Recent Posts

1751

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Shades on October 08, 2012, 05:20 PM »

But I could also be tempted to call it 'Papa'...   

1752

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Shades on October 08, 2012, 05:17 PM »

Rai stones, any one?

-ewemoa (October 08, 2012, 02:36 AM)

"In one instance, a rai being transported by canoe was accidentally dropped and sank to the sea floor. Although it was never seen again, everyone agreed that the rai must still be there, so it continued to be transacted as genuine currency.[4] What is important is that ownership of the rai is clear to everyone, not that the rai is physically transferred or even physically accessible to either party in the transfer."

-TaoPhoenix (October 08, 2012, 11:08 AM)

So was that the first Rai of Hope?

-Stoic Joker (October 08, 2012, 11:26 AM)

I would sooner associate Johnny Cash with this.   

1753

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Shades on October 08, 2012, 05:14 PM »

The previous link for Rai stones results in an error. This link will take you to the Wikipedia page

1754

Living Room / Re: Halloween would be less popular if...

« Last post by Shades on October 08, 2012, 05:00 PM »

You crack me up, as usual.

-MilesAhead (October 08, 2012, 09:49 AM)

I had to scramble for it.

-cranioscopical (October 08, 2012, 01:38 PM)

Hey! The yoke was already on me at Halloween!! I forgot to duck.

-MilesAhead (October 08, 2012, 02:29 PM)

But luckily you didn't break the basket   

1755

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: ASAP Utilities for Excel

« Last post by Shades on October 06, 2012, 03:21 PM »

The download page from Microsoft (for Office 2010) states all kinds of reasons to not use 64-bit Office, unless you absolutely have to. Actually, that page does not even mention there is a 64-bit version (or 32-bit for that matter). At least this was true when I last checked a month or two ago.

1756

Screenshot Captor / Re: This program should be avoided like the plague!

« Last post by Shades on October 03, 2012, 05:16 PM »

Screenshot Captor is a highly configurable and very capable piece of software. Because of the amount of configurable options it can be possible that some of the default settings are not to your liking. However, Mouser (the creator and head honcho of this establishment) has put up quite a lot of documentation put up, he even made screen-casts in which he explains most options and why the default settings are as they are.

Take a look at the forum, the people here are friendly and very helpful in solving your issue(s) with Screenshot Captor.

1757

Living Room / Re: Home server upgrade meanderings

« Last post by Shades on September 30, 2012, 09:46 AM »

Recently I had to rebuild my CVS server. It´s motherboard with AMD Athlon 3000+ processor burned up...actually the SATA controller burned up.

So I take a look at the prices from the biggest local PC shop and I was able to buy an Asus mobo with triple core AMD processor and 2GByte of RAM for less than buying an intel procesor (lower than i5 I´m not considering to be a replacement for anything) for a motherbard (1156 socket) that was given to me.

Almost 90 USD difference for these 3 parts alone. So I went for the AMD solution. Keeping the CVS server in the AMD family did make my life a lot easier too. Just swapped mainboards, reconnected all its 6 drives and it booted up just as if nothing happend at all.

So far I am pleasantly surprised about the performance of that server.

Personally I like to compare Intel and AMD with candles. Intel burns brighter, but not as long as the AMD´s do.

1758

Living Room / Re: Remote Android Control Solution?

« Last post by Shades on September 30, 2012, 08:53 AM »

If memory serves me right I saw once a guy with a Samsung Galaxy SII remote control his PC using VNC.

1759

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

« Last post by Shades on September 30, 2012, 08:49 AM »

@Renegade:
At the risk of too much information...¨Number 2¨ only happens about twice a week for me. Quite some time ago I did some not so scientifically accurate measuring test. While visiting a friend I was excused to use the master bathroom as work was being done to the normal bathroom. In that bathroom there was an old analogic weighing scale. Before and after I measured my weight on that scale and there really was a difference of 2 kilogram.

To me the 2 pounds a day sounds plausible.

1760

General Software Discussion / Re: Want to send a Batch file - but gmail & prob AV dont...

« Last post by Shades on September 25, 2012, 05:48 PM »

You could also try send as plain text but in front of each line of text you put an escape code, like # or -- or REM (for batch).

If there is a parser scanning the content of the attachment, you could likely fool it this way. In essence you just sent text which cannot be ¨executed¨ in any way.

The receiver can easily adjust the script. Most text editors are capable to removing columns in texts nowadays. Even if the receiver is only allowed to use Notepad, this shouldn´t be much of an issue either.

1761

Living Room / Re: Western Digital playing kinda loose with your privacy

« Last post by Shades on September 24, 2012, 10:20 AM »

FreeNAS would be a proper solution for either superboyac and Tranglos. There are several people here that have implemented such a server and as far as I can tell they all are (very) happy with it. It's free, based on Linux and runs nicely on practically any old PC that you have lying around.

1762

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... RAMdisk opinions

« Last post by Shades on September 24, 2012, 06:55 AM »

@ Steven Avery:
Yes, but that situation is not much different without using a RAMdisk. Actually, when the power fails and the OS was just writing to disk, I rather loose the work that has been done (RAMdisk) than potential file corruption (hard disk), which can have all kinds of "weird" effects and the (obligatory) CHKDSK takes time to complete as well.

1763

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... RAMdisk opinions

« Last post by Shades on September 23, 2012, 06:58 AM »

I believe there was a discussion/thread before this one here on DC with regards to RAM disks. As this one also describes how to defeat man´s greatest enemy, called: sobriety, I´ll guess its warranted.   

For me the following concept is interesting though. Say I equip an 32-bit OS with 8GByte of RAM. The first 4GYte is then usable for Windows. The remaining 4GByte would ideally serve as RAM disk (with no possibility of the OS stealing any capacity away from the RAM drive).

And this would be the thread I was talking about.

1764

Living Room / Re: Is my pen-drive performing okay?

« Last post by Shades on September 22, 2012, 10:02 AM »

@f0dder:
Then you should tell them that they mention octets twice (on the same line even!).   

1765

Living Room / Re: Cascading grammar trolls

« Last post by Shades on September 18, 2012, 08:37 AM »

excelent 

-phitsc (September 18, 2012, 01:30 AM)

not a chance, no one here will fall for that

PS you spelt excelent wrong

-Target (September 18, 2012, 01:41 AM)

Next time put a : after PS, wiil you?

-eleman (September 18, 2012, 01:51 AM)

you're smiley's incomplete

-Target (September 18, 2012, 02:55 AM)

Shouldn't a sentence start upper case, even in english? 

-AbteriX (September 18, 2012, 05:43 AM)

And it should have a full stop at the end! But us native speakers are (mostly) very flexible and forgiving with our own mistakes

-tomos (September 18, 2012, 07:24 AM)

But you forgot a full stop yourself. 

1766

Living Room / Re: Write until you pass out!?

« Last post by Shades on September 16, 2012, 11:43 AM »

For that matter, I don´t see how any one wood.

1767

Living Room / Re: Write until you pass out!?

« Last post by Shades on September 15, 2012, 02:46 PM »

That is not how I would put it...

1768

General Software Discussion / Re: instant linux on winxp

« Last post by Shades on September 13, 2012, 05:51 PM »

You can update the included Ubuntu to a higher version. That worked also right out of the box. Granted, it takes time, but hey, it that is the only thing...

1769

General Software Discussion / Re: instant linux on winxp

« Last post by Shades on September 13, 2012, 05:40 PM »

Link to externally hosted screenshot of Portable Ubuntu Remix and Another screenshot.

Kalos should really consider running Portable Ubuntu. The screenshots hidden behind the links above show what it looks like to have Windows XP and Ubuntu running at the same time. Exactly what he wants. It doesn't require any messing about with Virtual Machines and it runs fine on a P4 3GHz, 2 GByte of RAM and a Sata2 harddisk. Ran such a setup for about six months without any problem on either (OS) side. Sold the PC afterwards after showing this to someone.


Then again, in my own personal opinion, virtual machines are the way to go, if you don't have spare hardware lying around.

1770

Living Room / Re: Write until you pass out!?

« Last post by Shades on September 13, 2012, 04:55 PM »

@ miles:
...Dragon Ball Z?


 

1771

Developer's Corner / Re: FREE Programming eBooks! (and a C++ book for C# devs)

« Last post by Shades on September 08, 2012, 05:00 PM »

Where I lived there was a pharmacy store with help desk about 70 meters away that had a telephone number with the exact digits as mine except one digit swapped position between them (500508 and 508500 to be precise).

Guess what number I always fill in nowadays when sites ask me for my telephone number...

1772

General Software Discussion / Re: scripting tool to read emails and move matching embedded graphics & attachments

« Last post by Shades on September 07, 2012, 06:45 AM »

For archiving mail I use ´MailStore Home´as suggested by Carol here atb the forum.

Never looked back either. I´m not sure which database is used by MailStore Home, but accessing data is normally a lot easier after being stored in a database.

1773

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

« Last post by Shades on September 06, 2012, 10:40 AM »

Retro "docking" station for iPad 

1774

General Software Discussion / Re: instant linux on winxp

« Last post by Shades on September 05, 2012, 08:06 AM »

PortableUbuntu

You will still need to clear up some space on your hard disk, but that one allows you to run Ubuntu and Windows XP at the same time. If memory serves me right, it requires 2GByte of hard disk space. Unfortunately it is not maintained anymore, and the original site is not available anymore, but you can still download it from the link above.

Not sure if it comes with Ubuntu 7 or 8, but you can update it to the latest version 12 using Ubuntu's own update system. Will take a while and a lot of downloading though. this one is also usable from a pen drive/USB stick. Actually, it can really help with eradicating malware from a Windows PC as you can delete Windows files with PortableUbuntu that are normally inaccessible through Windows.

As always I end with the warning that one has to be careful with software like this, it is easy to make an error in areas of the Windows OS that only a re-installation can repair. 

1775

General Software Discussion / Re: What went wrong with Linux on the Desktop

« Last post by Shades on September 05, 2012, 07:01 AM »

Well, from my experience with both Windows and Linux on the desktop and on the server, I agree with Tuxman (but only a bit). The servers I run that give me no headache in any kind of way are the ones that run on Linux (Ubuntu server edition (without any graphical shell)). These are fast and very, very reliable. Windows Server is solid, but not nearly as reliable and require a lot more maintenance in comparison with the Linux ones.

All the PC's that were running Linux on their desktop have been phased out. Too problematic (granted, I had to use CentOS 4.0 and 5.0, you should not want to do that to your worst enemy) and for my intends and purposes not cost effective. After some security tweaks the Windows desktop PC's (XP and Win7) I have nearly as solid as Windows Server editions and are way more productive to me (Directory Opus version 9 or 10 is essential to my workflow) than Linux ever was.

The only experience I have with BSD is building a router PC from very old parts I still had laying around (286, 16Mb). It (only) took that PC 3 full days to compile/install BSD. Also very reliable for the six months of "life" the processor still had left in it.

As a one-man-show I could not find the time to continue with the BSD route though. As I already have very high reliability with Linux (and Windows is not doing too bad either) I could not  
find sufficient reason to get more/better acquainted with BSD. Too much differences for too little gain in my case.

My