Recent Posts

1051

General Software Discussion / Re: Do You Purchase Software on Impulse?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 11, 2008, 06:59 PM »

Nah, I think that's one of the effects of Zaine experiments with Linux. He heads to the package manager, ticks a lot of programs and starts downloading. When he comes back to Vista, having to download apps one by one makes him lost all desires to try new software

What I'm more interested in are the 12 steps from SW addiction!

-Darwin (February 11, 2008, 04:26 PM)

You can write a lengthy suite of songs afterwards

1052

General Software Discussion / Re: PHP IDE recommendations

« Last post by Lashiec on February 11, 2008, 03:33 PM »

Did you try a programming editor, like PSPad or Notepad++? If you only want to read and fix code, an IDE is overkill IMO

Anyway, some of the PHP editors not mentioned here, and freeware as well are Dev-PHP, SIDE, tsWebEditor, Tulip and PHP Designer.

We briefly compared all them (minus PHP Designer, as it's not OSS), for a web project we have to take care off at college this year, and the most compelling seems to be tsWebEditor. We ended up doing the code by hand, anyway

1053

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera Browser Power-User Mods

« Last post by Lashiec on February 11, 2008, 03:00 PM »

I'm still wondering why Opera Software does not open an centralized page for all this information and extensions that are scattered around the web, and sets up an interface for managing and updating extensions within Opera. People always complain about Opera's lack of extensibility, and then you start hunting around, discovering that Opera is really extensible, but somehow Opera Software prefers the users to ignore that.

Then again, many people (including self-proclaimed tech gurus) ignore how the Opera browser is doing these days, in terms of features, and think the software is already dead. Oh, the ignorance... (and the laziness of not pressing F6, Tab, and typing "Opera browser")

1054

General Software Discussion / Re: Do You Purchase Software on Impulse?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 11, 2008, 12:28 PM »

We need a SAA (Software Addicts Anonymous) for some of you

I don't even buy a bottle of water on impulse, so...

1055

Living Room / Re: Aquaria (An independetly developed game beneath the ocean)

« Last post by Lashiec on February 10, 2008, 07:01 PM »

Well, I've been expecting the game for months. I still have the demo around here, I have to find some time to try it, and then get it out of my small buy list. I've been waiting for some company to announce a Spanish boxed version of the game, but at this rate, I'll have to end up buying it online (em, w00t, only 21 € )

I guess nobody talked about it, because despite being indie, it's not freeware. BTW, one of of the developers, Derek Yu, is also responsible for the freeware game Eternal Daughter.

allen, if you don't add some shots, I have a couple of beautiful ones around here

1056

Developer's Corner / Re: Source code colors: Contrast / Readability / Ergonomics

« Last post by Lashiec on February 10, 2008, 02:22 PM »

I was wondering: Should I put this here or in urlwolf's thread?. Anyway, Scott Hanselman briefly discuss a few more themes for your IDE, specifically for Visual Studio. Just in case housetier flood of options is not enough

1057

Living Room / Flash Game: Apollo Justice - Ace Attorney

« Last post by Lashiec on February 10, 2008, 12:49 PM »

Capcom is releasing the Nintendo DS game Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney in a couple of weeks, and to give gamers a glimpse of what they can expect in the game, they have released a Flash demo of it, containing part of the first case you encounter in the game. Those who played the previous games starring Phoenix Wright might be familiar with the whole premise of the series, but for those who don't, check up the Wikipedia to see what the whole game is all about. Despite the change of the main character, the game seems to be more or less the same, which is good, as the plot is the main point in these games.

Play it right now

It's a shame you can't grab a microphone and shout out: "OBJECTION!", but you can always put yourself to shame later when you buy the game and decide to play in a bus full of people

EDIT: One caveat though. It's EXTREMELY short. Perhaps I jumped too early to post about this, because it's really limited.

1058

General Software Discussion / Re: Process Tamer.. The Drink

« Last post by Lashiec on February 10, 2008, 11:43 AM »

vegas' idea is definitely interesting. And a bottle of Glenfiddich is not that prohibitive.

1059

Living Room / Re: gif sharin

« Last post by Lashiec on February 10, 2008, 11:34 AM »

Yeah, yeah, plenty of those

Spoiler

Let's be fair, no smiley can't surpass the greatness of the original video

1060

General Software Discussion / Re: how to turn off XP's accessiblity options

« Last post by Lashiec on February 09, 2008, 06:19 PM »

Good question, Sticky Keys keeps returning me to the desktop when I'm playing something.

1061

General Software Discussion / Re: Thoosje Quick XP Optimizer

« Last post by Lashiec on February 09, 2008, 06:16 PM »

Hey, send one or two GB this way! A couple of cores would be welcomed as well

1062

General Software Discussion / Re: Is the Windows start menu dead?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 09, 2008, 07:54 AM »

Erm... yeah, RocketDock

1063

Living Room / Re: Making a dream PC for cheap (as possible) - help anyone?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 08:35 PM »

I'm not familiar with the GeForce 2 FX, but the GeForce 7300, as any low-end video card, it's shitty for everything. If it came with the machine, I guess you didn't have a choice.

It should not have problems with GTA III, that's true, but who knows

1064

General Software Discussion / Re: Is the Windows start menu dead?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 08:31 PM »

Whoo, seems someone drank the kool-aid. That demo is a bit over the top for what it's nothing more than a expanded XP Start menu. It's better than the default in Vista, but I think Microsoft also provided an option to use the old Start menu without forking $20 for "visual memory".

And if you want to activate your visual memory even more, use Rocket Launcher. Free, and with big icons

1065

Find And Run Robot / Re: General Help and understanding pattern scoring

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 08:13 PM »

Hey, that one is really cool! You've saved me a few keystrokes while searching for software documentation. Thanks!

1066

Living Room / Re: Making a dream PC for cheap (as possible) - help anyone?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 08:01 PM »

Things are quite even between them. nVidia provides the best balance between price and power in the high end, with the aforementioned 8800GT. ATI rules the roost right now, thanks to the Radeon 3870X2, but that's very pricy, and it's not really recommended anyway, unless you have tons of money. It also uses some "black magic" to achieve the highest performance in the single-card field

Anyway, considering your budget, I give you the same advice that I gave to wreckedcarzz: Buy a Radeon 3850. It's an excellent card for the mid-end, quite powerful to run without problems the most advanced games, but very affordable as well. If you can spend more money, it's either the 3870 or the 8800GT, both are good options, although nVidia has the edge in this case. It used to be a price difference between them favorable to ATI, but that does not seems to be the case anymore.

One caveat though: If you're going to buy the computer now (in two weeks, for example), my recommendation still applies. If you're planning to get the machine in a month, then wait a bit more. nVidia is releasing a new line of cards in March-April, and Intel is going to update the entire Core 2 line by then as well (note that the new Core 2 Duos are available, though not in great quantities). So you may have to revise your choice of the Q6600 by then.

Ooops! Brandon finished faster than me . So, what nVidia cards you used to give you so bad results? Reading "uses system RAM for graphic purposes" reminds of that wonderful card, the 6200 Turbo Cache, the king of the hill

1067

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Is there a main page for plugin downloads?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 10:48 AM »

Because FARR v2 is an "unofficial" release and mouser does not want to expose what he feels it's a beta application to the rest of the world. And that includes the addons.

Personally, I think it's ready to rock, but it's his app, so I won't complain. After all, I'm using it

1068

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox plugin that lets you delete manage url autocomplet entries nicely

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 09:25 AM »

How about this?

1069

Living Room / Re: Making a dream PC for cheap (as possible) - help anyone?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 09:13 AM »

Ah, OK. That's true, but I thought you were talking about 8800GT/512 MB and 8800GT/768 MB, a particular model that I think it does not even exist. Oh well...

1070

General Software Discussion / Re: I want to ALT-TAB between ALL apps

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 09:04 AM »

Yep, don't worry, I'll try both apps once I have some free time to test them extensively. So, Darwin, if you want to go ahead...

1071

General Software Discussion / Re: The definition of "bloat" - RE: Software

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 08:58 AM »

So, is Nero itself a bloated application or is the nero SUITE bloated? I would like to see a burner only option too, but I dont consider nero ON ITS OWN to be bloated. Quite the contrary. Yes, I have to download ~200mb of data, but I only install about 20-30.

-Josh (February 07, 2008, 07:15 PM)

Look at it from another perspective, then. Why do you have to pay $75 for a burning utility? That's all I want from Nero (and the analysis tools, although you can get them for free). I use and like Nero, but only because it came with the burner. If I had to buy it, I'd say "No, thank you" and choose another option, like CDBurnerXP Pro + ImgBurn. Besides, the "killer app" within Nero Suite is Burning ROM, the rest of the programs are mediocre. If Nero paid attention to the customers that demand Burning ROM as a separate product...

Also, as f0dder says, not everyone has fast connections. This particular point worsened a while ago, because Nero packed all languages in the same package, so now we have a 350 MB file. And update packages are quite big as well. BTW, the Nero burner alone it's not 20 MB, but something like 200. The complete Nero 7 installation nears 2 GB, Nero 8 must be even worse.

I long adopted the habit of using software that was lean but powerful. It's not that I lack disk space or memory, but why waste both with huge apps when you can get the same functionality with much smaller software?

1072

Living Room / Re: Making a dream PC for cheap (as possible) - help anyone?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 08, 2008, 08:23 AM »

Good machine you have there, Deozaan.

Regarding the graphic card, 512 MB are only necessary with the latest games AND if you're running them at high resolutions. Of course, to handle all the graphic load it's necessary to have a modern and powerful card, or you have a big bottleneck. In other words, a so-so card doesn't gain anything for the extra memory, but faster memory could give you an advantage.

Notice that more isn't always better - for instance, the best bang for the buck is currently the 8800GT-512meg cards, that actually perform better than the 768-meg

-f0dder (February 08, 2008, 06:34 AM)

How is that?

1073

General Software Discussion / Re: I want to ALT-TAB between ALL apps

« Last post by Lashiec on February 07, 2008, 02:46 PM »

Which is not that different from the AHK-only solution, and it costs $20 more

Thanks for the suggestion anyway, Brandon. But I think I'm sold on the Dextop idea, which seems more appealing that what I originally wanted. If it works like I expect

1074

General Software Discussion / Re: I want to ALT-TAB between ALL apps

« Last post by Lashiec on February 07, 2008, 02:14 PM »

Well, I joked about Mac OS X because of its combination of Spaces + Expose, not because of the dock (which it's a bit confusing, even more with the changes in Leopard IMO).

For what I'm seeing in the shots, I don't get nothing else than a glorified taskbar + system tray. Or is there a way to map key combinations to access the icons in the "system tray"?

1075

Find And Run Robot / Re: General Help and understanding pattern scoring

« Last post by Lashiec on February 07, 2008, 01:10 PM »

Aha, then I'm puzzled. I think there's no way to remove the numbers from the results... or at least I can't find the setting

I guess that's pretty normal. If there are a lot of files named photoshop<something> in there, it's natural you get a lot of results. Perhaps you could get the executable to the top of the list if you increase the "Leftmost Match Bonus" scoring in "Heuristic Scoring", but then maybe you could miss other executables you'd like to launch. That's why it's disabled by default, it gets too many results to select one fast.