Recent Posts

1376

General Software Discussion / Re: Create a profiles for users on a Workgroup and disable Homegroup options & wifi

« Last post by Shades on May 17, 2014, 09:34 AM »

Stoic's alternative solution is indeed an improvement over my too friendly concept. After all you're the admin and your users should feel the power that comes with that position. Applying routing tables will keep your users in check and discouraged.

But make sure to get those tables right, because if you don't, you have only added to your headaches. Here are two links that are springboards for study: Linux and Windows

For both a domain server or Untangle an old single-core Pentium 4 with 512MByte/1GBYte of RAM and 2 network cards (preferably not on-board) is already sufficient. So it really can be an old clunker, so the extra hardware cost shouldn't be an issue. Untangle and its alternatives, both commercial and open source/free.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Create a profiles for users on a Workgroup and disable Homegroup options & wifi

« Last post by Shades on May 17, 2014, 12:08 AM »

First of all, a domain would be your best bet. An old PC with a properly configured Untangle (or similar product) might do the trick as well.

However, if macguyvering is your only option, you could think about the following concept and steps to take (fooling your users a bit).
Make a virtual LAN on your switch that is not allowed internet access. I do hope you have a DHCP server that "parks" every known and unknown computer/smartphone" in that virtual LAN. Then there should be a script available to anyone that should suggest it has to run to grant internet access. That script should then assign (hard-coded) IP numbers in a different subnet with internet access on a first come, first serve basis. With 20 or so users that shouldn't be too hard. This script should also disable HomeGroup (as 4wd has shown you) and whatever else you need/want.

This goof-of-concept might work for you. But most of all, you should have learned by know that Workgroups are an administration nightmare on the best of days. Get a domain server is really the best way to go if you want a windows-only solution. Or invest time in doing networking on Linux. Untangle is based on Linux and its web-interface makes management tasks quite easy.

Oh, before I forget, learn to work with 'sc', that is a powerful toy to play with.

1378

General Software Discussion / Re: Send email from cmdline !

« Last post by Shades on May 14, 2014, 05:04 PM »

Some 3rd party mail servers require you to login using POP3/IMAP before you are allowed to send mail through their SMTP server (spam prevention method). And given the amount of users the Google mail servers have to use that method. Their traffic is already impressive enough with this method.

You don't have access to another mail server?

1379

Living Room / Re: Groundhog Day Loops

« Last post by Shades on May 14, 2014, 04:36 PM »

Supernatural season 3 episode 11 - 'Mystery spot'  - Great episode, too bad this series went downhill so fast after season 6, especially after the (more than) excellent seasons 2 till 5. So many opportunities missed in season 6 till 9, it is a shame.

1380

DC Gamer Club / Re: Broforce ("Bro Force")

« Last post by Shades on May 12, 2014, 08:19 PM »

Get 'Turrican' from GoG if you want (in my opinion) the best game of this type. The (pre-)teen hours I wasted on that game...
Challenging and you do need time to get around each level because they are very big.

Oh, wait...better go after 'Hurrican', this is a freeware game that draws heavily on the concepts of 'Turrican'. It is practically 'Turrican' but with updated graphics.

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Broforce ("Bro Force")

« Last post by Shades on May 11, 2014, 03:48 PM »

Crap, that level with the gunship is really hard (I also think it the final boss and after that this particular version of the game ends).

Not even with Brobocop I manage to hit the gunship enough to take it down.

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DC Gamer Club / Re: Broforce ("Bro Force")

« Last post by Shades on May 11, 2014, 12:04 PM »

Thanks!....now I'm hooked as well!   

1383

Non-Windows Software / Re: Recommend Debian based image for VMWare Player on W8?

« Last post by Shades on May 11, 2014, 11:23 AM »

@MilesAhead:
You might have to defrag the installation/distro itself inside VMWare as well. There is a button inside VMWare that allows you to defrag a VM (when it is not activated).

To my knowledge, none of the more modern distros such as Mint, Suse, Fedora will work well with only 1Gbyte of RAM assigned to it in any virtual environment. If you want a small(er) distro that is rather nice to look at, try ElemetaryOS.

40hz once linked to a website/blog from a guy who reviews distro's, but I didn't find the link anymore. That blog is gold if you are looking for a distro that is "just you". On that blog I saw a distro that was very interesting in looks, resource usage etc. It came from Korea, I believe.

1384

Developer's Corner / Re: TextAdept: Lua-extensible Editor

« Last post by Shades on May 11, 2014, 10:42 AM »

Indeed, there are differences between the two, but not bothersome to me. These solarized colors in your screenshot, do (but that is a matter of preference, of course).

Here is a side-by-side from both with default settings and colors on my windows 7 with Ati video-card (Radeon HD4670) with the latest drivers for that particular video-card:

Left is Sublime, on the right TextAdept. Text rendering is less "condensed" in TextAdept when compared, but that is no deal breaker for me.
 

1385

General Software Discussion / Re: Send email from cmdline !

« Last post by Shades on May 10, 2014, 04:52 PM »

There are 2 different versions for Windows. One that supports TLS and one that doesn't. It is important you use the correct one and perhaps add: -o tls=auto at the end of the line you created.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Send email from cmdline !

« Last post by Shades on May 10, 2014, 10:35 AM »

This might be more interesting: http://caspian.dotco.../Software/SendEmail/

Basic use would be:
sendEmail -f <your email address> -t <receiver mail adress(es)> -u <preferred subject> -m <message you want to send> -s <name or IP from your mail server(: optional port)>

or if this is more clear:
sendEmail -f [email protected] -t [email protected] -u "My first message" -m "Hello world" -s internal.mail.server


There are lots more options, the included help is quite clear.

1387

General Software Discussion / Re: Advice needed about splitting or re-sizing a partition ...

« Last post by Shades on May 10, 2014, 10:03 AM »

I understand anyone that couldn't be bothered to partition an 80GByte disk, it isn't much nowadays. And current software/games really consume storage space for one reason or another, so partition limits are quickly found.

My current personal PC setup (which runs already since 2008) has a 12GByte C:\ partition for the Windows 7 OS, 40GByte for applications on D:\, a 15GByte partition containing all temporary files and the rest is for my data. C:\ still has 2 GByte free and almost 10GByte is free on D:\ , which would be a lot more if I hadn't such a hard time parting with games Skyrim and Oblivion (including the big mod).

All zealotry (from my end) aside, with an 80GByte drive you will have to learn which software to install/keep and develop the discipline to keep the system lean and mean by removing what you don't need, even with one partition. And make backups regularly...

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General Software Discussion / Re: Advice needed about splitting or re-sizing a partition ...

« Last post by Shades on May 09, 2014, 10:18 PM »

All right, then here is the 1st (?) not one partition post  

If you are not familiar with tools such as nLite (XP and older) or vLite (Vista and newer), then I wouldn't make several partitions. But if you do, I always make a partition for the Windows OS itself, one partition for the software I need to install and my portable applications, another one for my data and preferably one partition for temporary files generated by the system and all users alike (including page/hybernate files).

Admittedly, this is a very involved way of installing Windows, but for me the advantages outweigh the pain of this installation method.

Temporary files and user generated files always make a mess of a one partition, requiring a lot of defragging over the life-time from the Windows installation. With one partition dedicated to just the Windows OS files, not much defragging is necessary at all and if you do it is done very fast. Keeping your installed software separated from the rest is also helpful, not much extra data changes are expected, so after a while hardly any defragging is necessary anymore and program files are positioned optimally, giving you between 3 to 10% global performance gain of the hardware.

Separate partitions for C:\ (Windows OS) and D:\ (Programs), you can install Windows fresh and with freeware such as ERUNT and have all your software re-installed within 30 minutes. That is how long it took me to revive a Oracle database server (with 2x 300+ GByte databases ready to run again).

Granted, it's not for the faint of heart, but I have never believed in the MS mantra of dumping everything on one pile and letting 3rd party software clean up the mess. The file system from the Amiga home computer worked much nicer back in the day and is/was much more akin to the Linux way of handling storage media. but you can apply these principles quite well on Windows too, although with each iteration of Windows it is more and more 'only their way or the highway'.

You might have guessed by now, I am highly/deeply/extremely opinionated about who is allowed access to the data I generate on my computer (using a quite rigid folder structure I made that suits my workflow best).  

On-topic:
Mouser is right, software like MiniTools makes you shrink the C:\ partition first before you can make the second one. And MiniTools is very decent software. I have used the freeware version of their software on several occasions and always delivered, so you won't hear me say anything negative about it.
  

1389

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PhraseExpander Giveaway (59$ value) today only

« Last post by Shades on May 06, 2014, 07:45 AM »

Whenever I see such an offer, I'll try to turn the software in a portable version. Most of the time that works, sometimes it doesn't. But lately I didn't see much that was interesting to me at GAOTD, so I didn't bother.

Buying stuff on the internet without having a credit card is quite problematic. But I don't want one, because I don't like the concept behind it. A debit card is much more to my liking, but very unpopular with banks and vendors alike. When living in the Netherlands I did have a bank card and that I used a lot, because it felt much more secure than a credit card. Just saying, it's not that I have too much against 'plastic', I just don't like credit cards.

Besides that, banks here in Paraguay are expensive. Much more so than in the US or the Netherlands and therefore a lot of cooperativa's are formed that handle money from people. For example, banks charge interest of 23% (legal limit, else it would be higher) on any amount their customer borrows. Taking in account the exchange rate, you also need to keep minimum of about 1500 USD permanently in your bank account. Most people make 250-300USD per month, so a lot of people can't afford a bank, even if they wanted to. Only banks give out credit cards, so getting one is near impossible here in Paraguay.

If you do have one, you can pay practically everywhere with it, it is not that Paraguay is that much of a backwater. It is just that this economy is very much cash-oriented. Buying things in parcels is also very popular here and although people don't speak English here, almost anyone does understand (and like) you when you say "I pay cash on the dash" to them. 

1390

Living Room / Re: An interesting look at what 'Big Data' means to privacy

« Last post by Shades on May 04, 2014, 08:45 AM »

Facebook always sends me mail messages about how happy they are that I have logged in, which I do more or less every 6 months or so.

They only excuse I accept from someone burying his/her head in their phone is if their partner is overseas and starts to whatsapp-ing.  Because any other case you are offensive to others sharing the table and you might as well sit alone as you are not contributing to the conversation/activity.

As I have played many tabletop game sessions in my teens and twenties, I enjoy the interaction taking place at the table. I have seen what it does to otherwise shy people. Board games can be very entertaining as these also require social interaction. Even a local LAN party would have more social interaction in its thumb, than all of Facebook combined.

[rant]
Facebook is an insult for intelligence, it is a shame the English language uses that same word for another concept and than Facebook is a godsend. Normally I'll honestly respond to all questions you/an employer/government official asks of me. This information exchange is quite restrictive in nature and exists after that in the memory of a friend or possibly in the database from employer/government. That is quite acceptable to me.

Facebook (or other "social" networks) makes this info available to anyone, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. After all that info is all only one hack away from being on the streets, to be sold to the highest bidder. Furthermore, Facebook actively tries to connect all kinds of other info to your person with or without your permission, also to the highest bidder, while hiding behind EULA's and heavily buried privacy settings.

The above is my main gripe with social networks in general and Facebook in particular. If I would find myself in the situation to be employed in the US and I would meet such a moron manager, I would make sure not to have Facebook account but from the most obscure social network I could find.

That way he/she cannot complain about me not having a "social" presence on the web, only that we disagree on the choice of network. And hopefully drive home the point that the manager should have enough brain to ask me for my information, instead of relying on data, coming from a 3rd party, that might have data I don't agree with associated with it for commercial reasons. Or because of "bit-rot". Or because of untruthful information given by the person.

If they still insist on getting my credentials, I would demand for a recent security audit of their whole computer system. If they cannot prove to being able that they cannot store my credentials in a proper way that hackers cannot reach these, I might as well throw my credentials on the proverbial street and in that case I cannot guarantee anymore if my profile contains the correct information. Implying that employment at their company makes me liable for a situation out of my control is not a big plus for them.

Unreasonable from me? Yes, in a similar fashion as them demanding my credentials!

Still insisting? The world needs more HR drones...only these ones need to be launched by the Obama administration!
[/rant] 

1391

Developer's Corner / Re: Nice Long Read: The Great Works of Software

« Last post by Shades on April 30, 2014, 08:05 PM »

A decent read. 

But I do think he forgot about the old, venerable CVS.

Agreed, not that many people are familiar with it, but CVS comes with a history of 24-25 years and did affect the way people treat and contribute to code...to this very day.

PUTTY might also be subject for inclusion as provides a very robust way of communicating with remote Linux machines for more than 15 years and more Operating Systems than you would think.

1392

General Software Discussion / Re: 4 (Maybe more) Absolute top go-to programs

« Last post by Shades on April 30, 2014, 05:50 PM »

Directory Opus
Notepad++
Foxit Reader
Process Explorer

Never leave home without these.

1393

Developer's Corner / Re: Developers and the truth (or close to it)

« Last post by Shades on April 30, 2014, 05:31 PM »

Then this article should be mentioned as well! 

(it is a direct link to a PDF file from a Microsoft programmer, but brilliant nonetheless)

1394

General Software Discussion / Re: Are there any simple graphic editors?

« Last post by Shades on April 30, 2014, 08:21 AM »

A new...or rather old contender: PaintStar

A piece of freeware that is not hard to learn, not too excessive in options if you don't want to and the website has tutorials and links for beginners. After it has been installed once, you can copy the installation folder to a pen-drive to make it portable. It works on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. Also, it's around 3Mbyte to download.

1395

Living Room / Re: State of US Nuclear Silos (60 Minutes)

« Last post by Shades on April 28, 2014, 11:39 AM »

On another website I learned that the way data is written to these floppies allows for reliable storing of data. Even better than tape, if kept in conditioned rooms (without too much humidity).

I worked for a company that still used 286 processor based computers in certain parts of the company. Actually, only in the rooms that were kept permanently below -20 degrees Celsius.
The reason was that newer processors get too hot too quickly and the condensation would kill the machine.

Although condensation is less of a problem in space, temperature differences are not. The bombardment of solar rays isn't helping either. These affect faster working processors more dramatically then the old clunkers of yesteryear. And as you you want as much reliability as possible in space, you'll deploy what you know

1396

Best E-mail Client / Re: E-mail client recommendations

« Last post by Shades on April 22, 2014, 09:37 PM »

@Tuxman:
And a "power user" also knows how to auto forward messages for one account to another account, making a mess with rules and whatnot, I'll admit, but it would be possible. 

Ok, more serious now. What about FoxMail? I have used that in the past with several mail accounts and it worked quite well. In some areas actually better than Thunderbird some years back. It is still around and remained free as well.

If you can get over its Chinese roots (which is noticeable in the English translations on the website), it is a decent email client.

1397

General Software Discussion / Re: Overclock help required !

« Last post by Shades on April 22, 2014, 09:24 PM »

That is the problem with updating previous generation machines. Expanding RAM and newer/better hard disk are the items that give your system the most noticeable speed boost.

It is quite difficult to get those part here in Paraguay and the prices reflect that. For example, take RAM. DDR2 modules are not being produced anymore for quite some time and I doubt you still can get new ones here. And for the price of one slow (secondhand) 1GByte DDR2 module I can also buy a 8GByte module (from the same or better brand) and still have some change left.

Now I assume that this situation is more or less the same globally. And after all, you add new hardware to already older hardware and you should determine if that purchase will be valid for a sufficient amount of time. We are talking about older hardware that is likely going to fail sooner than later, when compared with a new PC.

Hence I always bought/build PC's as best I have budget for...and don't upgrade any part afterwards (the hard disk being the exception). To my mind that has never been cost effective and therefore I start saving for my next PC the moment I buy the current one. A strategy that works for me, at least.

1398

General Software Discussion / Re: Overclock help required !

« Last post by Shades on April 22, 2014, 07:38 AM »

On a 32-bit version of Windows you won't be able to access all of the 4GByte of RAM. If you want a general speedup, use an SSD. According to TLom's hardware, you hardly go wrong with the brands Intel and Samsung, but any brand will give your computer a big boost.

You might even want to consider doing a fresh installation of a 64-bit Windows version. All the "speediness" from a fresh install with 4GBYTE of RAM and an SSD..., you will be amazed about the leap your old computer is able to make.

Then again, the money you will spend on getting your old system fast will also let you buy the core of a new PC (motherboard, CPU, RAM). For example, my Asus motherboard costed me about 100 USD at the time, and decent boards are still had for that price. My CPU was around 200 USD and nowadays 200-250 USD will buy you a decent i5 and spend 50 USD more for 8GByte of RAM (2 modules of 4GByte is better+faster than one module of 8GByte).

You can still use your old PC case, the old power supply is usually capable enough, a PCI express video card can be re-used and your SATA/SATA2 hard disk will work good enough as well, especially with a fresh Windows installation. An optical disk is hardly necessary anymore nowadays, so if you have one that still uses IDE, you might as well drop it. Most new motherboards do not come with physical IDE connectors anymore.

So if you are handy and able to do the work of swapping out motherboards etc. yourself, you'll spend around 400 USD to get a new PC. That amount of money you will also spend on DDR2 modules and an SSD for your old system (prices are just an indication and are based on prices in Paraguay, US prices are normally a bit lower).

With the new PC you can later on spend around 100 USD more to get a new SATA3 disk (1TByte) and a somewhat decent new 1GByte video card. After that, spend 20 USD more to get an el cheapo PC case (with power supply) for your old ECS motherboard and restore that old system with the old hard disk and video card. One (recommended) use is to try Linux on it, you could use it as an extra/backup PC, sell it for whatever pittance you still can get or even donate it to family/poor/church/whatever.

Decisions, decisions, decisions   

1399

General Software Discussion / Re: Overclock help required !

« Last post by Shades on April 20, 2014, 04:10 PM »

From memory, the E5700 CPU was never intended to be used for games. And that area is where overclocking is mostly used. Get more RAM and the fastest RAM your motherboard supports, besides the SSD of course.

My Asus motherboard is an inbetween one, hence it supports DDR2 RAM modules but at DDR3 speeds. So I bought 2 of those RAM modules which are almost twice as fast as the normal ones. And with my E8200 CPU (also dual core, but intended for games) + ATi Radeon 4670 I still play games such as Skyrim at 1920x1080 resolution without a hitch. The only thing I regret is having the budget to only buy 2 GByte of those RAM modules.

Lack of RAM is the only reason for me to think about buying a new personal system. For all my other intends and purposes this PC is more than adequate. When creating 7zip archives in ultra mode this system is barely slower than an i5 from a Dell laptop I fixed a month or so ago.

Spend money on getting good hardware parts that work nicely together. That way you don't need to spent so much on hardware every 3 to 4 years or so. If you do your homework with this, the PC you'll end up with will last significantly longer.

My only problem now is that I cannot buy those fast DDR2 modules anymore, only the standard ones that are clocked at 800MHz. And I don't want those modules as these will slow done my faster RAM modules. A sacrifice I don't want to make, hence my regret regarding budget.

Maybe it is a better idea to spent money on a better videocard than your current one if the purpose of overclocking is gaming.

1400

Living Room / Re: Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

« Last post by Shades on April 20, 2014, 10:38 AM »

When I lived in the Netherlands most electronics stores had a listening room where you could hear the audio equipment you had an interest in play with different speakers as well. And my budget allowed for a Sony 5.1 amp and Wharfedale speakers in 1996. Somehow, I like an amp best when it plays 'Twist in my sobriety' from T. Tikaram well.

And I used it with gusto till 2005 when I went to Paraguay. After my father passed away a few years back I wanted to ship that equipment over to Paraguay. However, I learned that all my stuff I had stored there for shipment was sold by either my brother or my father. Crap happens.

But here in Paraguay there are hardly any stores that do have listening rooms. There isn't even a lot of choice in brands and each brand only carries a very limited set of models.

With katschaka (or how else you write it) and raggeaton music over here it only needs to be loud and have a big bass speaker. After listening 30 minutes to that crap (the first is way worse than the latter) I need to listen to rock/metal for a month just to get my sanity back. To my mind that music is the reason why beer is sold in liter bottles down here.
[/rant]

Anyway, my point is that I always have bought my audio equipment only after actually hearing it play my favorite kind of music. I didn't even care to buy the showroom model if that sounded  better than the one in the box.