Recent Posts

1576

Living Room / Re: good Videos [short films] here :)

« Last post by Shades on August 16, 2013, 11:17 PM »

The cows on a rotating "platter", that was something I didn't see before. Just static installations for the same purpose. In the Netherlands, you don't have many small farmers anymore...not in the south where I grew up.

My neighbor at the time showed me sometimes the work he did on farms that were really big and automated when I was studying electrical engineering.

The animals will get their revenge when the same happens to humans (soylent green...)

1577

Living Room / Re: Why I Idolize Larry Ellison...

« Last post by Shades on August 16, 2013, 07:59 AM »

Looks like you did a DROP and likely included CASCADE...but forgot to PURGE.

1578

Screenshot Captor / Re: ScreenshotCaptor takes > 90 secs to start under certain conditions

« Last post by Shades on August 14, 2013, 10:02 PM »

Yes and No. By default the TCP/IP protocols wait max. 30 seconds before a connection is deemed bad and needs to be closed.

Assuming you use the default TCP/IP settings Microsoft has selected for your version of Windows, you can be waiting those 30 seconds.

Now I don't know if SSC tries to connect multiple times and if so, if it does this sequentially instead of parallel. Anyway, it doesn't take genius to figure out that all those waiting times add up.

Depending on the version of Windows that you use, different TCP settings can be adjusted...but only in the registry. This is done on purpose by Microsoft and they are right about that in my view.  

Only if you really know what you are doing/have intimate knowledge about the inner workings of your network gear you can adjust the configuration. Or you can use the trial-and-error method of finding the settings that work best on your particular network setup. To do that, search 'TCP settings Windows registry' on the MSDN/TechNet sites from Microsoft.

The best solution?
Either become proficient in patience or make sure you set SSC to not automatically update. Please don't take this in a bad way, it is not intended as such. Your way of working does not allow for automatic updating of SSC or any other application really.

Personally, I don't like automatic updating at all. However, I am also at piece with the consequences of this mindset. So, if you need automatic updates, remain connected to the internet all the time...after all, the NSA could get bored out of their skulls if everyone would only connect to the internet when they need to  

1579

Living Room / Re: Information Sharing In Danger

« Last post by Shades on August 14, 2013, 09:12 PM »

Almost everyone born after 1990...is born without spine. Only some have heard of the concept. Society made it so, I'm afraid.

The ones born earlier have one, but it's hidden very deep level...the formula would be: 1 + <last two digits from the year of your birth>

1580

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on August 13, 2013, 09:29 PM »

Aha, we're talking good anime now?   
 
Just saw Ghost in a Shell: Arise - Border 1.
And if you didn't see the original and sequel, they come recommended!

1581

Living Room / Re: Internet Speed Test

« Last post by Shades on August 11, 2013, 06:20 PM »

Uniblue is a software company that makes debatable software, such as registry cleaners and PC speed up software

Both types of software are hardly worth the bits they occupy on the net, but that is a different subject (and has been discussed already here on DC as well). Uniblue asks for quite some money and keep bothering you with commercial messages.

Hence they have not such a good name.

1582

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Network Scanner / No title as yet and in beta stage

« Last post by Shades on August 10, 2013, 09:59 PM »

The download site doesn't inspire trust...and a 36MByte file size is not helping either.

Are the tools you mention (Putty, browser erc.) included?

1583

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on August 07, 2013, 09:42 PM »

About Snitch:
Funny, those law makers/upholders in the US Justice department...they arm themselves so well, they could take on small countries without any problem. Surveillance capacity is amazing for them  these days as well. However, they still make ordinary civilians do their job for them by making those civilians entrap each other...

Guess no amount of armor can hide that you are regarded a coward amongst the other chickens...

1584

Living Room / Re: The fun of installing custom router firmware (tomato, dd-wrt) - an introduction

« Last post by Shades on August 07, 2013, 09:29 PM »

FWIW, the most useful setting in Tomato that I think every router firmware should have is the one that lets you set it to reboot itself in the middle of the night every day. For me, that completely solved the problem of having to pull the power on the router when it started having  problems after a couple weeks of constant uptime.

-mwb1100 (August 04, 2013, 02:22 AM)

You can buy timers that allow you to program the times you want it powered up. All you have to do is put the timer in the wall socket where your router draws its power from and put the plug from the router in the timer. These devices are around 10 euro's for a simple, indoors one.

A mechanical example and electronic ones. Both sites are in Dutch, but the text is not extensive (meaning: Google translate will be quite accurate) and its mostly pictures anyway.

1585

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on August 07, 2013, 09:16 PM »

I wouldn't a stockpile of those pills myself   

I'm now taking a look at the Hannibal TV series...interesting in ways Bones never was.

1586

Living Room / Re: Please help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by Shades on August 07, 2013, 08:52 PM »

^ +1

So you are one from the (old) school of blood and magick as well...

1587

Living Room / Re: P3005 HP LaserJet printer questions

« Last post by Shades on August 07, 2013, 08:48 PM »

Still happy using a "throwaway" HP LaserJet: the 1020...for almost 8 years now. There is a big refill market here and at the time I bought 2 "fake" cartridges when my original was gone. There was no way to buy a new one from HP, but the two fakers perform just as well and have been refilled quite some times already.

The printer is in a location that doesn't collect (much) dust, out of the murderous sun light and shared over a USB port into the LAN, which consists of a mix-and-match of Windows and Linux systems. All can and do print without problems.

Nothing but good words about my little HP "soldier".  
  

1588

Living Room / Re: Apple vs. Samsung Goes NUCLEAR!

« Last post by Shades on August 05, 2013, 01:35 PM »

When I read this story in he weekend on a Dutch tweakers site, the comments were juicy. The apple camp kept saying that apple needed to pay ten times more than other parties for samsung frand's. That got me thinking...Dothese other parties have frand's that Samsung uses? If so, frands can be used to say 'I don't pay for your frands, you don't pay for my frands'. If there is a difference in number of frands between parties a bonus-malus system would be reasonable. How much (relevant) frands does apple have in this case? According to the trade cmission not enough. I believe that because of this apple didn't pay anything and dod not even try to negotiate. Both sides act as little children trying toget their way. Samsung is right, but 'big brother' obully sets the market straight...I am just waiting for the bitch-slapping to be delt to each and every party in this scandal. It is seriously long overdue.

1589

Developer's Corner / Re: Nerdy Data - source code search engine

« Last post by Shades on August 04, 2013, 08:24 PM »

That is their intended audience, at least I tried the demo and when I clicked on the download button a screen popped up with 3 different subscription offers accompanied with a test that it was intended for SEO/marketers.

After grokking the content from that screen, it took 1 second to leave that page, never to return.

1590

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on August 04, 2013, 04:38 PM »

The last Uwe Boll movie I saw, was titled: Attack on Wallstreet  and I must say that is wasn't that bad, story-wise or in the acting. Actually, I liked the end-scene...for a "Boll" it was rather clever.

And if you must know, I did see quite a lot of Uwe Boll movies...mainly because I want to see how bad a game-concept can be tortured.

Having said that, I did like some of the jokes in the movie Postal, where he also features as an actor and makes jokes about his movies being financed with Nazi-gold...

1591

Living Room / Re: Slower Planes And Charging For Bathrooms

« Last post by Shades on August 03, 2013, 09:16 PM »

I assume that there are very intelligent engineers that already thought about this and likely have found solutions as well.

Additives that are used in Dutch winters will most likely not work in the much harsher environment of -80 degrees Celsius temperature at altitude. That is my fear.

I like diesel and that type of engine, which has seen already so much improvements over the years. Modern diesel cars are just as fast as gas-powered normal cars are, and still drive more miles on a liter of fuel than a gas-powered car does.

Take a look at endurance races such as the 24 hours of LeMans, the amount of diesel cars is higher every year and most of the time leading in their class of racing cars.

To my understanding, the US does not use diesel engines that much. That always struck me as strange, because families in the US live quite often far apart and diesel would cut the fuel bill significantly when it is time to visit.

1592

Living Room / Re: SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps Specification Set and Ready for Development

« Last post by Shades on August 03, 2013, 08:46 PM »

@ewemoa:
I have bought some new motherboards lately and I saw in the UEFI/BIOS part new options with regards to booting from USB. There were 3 options: disable / enable/ partially enable

I understand these options were build-in to make your computer boot faster. Apparently it takes too much time to check if devices are connected to USB ports...

Maybe it would be a good to take a look your UEFI/BIOS settings to see if you can improve USB handling during system startup.

1593

Living Room / Re: The fun of installing custom router firmware (tomato, dd-wrt) - an introduction

« Last post by Shades on August 03, 2013, 08:23 PM »

Another vote for Untangle here. I had an old white-box laying around, put in two network cards and put Untangle on it. Easy to install and the default configuration settings worked out of the box within my LAN. You have a good overview of bandwidth usage, DHCP, DNS, VPN, encryption and a boatload of options/services more.

The free version is already quite complete and you can buy extra features/enhancements to existing features from them as well.

Can't tell you much about those though, never had a need to buy anything. And that white-box is already running steady for at least two years now (if I don't take the power failures into account).

1594

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on August 03, 2013, 12:39 PM »

Los Ultimos Dias - A Spanish sci-fi movie where people cannot go outside anymore. This is a well-made movie, even you don't understand Spanish.

The male actors carry the story fine, for me the female lead character overdid it at the end. I guess the director banked on her 'pleasing-the-eye-ness' to get away with that end scene.

1595

Living Room / Re: Slower Planes And Charging For Bathrooms

« Last post by Shades on August 02, 2013, 10:57 PM »

It used to be that diesel would develop 'flocks' (the Dutch term is 'vlokken') that could get stuck inside an engine, fuel-lines etc. Older diesel engines were not too happy about that.

Diesel can be treated and it hardly happens anymore in the Dutch climate. However, After seeing the outside temperature of minus 80 degrees Celsius when I sat inside a commercial airliner at 30.000 feet, going 800 kilometers an hour...I think that the 'flock' problem with diesel returns and will be very hard to fix at these temperatures.

Now I didn't know that jet fuel and diesel were alike. Never too late to learn something new 

1596

Living Room / Re: Show us a picture of your.. CAR!!!

« Last post by Shades on August 02, 2013, 10:41 PM »

Good mileage has also a lot to do with weight/mass of a car.

Acceleration of a mass requires exponential input of energy, not linear amount of input. Moving a mass through air makes sure of that and aerodynamics cannot fix that, only partially negate it.

Friction on the surface that enables acceleration is always a problem, but you need it else you'll loose grip. And all of these negatives become more prevalent above 55 to 60MPH.

Stay below that speed and your engine can be a lot smaller and more efficient without giving up too much acceleration capacity. 50 to 60 miles per gallon is quite attainable even with current day tech.

And you'll get even more MPG's if you trade your lead foot in for a plastic one.

In short: people want their cars to go too fast too quickly and then complain that they have to spend so much on gas bills.

Every one likes to go to their destination as fast as they can, myself included. When you take a look at the amount of energy that has to put into your vehicle of choice to cut 5 minutes of travel time, or leave home 5 minutes earlier and see how money that already saves, you would be amazed.

That money you can spend on other fun things. Going fast is fun for me, so I don't mind occasionally spending money on that.

And there are also times when cruising can be just as fun, especially in a country where the average age is still under 30 years, has more women than men and summer practically all-year-round.

You learn to appreciate reggeaton music quite quickly over here, I can tell you that much. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that beer is sold in liter bottles over here...

1597

Living Room / Re: Slower Planes And Charging For Bathrooms

« Last post by Shades on August 02, 2013, 06:26 PM »

Sorry, I can't let this one slip by...jet engines are by definition rotory engines, are they not?

Ok, serious now. Diesel develops small 'clouds' of substance when it is really cold. On high altitudes it is actually really really cold. Diesel in liquid form is a good fuel, solid not so much. I had once a subaru car with rotary engine. That car was neither fast or fuel efficient. A rotary engine is a piece of technology where theory never meets practice, i'm afraid.

1598

Living Room / Re: Show us a picture of your.. CAR!!!

« Last post by Shades on August 02, 2013, 06:09 PM »

as i did not encounter mobile refuelling stations for cars (similar to inflight refuelling with aeroplanes) in physical form and i don't want to search for it on my teeny tiny mobile phone, i would guess that every living soul is able to pass a gasstation on raw speed alone....without really trying, hehehe

1599

Living Room / Re: Slower Planes And Charging For Bathrooms

« Last post by Shades on August 02, 2013, 08:43 AM »

@Tinman:
As you are/used to be an air force guy...I read once that it might be a good idea to put more effort in putting turboprop planes back into the air.

Energy-wise this technology could be made a lot less wasteful than current jet engine tech. As it currently stands the two technologies match each other.

Besides this, commercial airliners fly as slow as they can get away with already for years now, to keep fuel costs down. Almost negating the advantage a jet has over a turboprop (speed).

From that article I understood that using similar maintenance procedures/intervals for turboprops as is done for jets, current turboprop tech is as reliable and almost as fast current jets fly, but a lot cheaper with fuel.

I keep saying article, but it could also have been a paper or case-study...

1600

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Shades on August 01, 2013, 12:38 AM »

Just when Internet became a huge thing in the Netherlands my friend had an ISP, making decent money...as in don't have to worry about being able to buy something expensive when needed.

Then the internet really took off and his silent investor sold his share for serious cash. The new investor aggressively bought out my friend for 4 million euro's (with current exchange rates that would have been close to 8 million USD).

Well, my friend's family increased by 500% overnight, coming over to his house to nag/beg him to death about helping them out...people that previously didn't gave him the time of day suddenly acted as BFF's, banks started calling just as telemarketers do.

Financial "advice" from everyone around you (family, in-laws), every decision you make being questioned by those same people, putting a big strain on his relationship.

Worrying about losing money in the stock market, because your account manager at the bank doesn't buy or sell at the time when you want him to (this was still before online broker sites took off). He actually lost quite a lot of money that way.

After seeing all that, I couldn't help but thinking that (financial) freedom actually lies at the point where you have enough to buy something expensive without having to think you can afford it...while not being noticed by people/organizations/institutes of religion that are after your money, leaving you time to do your own thing.

Ah well, to each his own.