn up GridinSoft Notepad so I felt I should add it too. I was considering paying for it but it doesn't support Unicode of UTF-8 and in this day and age that seems unacceptable. It's excellent on everything else though.

1029

Living Room / Re: What is appropriate content for DonationCoder?

« Last post by Eóin on January 03, 2008, 06:29 PM »

To me NSFW tags are but one small step away from censorship. I think a more reasonable approach would be to add SFW tags to threads which are judged to not be offensive to anyone. Of course such threads would need to be locked too so vulger people cannot add a distasteful reply.

1030

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista Aero interface and colors

« Last post by Eóin on January 01, 2008, 06:44 PM »

That color is something which can be changed with custom visual styles I think. For example here's a screenshot when using the NEXTLevel style.

1031

Developer's Corner / Re: Best way to start learning C++?

« Last post by Eóin on December 29, 2007, 04:11 PM »

Which book shall I get?

-superboyac (December 28, 2007, 06:01 PM)

When I switched from VB to C++ I found Complete Idiot's Guide to C++ very helpful. It takes you through the language and onto initial OOP concepts. That should be a good base to have, even if the course ended up using Java those basics should still be a big help.

1032

Living Room / Re: What is a "Gentleman's drink"

« Last post by Eóin on December 26, 2007, 04:34 AM »

Without a doubt Jägerbombs.


More seriously though it's usually any drink young people find difficult to pallet. So you're talking very bitter pints; stouts and the like, or spirits neat. The particular pint or spirits would be very cultural though. Here in Ireland Guinness would of course be the iconic Irish drink even though younger people rarely drink it. With spirits then whiskeys, brandys and to a lesser extent cherrys would be "gentleman's drinks" while little or no one drinks vodkas straight here.

1033

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Raid with SATA Disks

« Last post by Eóin on December 25, 2007, 10:24 AM »

Thanks for the replies and Cuffy that's an excellent link.

f0dder when you say mirroring with parity are you suggesting something like :-

RAID 4 (Independent data disks with shared parity blocks)

• Max capacity: (Number of disks minus 1) x capacity of each disk
• Description: A file is broken down into blocks and each block is written across multiple disks, but not necessarily evenly. Like RAID 3, RAID 4 uses a separate physical disk to handle parity. Excellent choice for environments in which read rate is critical for heavy transaction volume.
• Drives required (minimum): 3
• Pros: Very good read rate. Tolerates the loss of a single drive.
• Cons: Write performance is poor. Block read performance is okay.

-http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10880_11-6056489.html

1034

General Software Discussion / Software Raid with SATA Disks

« Last post by Eóin on December 25, 2007, 05:32 AM »

Hello all, happy holidays

I got this notion in my head recently that I should really start doing a better job of backing up my files. What I would consider to be my critical data- thesis files, programming works and other misc. hoby stuff is all very well backed-up. But less critical things like my music and movie collections are too big, I'm running out of room as it is.

So that's the back story. I have a spare pc acting as a file server most of the time sometimes as a workstation which currently runs XP x64. It's got plenty of room for some more harddisks so I was considering a raid 5 setup with 3 new harddisks. But I'm completely clueless when it comes to RAID setups.

Would any experts here know if what I'm thinking is feasible and is there additional software I'd need to install? Thanks all and merry chirstmas again.

1035

Developer's Corner / Re: Multi-touch and Head-tracking demos wth PC and Wiimote

« Last post by Eóin on December 24, 2007, 08:38 AM »

Wow wow wow, got to start playing around with that, I's really cool.

1036

Best Text Editor / Re: How could y'all not mention Notepad Minus?

« Last post by Eóin on December 20, 2007, 09:56 AM »

TheGun sucks

-f0dder (December 20, 2007, 09:50 AM)

1037

General Review Discussion / Re: VPN/SSH Tunneling software

« Last post by Eóin on December 18, 2007, 04:54 AM »

What type of server would I need to setup on my pc to allow me to use tunneling like that in windows xp?

-Josh (May 23, 2006, 10:15 AM)

I use copSSH on XP x64 back home and it seems to work perfectly. Easy to setup and free free free

1038

fSekrit / Re: Beta: fSekrit 1.35 for your testing pleasure.

« Last post by Eóin on December 15, 2007, 05:19 PM »

The other issue is that non-unicode filenames in a path which has unicode characters also gives trouble. I've seen this catch people out when say their username and hence "My Docs" folder has unicode characters in the path. Not a problem specific to fSekrit of course but the separate build might be nice.

Ah the joys of portability. As for the other, it's just me being awkward. Congrats on the great work.

1039

fSekrit / Re: Beta: fSekrit 1.35 for your testing pleasure.

« Last post by Eóin on December 15, 2007, 04:41 PM »

Hi f0dder,there seems to be an issue with unicode filenames, or at least the filename "ЏиϊсoδΣ.exe". You get an error when trying the save the file.

As a p.s. can I bump a much early suggestion to have a simple cut, copy and paste rightclick menu, sometimes the toolbar is just sooo far away

1040

Living Room / Re: Microsoft Publishes Detailed Vista SP1 Changelog

« Last post by Eóin on December 09, 2007, 05:22 PM »

Actually the switch to Server 2003 is one I'm thinking I'll be making myself over the Christmas break. (which begins next week ) I only have a legal license for 32bit which is unfortunate but is also all the more reason to continue to dual boot with Vista x64.

I've already been toying with it in a VM, I applied Windows X's Windows Server 2003 - XP Conversion Pack, though not the full switch everything to XP, I was conservative. Some initial tests were very promising, two of my favourite shell extensions (Link Shell Extension and HashTab) worked perfectly. Windows update gave no issues. Heck even the Vista Transformation Pack also from Windows X worked but I wouldn't bother with that really.

Drivers are however my concern and I won't really be able to know how that will pan out until I try it on real hardware, so you can be sure I'll be imagining my current XP disk should it all crash and burn.

I'll report my experiences here if people are interested, f0dder in your case though I think XP x64 is built on the Server 2003 codebase so the switch probably wouldn't be necessary. But that's worth looking into.

1041

Living Room / Re: Microsoft Publishes Detailed Vista SP1 Changelog

« Last post by Eóin on December 09, 2007, 08:23 AM »

I for one am wondering if Server 2008 will be viable as a workstation. As I gather (from the above mentioned change log and elsewhere) that the core system kernels will be the same. I've toyed with the RC releases and very much like the feel of the OS, it seems snappier.

That said I've bought Vista x64 and don't want to just give up on it, I really hope though there will be some better VS for it. I love Aero and the glass effects, but everything else; buttons, toolbar, scrollbars, even context menus are so bad I find myself unable to use anything but the Windows classic style. Server 08 also suffers this problem, even just if XP style worked I'd be happy

P.S. hope this rant hasn't hijacked the thread.

1042

General Software Discussion / Re: Rumor: Windows Apps Running Native on Your Mac

« Last post by Eóin on December 04, 2007, 08:49 AM »

Well WINE seems to work on FreeBSD and NetBSD so I can't imagine a port would be infeasible. A quick check turned up the Darwine sf.net project but not sure how active it is.

1043

ProcessTamer / Re: Need prgm to measure the real runtime usage of a program

« Last post by Eóin on December 02, 2007, 09:34 AM »

When a process is idleing it uses pretty much no CPU time, so if an encoder runs full speed for 4 hours then sleeps for the rest of the night then CPU time reported the next morning should be about those four hours.

So unless the program does alot of unrelated stuff in the background which you don't want to measure then CPU time is the way to go.

1044

ProcessTamer / Re: Need prgm to measure the real runtime usage of a program

« Last post by Eóin on December 02, 2007, 06:59 AM »

Perhaps Process Explorer would be useful to you, the CPU time figure could be an accurate measure of how much 'work' an application did.

1045

Living Room / Re: Name the screensaver.

« Last post by Eóin on November 30, 2007, 10:18 AM »

I hope you continue to stick around elias.jott

With the name I found the original author together with a host of other beautiful examples of computer art at Gallery of Computation.

1046

Living Room / Re: Name the screensaver.

« Last post by Eóin on November 29, 2007, 03:04 PM »

Whow thanks elias.jott, that was exactly the screensaver I was looking for, some donations credits headed your way as a thanks.

How'd you track it down?

1047

Living Room / Name the screensaver.

« Last post by Eóin on November 29, 2007, 07:37 AM »

Ok this is an odd post. I saw a really hypnotising screen-saver running on a Linux box. It looks like a type of self-drawing modern art. I had no access to the PC so snapped a pic with my camera phone. Is there any chance that someone out there knows the name, I just have track it down 

1048

Best E-mail Client / Re: Best IMAP Client

« Last post by Eóin on November 28, 2007, 09:35 AM »

A little know client which seems perfectly capable is Sylpheed. Even though it's GTK+ based it looks perfectly native on XP and memory consumption is significantly better than Thunderbird.

In truth I can't speak from too much experience, I switched to Opera's mail client from Thunderbird, but it's well worth a look.

1049

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual C++ 2008 Express and native x64 output ?

« Last post by Eóin on November 22, 2007, 06:56 PM »

F0dder you're right it relies on ATL. Thankfully the people behind WTL continune to support the freely availible ATL version 3.0 I believe together with the more recent versions.

1050

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual C++ 2008 Express and native x64 output ?

« Last post by Eóin on November 22, 2007, 09:31 AM »

Good question. The x86 cl.exe targeting amd64 version number from the Server 2003 SDK R2 is 14.0.40310.41, from Vista SDK it's 14.0.50727.42 while the one from VS 2005 SP1 is 14.0.50727.762. Now I'm not sure what the pre SP1 VS 2005 version was.

The Vista SDK really is a complete dev package, it has all the libraries, but no MFC or ATL. However you can get an old version of them from the PSDK which is enough to use WTL should you want. Otherwise the PSDK doen't have the x86 tools at all, you need VS 2005 C++ Express to get those.

The other download worth checking out is Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows Server code name “Longhorn” and .NET Framework 3.5 which I don't have downloaded yet.