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1626

General Software Discussion / Re: The problem with text compare tools - similar, in database compare tools

« Last post by Shades on July 14, 2013, 10:22 AM »

Comparing databases is done (in most cases), because a DBA suspects a change in structure, which can be very problematic for software especially written for that particular database structure. Although one should not program like this, I think it can result in faster applications when one already knows exactly where to look/write.

For Oracle databases there are tools that can also do content comparison, some are basic and free, but in most cases expect to pay dearly (especially with Oracle products). With MySQL it is most of the time not that difficult to make a complete extract (structure and content) into a .sql file and which can be easily checked with a text comparison tool for differences.
I use XAMPP which comes with MySQL, a webserver and the PHPMyAdmin scripts. With that it is easy to create a complete dump of any MySQL database.

I have no personal experience with other databases (only some minor PostgreSQL), such as Microsoft and IBM database products, but I suspect that tools for these databases are more similar in functionality and price with the tools for Oracle products than for MySQL.

A long(er) shot would be to use the 'Oracle SQL Developer' software for both types of comparisons. This software you get for free when installing the latest Oracle client and/or database software (you can also fish this software out of the installation archive and run it as a portable application. All the necessary Java software is included, you do not need to install Java, you just have to configure it once). It is not included in Oracle XE versions, last time I checked.

If memory serves me right, this software is designed for Oracle databases (duh!), it is also able to handle Microsoft Access and as MySQL is now part of the Oracle family it should be able to work with these databases too.

Granted, the above solution doesn't sound simple and easy, but at least it is free. If you are interested , you could PM me with an FTP/dropbox location where I can dump an archive from the Oracle SQL Developer software I use on my system.

1627

General Software Discussion / Re: The problem with text compare tools - similar, in database compare tools

« Last post by Shades on July 14, 2013, 09:35 AM »

Apparently ExamDiff Pro can handle moved blocks since May 2009 (version 4.5 and up), see here.

I don't know which version (of ExamDiff) you were using/trying, but I cannot stand by when one of my favorites get shot down 

1628

Living Room / Re: Help me choose my next smartphone

« Last post by Shades on July 14, 2013, 08:55 AM »

Bill Gates was a tech and when he was leading the company, there were real advances in their software (granted, it was either bullied from x, bought from x or made in-house), now an accountant is ruling the company and see that there are no real advances anymore. More wind-bagging and less substance unfortunately require hype...

1629

Living Room / Re: $250,000 Prize for Human-Powered Helicopter

« Last post by Shades on July 13, 2013, 08:25 PM »

Why are tuition fees as high as they are?

If you would ask me (and I know you didn't, but I will tell you anyway  ), it would be that there are too many lawyers and finance students that have the impression that they deserve more money than people that actually do help the human race move out of the status quo (and hopefully in a direction most of us would call: forward).

In my admittedly limited view of the world, it is the engineers (mechanical, electrical, computational and biological/chemical) that are actually able to do the moving, while the others actively preserve the status quo, with all the problems that this brings and a lot of people are currently experiencing. Of course, there is no denying that there are exceptions on both sides, but still....

My 92 Guaranies (worth about 2 USD cents)

1630

General Software Discussion / Re: Open or launch hyperlinks from a pdf file

« Last post by Shades on July 13, 2013, 05:07 PM »

Most PDF readers can open hyperlinks by using the browser that you have set on your computer as default. Personally I use both FoxIt Reader and Adobe which do this, so I think it is safe to assume that the PDF reader of your choice will do the same.

No extra software required  (or I miss the point of the request).

1631

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by Shades on July 13, 2013, 03:16 PM »

Here are the ground rules for anything political or otherwise related to government:

http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm


Although on the end, it appears to repeat itself...it is still an enlightening (and quire extensive) read.

1632

General Software Discussion / Re: Similar program to automation anywhere (integration software)

« Last post by Shades on July 13, 2013, 01:37 PM »

But that could take a while as he (according to Prince/TAFKAP/?) should be partying like it is 1999?

 

1633

Living Room / Re: If Wikipedia existed back in the DOS era

« Last post by Shades on July 13, 2013, 01:25 PM »

You will find some good company here then 

Even if I include myself 

(my heritage: Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga (all models except 3000 and 4000), Acer PC (286) and after that only white boxes (ranging from AMD 586 to Intel i7))

1634

Living Room / Re: Very thin hard disks

« Last post by Shades on July 13, 2013, 01:16 PM »

If you would create a pendulum of hard disk platters and you would hang it outside, the wind will play a nice harmonic sound/song (and you would make the job of the NSA easier as all your data is out there in public... )

1635

Living Room / Re: Very thin hard disks

« Last post by Shades on July 13, 2013, 01:13 PM »

It is glass that is not supposed to alter its shape in any way or form when the temperature changes.

Glass that is used in Windows of old buildings tends to warp as it has been subject to gravity for all these years it has been in vertical position. I'll guess that ordinary glass would also warp when spinning around between 5400 and 10000 RPM (speeds of most hard drives).

1636

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

« Last post by Shades on July 13, 2013, 11:27 AM »

And she's wearing a coat with a zipper up high!


Those activists of today...   

1637

Living Room / Re: $250,000 Prize for Human-Powered Helicopter

« Last post by Shades on July 13, 2013, 11:06 AM »

Amazing feat! And a good example of why more people should study more engineering!

1638

Living Room / Re: This Just in: From the You Gotta be Shitting Me Dept.

« Last post by Shades on July 10, 2013, 08:29 PM »

i can relate to that feeling, yesrs ago i was driving in a military car doing a rather large postal run. While waiting for a traffic light, benind two other cars, a truck pulling a tank with 20.000 liter of milk though the traffic light was green. My car took the real beating, the two cars in front of me were totalled as well. And everyone involved were practically ignoring me during the form filling. Even the military police did this, making me wait for 1.5h it took for somebody from my base could pick me up. The wreck of the car i was driving was treated better than me.

1639

Living Room / Re: What is safer for data -- a hard disk or a blue ray disc?

« Last post by Shades on July 09, 2013, 10:49 PM »

Decent quality, slow burned disc´s that are kept in their box in a dry, dark place at a constant temperature do last a long time. Here in Paraguay disc´s are not that great, mainly because of the shitty quality of the players. Getting a disc to work here is a crap shoot. I have 8 DVD burners here and none of the disc I have burned over time work at any given time in any given player.

This is so ff-ing frustrating that I have abandoned this whole tech...until I could lay my hands on a DVD burner that came from the Netherlands. With that drive all discs work all the time. Depending on where you are, and the quality of the reader you can get, disc´s could be an option.

Maybe it would even be a good idea to flip hard disc´s that are in storage every 6 months or so, just to be sure gravity has not too much effect on the (grease of the) bearrings. But in any case, hard disc´s would be my preferred storage medium.

Support for SCSI drives is less of a problem than for IDE drives, It is often easier to get a separate SCSI controller, while getting a separate IDE controllers is a lot harder to get.  As onboard IDE controllers were adequate in most cases, the need for separate IDE controllers is/was practically eliminated.

I only know about soundcards, back when Windows 3.11 was king, that came with a separate IDE controller, which were only useable if you had the IRQ´s to spare...on your motherboard with ISA ports! SCSI controllers at least progressed...

1640

General Software Discussion / Re: Log CPU and memory usage

« Last post by Shades on June 25, 2013, 04:51 PM »

The CSV output format was chosen, as one can check these easily in Excel/LibreOffice. However there are three 'ConvertTo-...' options more: XML, HTML and TXT.

Just letting the OP know.

1641

General Software Discussion / Re: Connection Conundrum

« Last post by Shades on June 24, 2013, 08:03 PM »

Did you try the hints and tips from this link (answers.microsoft.com)?

1642

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 - Mini-Review (calculator)

« Last post by Shades on June 24, 2013, 07:48 PM »

(Unfortunately, I have so far been unable to get these add-ins to work. This may be because of conflicts with the 64-bit OS.)

-IainB (July 10, 2012, 02:45 AM)

I think you may need to use the add-in that matches your Word or One-Note installation, not necessarily the OS.  In other words, if you have 32-bit Office installed on a 64-bit OS (which is I think is the common configuration even on a 64-bit OS), you should install the 32-bit Add-in.

-mwb1100 (July 10, 2012, 12:43 PM)

Microsoft warns agains the use of 64-bit Office versions. They imply that unless you have an absolute reason to use a 64-bit Office version you should download the 32-bit one. This warning was not readily but quite accessible when I downloaded their trial Office 2010 version at the time.

I'll guess that this warning is still valid till this day.

Here's the screenshot I made that day:

1643

General Software Discussion / Re: Log CPU and memory usage

« Last post by Shades on June 24, 2013, 02:20 PM »

As a PowerShell beginner and with the help of a PowerShell IDE, I was able to conjure something rudimentary up.

The Mission
Find 5 running processes sorted on highest CPU load and their use of RAM (working set, not private memory):

The result
Get-Process | Sort -Property CPU -Descending | ? {$_.mainwindowtitle.length -ne 0} | Select Name, @{Label="Application"; Expression={$_.mainwindowtitle}}, @{Label="State"; Expression={"Running"}}, CPU, @{Label="Working Set"; Expression={"{0,12:n0} KB" -f ($_.WS/1kb)}} | Select -First 5
or send this data to file:
Get-Process | Sort -Property CPU -Descending | ? {$_.mainwindowtitle.length -ne 0} | Select Name, @{Label="Application"; Expression={$_.mainwindowtitle}}, @{Label="State"; Expression={"Running"}}, CPU, @{Label="Working Set"; Expression={"{0,12:n0} KB" -f ($_.WS/1kb)}} | Select -First 5 | Export-Csv -Path G:\Temp\log1.csv -NoTypeInformation


Both lines above show only a limited set of data (the requested data). If you want the standard output use the following line:
The screen layout looks like:
Handles:   NPM:   PM:   WS:   VM:   CPU:   ID:    ProcessName:
Get-Process | Where { $_.cpu -gt 0 } | Sort -Property CPU -Descending | Select -First 5
or send this data to file  (this file will show a boatload of information...be warned!):
Get-Process | Where { $_.cpu -gt 0 } | Sort -Property CPU -Descending | Select -First 5 | ConvertTo-Csv | Out-File -FilePath G:\Temp\log2.csv


Still-to-do
Filenames should contain the date-time when they are generated. Right now I'm overwriting files. Appending data could be a solution, but I did not find such an option yet in my travels.


Notes
Save the one you like into a text file with the extension .ps1 (for example: FileNameYouDesire.ps1) and use the Windows task scheduler to run this file at the desired interval. To my knowledge you can start a script in administrator mode with the Windows 7 Task scheduler (but I'll deny having said that in court ).

You will get different results, depending the level of user you login with. The adminstrator account will show you everything, when using this on a limited user account you'll see the information from processes etc. associated with the current user only. That is the way how PowerShell works.

You see me use two different ways to write the data to file. The method 'Export-Csv' is not UTF8 friendly. Reading the file into LibreOffice at first showed garbage, but all data became visible after changing the characterset from 'UTF8' to 'Western-Europe (ASCII/US)'. The other method ConvertTo-Csv did not require this change when being read into LibreOffice.    

As the commands are basic, these will work on each version of PowerShell. I would upgrade the PowerShell on XP to the highest version available though. My computer at home is not (or will be) connected to the internet, so I didn't see a reason yet to upgrade to Win7 SP1. IIRC Win7 comes with PowerShell version 2, which is upgraded to version 3 after service pack 1. XP on the other hand cannot upgrade to more than version 2.

Another idea one could entertain is to write this data into the appropiate EventLogViewer from Windows itself and use that software to get an overview. Ok, I might fill my next Saturday afternoon with this puzzle.

1644

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by Shades on June 21, 2013, 07:40 PM »

Or we could do what Aerosmith was/is still singing about....'Eat the rich'.

That would solve quite some issues quickly 

1645

General Software Discussion / Re: The Non-Notepad(MS) Thread!

« Last post by Shades on June 21, 2013, 07:18 PM »

Aranaea used to be a lightweight editor that was already head and shoulders above notepad when I first encountered it (version 1 or so). Now it is at version 5.

If you really want to go barebones and oldskool...there is always edxor. The installer is less than 50KByte! Or get the portable one (30KByte) if you find that excessive. This is a very decent text editor with quite a lot of extra functions (but no tabbed interface). 

HiEditor does tabs is also very small (about 3 times the size of edxor) and has functions you will likely not use as it comes from a site dedicated to "good old" ASM (assembly) coding.

Still want more? There is always Zeus. This is an expensive and extensive text editor, but they offer a lite version of their software for free.

1646

General Software Discussion / Re: Log CPU and memory usage

« Last post by Shades on June 19, 2013, 10:32 AM »

PowerShell can do this. PowerShell comes with Windows Vista and Higher and can be downloaded from Microsoft for free for XP.

Creating some scripts is quite easy, especially when using a free IDE such as the one from Idera. (this one actually comes with example scripts that hardly need any modifying to do what you want. Run these scripts at the intervals you prefer and you should be done.

1647

General Software Discussion / Re: notepad++

« Last post by Shades on June 05, 2013, 05:06 PM »

At the time (some 6 months ago) there was a link to a portable version. At least my memory clearly says so...which is (of course) not affected at all by the beer and wine I have consumed in the mean time...

1648

General Software Discussion / Re: notepad++

« Last post by Shades on June 05, 2013, 04:08 PM »

The base version of Notepad++ (whichever version) has always worked fine (I always download the latest portable version though). In my personal experience NP++ does sometimes mess up with a combination of plug-ins. These plugins by themselves work fine, just the combination of them doesn't always work as advertised.

Because of that I tried the beta from Sublime text editor. This is also a very, very nice text editor, but that one is not free (although the version I tried at the time can be used indefinitely). Still, NP++ keeps drawing me back as it feels the most 'natural' to me.

I tried to use a portable Windows version of GVim, but that one didn't feel right to me. However, I do think it is a very capable text editor. And when you try GVim (or Vim), I also took a look at the portable Windows version of EMacs. But that has the same "problem" as GVim. But also here I can say that this is a very capable text editor.

All in all, the power (and 'simplicity') of Notepad++ cannot be beaten (in my point of view). I think all went "wrong" with me when I used CygnusEd on Amiga. That was (and still is) a favorite of mine.

1649

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Bring back the BEEP!

« Last post by Shades on June 03, 2013, 10:52 AM »

Another long shot:
http://www.bttr-soft...rd_entry.php?id=6570

Pieces of software are available here that are supposed to enable you to play all kinds of audio through the system speaker.

1650

Finished Programs / Re: SOLVED: GUI for DISM

« Last post by Shades on June 01, 2013, 02:39 PM »

For Windows XP there is a piece of freeware called 'nLite'. That should give you more than enough to play with. I am sure there are similar pieces of software for Vista and higher. I never bothered to look for these though.