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Recent Posts

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1251
Living Room / Re: What should I do with my audio CDs?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 13, 2008, 12:57 PM »
It will, if André implements some of the suggestions that he received upon the release of dbPowerAmp. For the moment you can use Test & Copy in Burst mode if the album is present in Accurate Rip, and returns high values of confidence. It's as good as Secure mode, but much faster (around 22-24X speeds on my drive), handy for those 20 minutes songs :D
1252
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: xplorer², a powerful windows file manager and explorer replacement / alternative
« Last post by Lashiec on January 13, 2008, 12:39 PM »
Whoo, custom toolbar icons! Finally! Those stock icons become uglier each passing day. Now don't spoil the party saying that it's only present in the Pro version...
1253
Living Room / Re: Which Software Personality Would Sing These Lyrics?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 12, 2008, 11:52 AM »
mouser? Probably for the donationware thing ;D

Although the line "Jesus knows your soul can not be saved" points to Bill Gates, as every Microsoft users has been deemed guilty of "selling their soul to M$". The GPL zealots line is also very fitting for Mac zealots.

But of course, "There's no price to pay, just follow me" clash with the market concepts of Microsoft and Apple :)
1254
Living Room / Re: What should I do with my audio CDs?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 12, 2008, 11:47 AM »
Yeah, APE does have a pretty good compression ratio, but the highest levels take the longer time to decompress, unlike FLAC, which stays at the same speed for all the levels. Only TAK can better that.

Renegade, blame the loudness race. Higher sampling rate doesn't help anybody (human maximum level perception is around 20 KHz, but due to the Nyquist theorem, it's ideal to have that ratio doubled, that's why the 44.1 Khz), except rabid audiophiles and whales ;D. Actually, the loudness race problem is even being featured on the mass media these days, so I hope those producers take notice, and we don't get disasters as Californication (the album, not the TV series). It pays off during recording and for master copies, though.
1255
Living Room / Re: What kind of tagging system would be appropriate for DC?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 12, 2008, 11:26 AM »
CodeTRUCKER, don't be offended, but considering all those words as inappropriate for children made me giggle. I'll tell you, children hear things like that everyday, mostly on the street, and if we're going to consider the proper names for sexual organs as offensive, I wonder what kind of sexual education are we going to teach to children.

Of course, your mileage may vary, but I think we could end up going too far. Besides, another thing that arises from the context consideration is that if you're willing to turn on a post filter with the possible results of missing conversations just because there's a inappropriate word in there. Considering all the times words like "damn" or "dammit" were used in this forum (half of my posts include the word ;D), I think you'll end up ignoring much of the conversations around here.

* Lashiec doesn't get last reference to New Found Glory ;)
1256
Living Room / Why I left Apple
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 05:34 PM »
Justin Berka, from Ars Technica's Infinite Loop (their Apple-centric blog) posted an interesting link to a former Apple employee blog, Jens Alfke, where he outlines the reasons for he is leaving Apple after 16 years in the company. It's not that his salary is bad, or fellow programmers there make fun or him, but about the direction of Apple during recent times. Seems even people inside Apple are a bit tired of the company's uniformity.


Note that Jens is now going to work on its own, like some other ex-programmers at Apple, who left to company to pursue an "indie career", that's what the post which links to Jens' blog is all about, experienced developers going out by themselves, instead of taking the startup route.
1257
Living Room / Re: What should I do with my audio CDs?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 05:17 PM »
Yeah, actually I dropped the RAR archive in foobar2000, and waited like 5 seconds for the program to access each song (it took much more for the program to parse the file), that's why the last line is there :). Not to mention the time it takes to compress everything, FLAC is MUCH faster.
1258
Living Room / Re: Mommy, why is there a server in the house?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 05:13 PM »
This book is too much:

Screenshot - 12_01_2008 , 0_03_04.jpg

Lesson for future geeky kids: If you want to live a long, peaceful life, don't get into a company that has a server. Avoid IT at all costs! ;D

The book is brilliantly hilarious, and reinvents all those old cliches: When a woman and a man love each other, they don't make babies, they buy a WHS! Making fun of fat kids is old-fashioned, now the latest rage is exploit the soft point: the WHS, of course, like big people do at the Interwebs! At least, the uncle is still smelling funny. I can't believe this is from Microsoft, they may have a funny side after all!
1259
Living Room / Re: What should I do with my audio CDs?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 04:53 PM »
It's all math, as always ;D

Of course :). Note that only the second article actually explains MP3 compression, but the others may be necessary to understand all the mumbo jumbo.
1260
Living Room / Re: What should I do with my audio CDs?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 12:35 PM »
I'm bored ;D

So I converted the FLAC files to WAV, and "Made in Japan" takes exactly 774.5 MB. Compressed with ZIP, we take that down to 700.7 MB, and RAR brings it further down, to 506.5 MB.

It's not recommended to play the resulting RAR file ;D
1261
Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 11:43 AM »
Cool, thanks!
1262
Living Room / Re: What should I do with my audio CDs?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 11:36 AM »
Well, is BIG ;D. Around 50% - 70% of the original size of a CD extracted to uncompressed WAV files. For example, Deep Purple's "Made in Japan" takes around 450 MB compared with 650 MB of the original CD (too lazy to go for the CD, slide it in the drive, and check it out :D)

Some software supporting FLAC and some more (scroll to 'Extras').
1263
Living Room / Re: What should I do with my audio CDs?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 08:42 AM »
Rip them to FLAC or WavPack and your favourite lossy compressors at the same time. Yeah, there are programs to do that, and they integrate nicely with Exact Audio Copy or your favourite ripper (as long as you use a serious ripper, that is, not iTunes or WMP or things like that). Put the CDs in boxes and carry them to a safe place. That's what I would do in your situation.

Why keeping the CDs? If a disaster strikes, you still have your CDs and can rip them again (well, it's a nuisance for the time that takes, but it's better than buying EVERYTHING again. Or not having any music). With FLAC copies you can do everything, like backing up to an external HDD, and listen only to the lossy ones (if you used a properly configured compressor, and a good one as well). If later, you decide you want to change to AAC, for example, you can easily convert the files to FLAC to AAC in no time (if your computer is fast enough), which is way faster than ripping everything again. And with lossy, you save space in your main HDD and you can put them on your portable player.

Incidentally, now I'm the middle of ripping my CD collection to FLAC as well. For now, as I don't have an external HDD, they'll remain in the main HDDs, but later I'll convert everything to Vorbis, and call it a day :). It's going to take some time, though, I have several CDs not present in the AccurateRip database, that means I have to rip them in EAC's secure mode (sloooow).
1264
Living Room / Re: What kind of tagging system would be appropriate for DC?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 08:29 AM »
Those little checkboxes and the "Mark messages as read" button. Seriously.

In terms of filtering out what I don't want to read, select what I want to read the most, giving me quick access to all posts, and let me stop and continue the reading when I have to go somewhere and can't finish checking up everything, DC forum is as streamlined as it can be, IMO.
1265
Living Room / Re: Your Small Form Factor system for a mere $200
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 07:20 AM »
Cool, I love Antec cases :)
1266
General Software Discussion / Re: FeedDemon going free
« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2008, 07:15 AM »
I tried Google Reader yesterday, after these comments here and some other people drooling in CyberNet, and didn't find it enticing. As always, Web apps have some weak points compared with their desktop counterparts, like them being far slower, or the lack of that famous platform agnosticism (OK, for being Google, worked really good in Opera, but I was getting some layout and server errors along the way). It's pretty good, that's for sure, but considering the way I'll access and read the feeds, I'm much better with a desktop app. Also, Google Reader lacks some customizability I've seen in desktop readers. And accessing a desktop app requires less clicks and keyboard smashing ;D

Google Reader is ideal for those checking feeds everywhere, but I always leave the Internet at home ;)
1267
Living Room / Re: What is appropriate content for DonationCoder?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 09, 2008, 02:21 PM »
Uh, that blog link needs a HUGE NSFW alert ;D
1268
General Software Discussion / Re: FeedDemon going free
« Last post by Lashiec on January 09, 2008, 02:18 PM »
o_O, that means another contender for the throne of best RSS client. It's going to be tough to choose one between all the choices I have in mind. Thanks for sharing it, Ken.
1269
Living Room / Re: iPod Touch - any opinions?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 09, 2008, 01:59 PM »
Remember that the iPhone is everything BUT a phone. If you want a mobile phone, there are much better alternatives out there. Unlocking such device is like playing the russian roulette: you may win, but the risks are far too great. Also, is quite expensive, both when you buy it and when you use it, with terrible contracts and all that. Think of the iPhone as a glorified Blackberry, I think that's the closest thing to it. On the other hand, there are tons of apps for it, Apple is releasing the official SDK for it soon, and iPhone users love the device. You could also consider something like a Nokia N810, despite being a different thing, it shares quite some things with the iPhone in philosophy, Ars Technica reviewed the thing recently.

As for media players, I like the Sansa e2xx models, the one that f0dder mentions. There are also other alternatives that look quite attractive to me, like Cowon's iAudio (a bit expensive, if you ask me), or the Meizu line of MP4, recently brought to my attention in Hydrogenaudio. They are affordable, and pack a lot of functionality, much like the iAudio. In that field, they're better than the Sansa.

I don't know what to think about the iTouch, though. All the functionality is available in the iPhone, it has a paltry amount of space... to me, it looks like a loser in the Apple line of iPods.

PD: The Zune is also coming to Europe.
1270
Official Announcements / Re: JANUARY 2008 GIANT SHAREWARE GIVEAWAY AND DISCOUNT CELEBRATION
« Last post by Lashiec on January 09, 2008, 01:37 PM »
WHOA! So many amazing software... Should I enter the software drawing as well? What could I choose as the first option? :tellme:
1271
General Software Discussion / Re: Is Vista Creating Duplicate Files of Everything?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 09, 2008, 01:26 PM »
Remember that the folders storing the data from restore point are hidden and not accessible to the current user, you have to set up the options to view them, give yourself permissions and look carefully which folder are you going to delete (if you have two drives, like me, and the OS installed in one of them, and you formatted one of them, you can see more than one. The same thing happens with the Recycle Bin, BTW). Use the creation data as a guide.

I wonder if lowering the percentage of space used for restore points in the applet controlling that to 0% would delete everything (I'm not trying... ;D)
1272
Living Room / Your Small Form Factor system for a mere $200
« Last post by Lashiec on January 09, 2008, 01:11 PM »
Guess everyone is going wild over the new breed of cheap PCs, including renowned maker of SFF systems, Shuttle. They recently introduced in the CES a low-end model for $199. Its specs are not exactly drool-inducing, but I would be more than happier to have one of these in the living room, it won't play HD formats, but I can see its retrogaming possibilities :-*. And movie playing, of course. It's stylish too.
1273
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Closed Program Bin / Reopen accidentily closed software
« Last post by Lashiec on January 09, 2008, 01:04 PM »
Guess who made it to CNET's "The Daily Download Blog"? And featured in the corresponding newsletter, too ;D
1274
General Software Discussion / Re: Is Vista Creating Duplicate Files of Everything?
« Last post by Lashiec on January 08, 2008, 07:03 PM »
If it's like XP, there's a way ;D
1275
Developer's Corner / Re: Article Convinces Me To Move To vi(m)
« Last post by Lashiec on January 08, 2008, 06:58 PM »
Because we're forced to do that. I don't know if the nano package is installed in the Debian that runs the server, never bothered to try.

Good question, considering that all computers in the different classes have Ubuntu installed, but still they force us to access the Debian server, in multiuser fashion, and hack programs there. It's only for one subject, though, in most of the others we use normal tools :)

And considering the advice they gave us over how bad programmed multithreaded routines can bring the server to its knees... well, I guess they like to play with fire ;D
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