Recent Posts

10801

General Software Discussion / Re: windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 08:20 PM »

That's not always true, because I have at least two memory sticks that I can't set as active in Windows disk management yet I have absolutely no problems booting from them when I need to. Of course, the BIOS needs to allow you to select the device if you are to boot from it, but what Windows itself says does not really matter.

-Dirhael (January 15, 2009, 08:11 PM)

Bingo! You are absolutely correct. I should have stopped after my first sentence:

You can only boot to a device your BIOS supports and identifies as bootable. AFAIK there isn't any way to get around that.

In my eagerness to give an example with Win7, I screwed up royally.

Thanks for catching my error.

You could probably install grub/whatever on a floppy or MBR, and use that to boot from external media, though?

-f0dder (January 15, 2009, 07:42 PM)

Yes. And traditionally, that's the way it used to be done.

But a floppy is a BIOS bootable device, as is the MBR. So you're really not booting off the USB if the initial bootloader is someplace else right? Isn't that more like a workaround?

Still, it does work,  so I guess that's one way of "booting" Win7 from a USB key without really booting from it.

10802

General Software Discussion / Re: windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 06:37 PM »

I would (I have a 4G usb stick I can spare) but my box doesn't boot the usb. I've looked around for ways to make Grub boot the usb port and floppy-based usb booters, but nothing has worked so far.

-Edvard (January 15, 2009, 05:32 PM)

You can only boot to a device your BIOS supports and identifies as bootable. AFAIK there isn't any way to get around that.

In Win7, if your BIOS supports booting to your USB stick, the Mark Partition as Active option will be available:



In this case, the 4Gb USB stick showing up as Disk 1 is not supported as a bootable device. (Bummer! )

10803

General Software Discussion / Re: The Monkeys Have Hit The Button

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 01:56 PM »

They want to protect their ideas since their data was stolen by a team member who decided to leave (!).

-Zero3K (January 15, 2009, 01:35 PM)

I can appreciate that. But if that's the case, isn't what they're doing sort of like locking the barn after their horse has been stolen? It won't get their "ideas" back. It only serves to confuse people who are genuinely interested in what they're doing.

It also makes it harder to get donations since all you get told on their website is how "revolutionary" Cairo is without being given any technical information as to how or why.

Just my tuppence.

10804

Living Room / Re: Switching to Linux for a week

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 01:38 PM »

Hey, don't look at me. I'm not a Mac fan either. 

-Paul Keith (January 15, 2009, 10:55 AM)

Actually, I wasn't thinking about OSX just then. I was thinking about the other other OS.

----------------

BTW: I'm currently switched over to Windows 7 for a week. Please don't tell TUX!

10805

General Software Discussion / Re: The Monkeys Have Hit The Button

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 01:01 PM »

Just curious...is there any particular reason why they're being so coy about the whole thing?

10806

General Software Discussion / Re: .NET Framework 3.5 install advice

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 12:45 PM »

In some of the .Net releases, MS has introduced tiny changes in behavior. It's possible that these changes could break an application, although I've never run into such a situation -- and I work with .Net all day, every day.

-CWuestefeld (January 15, 2009, 11:32 AM)

Thanks for sharing that.

I keep hearing about the Net Framework "version compatibility problem", but like you, I have never encountered it.

The only time I ever ran into a versioning issue was when somebody's installer was hard-coded to look for a specific version of Net, and would refuse to complete an install if it couldn't find it.

On a lark, I once installed an older version of Net, and then removed it after I completed one of those . Not surprisingly, the app in question ran just fine with 3.5 instead of the 2.0 version it was insisting on.

Don't know if that's what happens in most cases, but it was an interesting experiment.

10807

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 11:34 AM »

It still needs lots of polish here and there (lacks consistence between different parts of the system), but it's shaping to be a really great OS. And FARR works!

-Lashiec (January 15, 2009, 09:26 AM)

My impression too.

As long as Microsoft doesn't go insane with pricing, I strongly suspect that me and my FOSS cronies will be kissing The Year of the Linux Desktop good-bye one more time! 

10808

General Software Discussion / Re: windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 11:28 AM »

Re: vLite and Win7

Well, it apparently works.

I did a few minimal component removals, and added one NIC driver I know I need as a test.

The entire process was pretty sluggish on my underpowered test machine.

The entire build, from start to finished ISO, ran just under an hour (with my CPU frequently spiking to 100% and RAM usage up around 68-89%} as I expected it would.

My new ISO image tips the scales at 1.87 Gb  vs 2.44Gb (or whatever the 64-bit Microsoft image size is). That's a fairly substantial drop in size IMHO. Especially considering how few changes I made to the default install.

Pretty cool.

P.S. Thanks again f0dder for those components. If I had to download the entire WAIK to get them, I wouldn't be posting this right now.

10809

General Software Discussion / Re: .NET Framework 3.5 install advice

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 08:20 AM »

You can just install Net 3.5. No need to install 2.0 first.

Other than the hit on your disk space, the only real downside (if you want to call it that) is that Net might introduce potential security vulnerabilities. But the same thing can be said about any other software you might already have installed.  Microsoft includes security patches for Net Framework as part of their regular Windows Update. Just be sure to stay on top of your Microsoft updates and you'll be fine.

10810

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 08:05 AM »

I'm somewhat impressed by how much faster and better organized Win7 is than Vista. And the interface is actually quite nice (except I hate that baby blue default color scheme  ).

So...does it look like Microsoft finally  has a viable XP replacement here, or is it just me?

10811

Living Room / Re: Switching to Linux for a week

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 07:57 AM »

The problem with saying that there are friendlier distros out there is that for anyone not knowing any better, they hear the majority of Linux community cry Ubuntu. You could even recommend Linux Mint and explain to them that it's a much user friendlier version of Ubuntu and most newbies will still go for Ubuntu because that's what most in the Linux community claim as the smoothest ride.

-Paul Keith (January 15, 2009, 01:22 AM)

Much like why so many people go for a certain other operating system?

10812

General Software Discussion / Re: windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 01:06 AM »

It sucks that you have to download WAIK to use vLite - I'm pretty sure it's only one or two DLL files it needs from that package (or something similar). nuhi probably did it this way to avoid getting into redistribution trouble with Microsoft... I'm attaching the files I think are necessary here, try unpacking them to your vLite install folder.

-f0dder (January 15, 2009, 12:21 AM)

Thanks f0dder!  That did the trick. 

1. Drop wimfltr, wimfltr.sys, and  wimgapi.dll into the vLite root folder.

2. Right click on wimfltr (i.e. setup info file) and select Install

Next time you open vLite it's ready to go.

---------

Well...it's 2:05AM where I'm sitting, so I'm gonna call it a day and give vLite a shot tomorrow. I'll post how it worked out when I do.

'Night...

10813

Living Room / Re: Apple Wheel macbook - revolutionary

« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2009, 12:51 AM »

doesn't that defeat the purpose of shininess? (That's a word?!?!?!)

-wreckedcarzz (January 14, 2009, 11:30 PM)

It is if you're Kaywinnet Lee Frye (aka Kaylee).



"Everything's shiny Cap'n!"

10814

General Software Discussion / Re: windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 11:17 PM »

GAH!!
2.5 Gig Win7 download
1.4 Meg vLite download
1.34 Gig Microsoft WAIK download (required by vLite)

This had better turn out a less-than-700-Megabyte install iso or I'm gonna be upset... 

-Edvard (January 14, 2009, 07:16 PM)

My sentiments exactly. It's the 1.34Gb WAIK download that prompted me to say "Shag this!"

I'm curious...but I'm not that curious.

40Hz: how on earth is that going to work if you having installed a bootsector on the USB device? Formatting doesn't do that by default...

-f0dder (January 14, 2009, 05:10 PM)

I agree. From the look of the how-to, the formatting was done under Win7. I suspect that a boot sector gets written to the drive when you select the new "Mark Partition as Active" option under the Drive Manager.

Looks like they added some features from the old fdisk command to the Disk Management snap-in.

10815

General Software Discussion / Re: windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 03:50 PM »

Interesting post up on gHacks.

http://www.downloads...le-windows-7-instal/

Turn any USB flash drive or HDD into a bootable Windows 7 installer

This little gem managed to slip through the cracks, but now that you've all had a chance to get your hands on the Windows 7 beta iso, it's definitely worth sharing.

In November Long Zheng - all around smartypants and good guy - released a handy tutorial on turning the PDC hard drive that Windows 7 was being distributed on at the time into a bootable installer. As luck would have it, he discovered that the process works with any old drive.

It's a pretty simple procedure. Create an active partition on your USB drive if there's not one there already. Mount your Windows 7 iso with a utility like Daemon Tools Lite, and copy the complete contents of the "disc" onto your drive. That's it. Reboot and force your PC to boot to the USB device, and you should be ready to install.

You should be able to pull the same thing off with Vista as well by following the same steps.

Here's the direct link to Long Zheng's how-to mentioned in the above article:

http://www.istarteds...dows-7-install-disk/

10816

General Software Discussion / Re: windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 03:25 PM »

Has anybody tried to nlite this? I was dismayed to realize that after a 2.5 Gig download, I suddenly came to the brilliant conclusion that I would have to burn this on a DVD not a CD.

I guess what I'm asking is if the ISO is really that contrapulated or is there a bunch of cruft that can be stripped out to get it down to CD size?

-Edvard (January 14, 2009, 01:53 PM)

Ooooo! Now that's a thought. I'll have to give that a spin since I seem to recall reading somewhere that vLite is supposed to work with Win7.

(I also wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft left a lot of debug code in the beta since it is a beta. If so, vLite won't be able to do much about that.)

10817

Living Room / Re: Switching to Linux for a week

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 03:13 PM »

Imagine a Ubuntu-installed portable hard drive at a friend's apartment after a little too much defragmenting...
"Dude, I tried to tell her, you know, open a few man pages, maybe just take a peek at the xorg.conf. Would she? Naw, she just goes crying to the forums taking stupid advice from strangers telling her she'd be better off with another distro. Would she apt-get? Maybe even a little modprobe now and then to set the drivers straight? No dude, she thinks I should read her mind and stuff like that guy from Redmond she'd been seeing since Junior High. One time she even said I was difficult. Imagine that. Me. Difficult. You know who's difficult? You got that right Bro, not numero uno. No way."

C'est la vie, non?

-Edvard (January 14, 2009, 01:40 PM)

LMAO. Obviously you've spent some time thinking about this haven't you?

10818

Living Room / Re: Switching to Linux for a week

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 12:10 PM »

We traded life secrets, took road trips together, ate at restaurants whose menus I couldn't pronounce, for a while it was like dangling your feet off the edge of the clouds across from the gates of heaven...
Then, like a portable USB drive, she unplugged me and bid me adieu with a kiss on the cheek and a flirty giggle saying "You were so much fun, I hope we get together again sometime..." and drove off in her Miata back to her ex while telling her friends what a nice boyfriend/husband I would make for them.

-Edvard (January 14, 2009, 11:46 AM)

Ouch!

I've found the best way to deal with a situation like that is to adopt the philosophy of the 90-year old multi-millionaire who had an unfaithful, but stunningly beautiful and intelligent 25-year old mistress. When asked why he tolerated her 'infidelities', he replied:

"Because I've come to realize that 10% of a good thing is a far better alternative than 100% of nothing."

Well...at least she didn't charge you tuition...and she did provide you with good references for "grad school" with her friends...

(BTW: I assume you did wind up in the graduate heartbreak program since you mentioned this happened to you twice, correct?)

10819

Living Room / Re: What may you be missing?

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 11:43 AM »

Most street musicians tend to annoy me, because they - sorry to say it - suck. And mimes should be banned by law. Whenever there's a musician that doesn't suck, I don't have any cash on my, doh. (Which I rarely have, btw - debit cards ftw.)

Interesting that people just stress by without even taking a look at the guy, though. Just how much in a hurry can one be?

-f0dder (January 13, 2009, 07:23 PM)

In just enough of a hurry to avoid getting annoyed perhaps? 

10820

Living Room / Re: Controlling your mouse with head, eye and mouth movements

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 11:37 AM »

Well...it was news to me at least.

10821

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 10:49 AM »

Our spies were out snooping as usual and scored this sneak shot of Superboyac, at the keyboard, firing up his new baby for the first time.

And what a Baby it is, folks! Watch out girls! This is one guy who knows what he wants - and knows how to get it.

Righteous Build SB.

10822

Living Room / Controlling your mouse with head, eye and mouth movements

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 10:08 AM »

Where does gHacks find these things?



http://www.ghacks.ne...-mouse-head-control/

Computer Mouse Head Control
Posted by Martin in Windows, software 
Tags: computer mouse, headmouse 2, mouse, webcam, webcam mouse, Windows, windows software


HeadMouse 2 is a interesting software program for computer users who cannot or do not like to use their hands when controlling the computer mouse. The software is compatible with most Windows operating systems including Windows Vista or Windows XP. The only other requirement is a webcam with a minimum resolution of 640×480. The program will initiate a user face detection during first run to calibrate the webcam for best results.

Direct link to HeadMouse 2:  http://robotica.udl....se2/headmouse2e.html

10823

Living Room / Re: Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing at alrming rate?

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 09:42 AM »

Cunning plan, gepetrant. I wonder how Mrs. Darwin would react... ?!

-Darwin (January 14, 2009, 09:11 AM)

Predictably, I would imagine.

10824

Living Room / Re: Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing at alrming rate?

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 07:43 AM »

qpetrant: Always offer to defrag your (geek/ess)'s hard drive. But not on the first date.

10825

Living Room / Re: Switching to Linux for a week

« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2009, 07:39 AM »

I stop reading the comments eventually. This whole "average users don't install an OS" crap makes me want to vomit.

-Paul Keith (January 14, 2009, 06:43 AM)

To vomit? Ye Gods, Paul!

I've made it a point to never (ok, seldom actually) look at the comments section anywhere on the web. The ratio of information to verbiage is just too low to be worth investing the time to read it.

I also immediately bail out of any article or a post that contains kid-speak (i.e. WTF noob?. 733T, STFU!!!, LiNuXHaX0r, etc.) since I don't have the patience to deal with someone who's channeling their raging adolescent libido into their web presence. The bedroom is the place for that, not the web.

Unfortunately, if you're looking for (generally   ) rational conversation, and a modicum of good manners, then I'm afraid you're stuck with DonationCoder. This is just about the only place that avoids most of the nonsense that goes on out there.

----------------

DoCo Forever!