Recent Posts

1776

General Software Discussion / Re: Images unexplainably changed

« Last post by Shades on August 28, 2012, 07:32 PM »

With the last description you might entertain the possibility that you experience the first signs of a "dying" monitor.

1777

General Software Discussion / Re: Images unexplainably changed

« Last post by Shades on August 28, 2012, 04:46 PM »

Seems like a screen calibration is necessary. Maybe you use a different color profile on your monitor. Or a different color profile from the driver software from your video card.

1778

Living Room / Re: Apple v Samsung Verdict is in

« Last post by Shades on August 25, 2012, 07:23 AM »

The verdict in Korean court was the following:

Apple is not allowed to sell ipad, ipad2 and some more older products over there, Samsung is not allowed to sell Galaxy S1, S2, Tab10.1 and a few other older products anymore. Effective immediately. That is the only sane outcome for those idiots in both camps.

My understanding is the following: Apple does not pay any license fee(s) for the FRAND patents from Samsung. In my opinion: until they do they should not even be allowed to sue for any patent they have. If Apple does not play by the rules (read: common sense), why should others even acknowledge Apple or any their patents. Come on, if Apple finds it does not have to pay for the essential basics, I don't see any reason for Samsung to pay for design basics.

You know, you would get the idea from the Korean verdict that the US is even outsourcing Justice nowadays. Truly, what happened to once great nation? Oh wait, outsourced that as well...  

1779

Living Room / Re: I want a Sony Xperia SX, but I think it's stupid to buy one.

« Last post by Shades on August 21, 2012, 02:10 PM »

It also has something to do with the peculiar cellphone gear in the US cellular grid. Why someone would use a non-GSM based cellphone is beyond me, but a (big) part of the US does. That means if you want to sell in those regions that you have to do redesign of electronics inside the phone.

So the question (for Sony) quickly becomes: How much units can I sell against the redesign costs. Sometimes it is really not worth it. Better to recognize such things early. If that is already not a showstopper, there is also the possibility US carriers won't or can't afford to have this model in their assortment.

There was at one time a guy over from the US and he brought his US cellphone. He selected the model because it also supported the working frequencies here in Paraguay and was pretty angry that his phone didn't work here. Almost no carrier outside the US uses the non-GSM type of phones (for anything else than land-fill). For me it was the very first time I saw such a cellphone.

1780

General Software Discussion / Re: programming language for math

« Last post by Shades on August 21, 2012, 12:47 PM »

@Curt:
I am interested in this piece of software, but...

[Off-topic]
Does anyone else experience trouble accessing the giveawayoftheday website? It is now already about a month I cannot access any content from anywhere in Paraguay, I just get blank pages.
[/Off-topic]

1781

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me understand Virtual Machine [VMWare]

« Last post by Shades on August 20, 2012, 02:09 PM »

Converting a VM to a real system again requires you to make an image from the running VM and use that image (plus all the required drivers for the real system) to create a real system again.

Just to add to the confusion...

1782

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me understand Virtual Machine [VMWare]

« Last post by Shades on August 19, 2012, 08:33 AM »

Yes, you could consider a copy of a virtual machine like an image made by the software you mentioned.

Snapshots are a lot smaller in size and apparently restore fast (I only have experience with VMWare Player).

My way of working is always to configure/finetune a virtual machine, then make a copy of it, then compress it (7zip) for storage on DVD. A whole lot more personal involvement, but it doesn´t require money to be separated from your wallet.

If you think this is too much of a hassle, the VMWare Workstation software would be your best option. Likely once you tried it, you wonder how you could have managed without it all this time.  

1783

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me understand Virtual Machine [VMWare]

« Last post by Shades on August 17, 2012, 12:22 PM »

My anecdotal view is this: the portable version of VirtualBox that I tried was not that nice to work with. The VMWare Player v3+ was a lot smoother in creating and using a virtual setup.

Not sure about the speed with which a virtual setup is executed/handled in both environments. I don't think one is substantially faster than the other in day-to-day use. I did feel at the time that VirtualBox gave me a more hands-on experience.

Then again, I was also pressed for time at that moment so I went with the easiest one. As far as I know VirtualBox can work with a virtual setup created by VMWare and vice versa.  

1784

Living Room / Re: Wikileaks - Julian Assange Granted Asylum by Ecuador

« Last post by Shades on August 16, 2012, 04:50 PM »

It's not a Cold War anymore, but a Bold War...


Saddening, really.

1785

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Diagnose problems in windows file sharing on LAN

« Last post by Shades on August 14, 2012, 01:47 PM »

I encounter the same misery when connecting with XP to Win7 or Win2008. For no reason whatsoever the connection breaks. No firewall on any of the PC's, Avast antivirus is the only security suite that could affect the connection, but I find that hard to believe as it never happens when connecting to another XP / Win2003 / Win2000 PC. Also, the LAN networking is managed by UnTangle (linux based).

However, when I connect with Win7/Win2008 to XP/Win2003/Win2000/Win7/Win2008 I don't experience any inexplicable loss of connection at all.

Because of that I can't help but think that it will take some time for the Win7/Win2008 networking software MS wrote themselves to get the same robustness as the networking software they licensed from BSD in any of their pre-Vista Operating Systems. Actually, I am more blunt and say that I don't think that any of their Vista+ OS's is fit for (serious) networking. At all! In other areas I am inclined to believe that Win7 is an improvement, but networking sure as hell isn't.

1786

Living Room / Re: Staple of people from State and Europe !

« Last post by Shades on August 14, 2012, 08:57 AM »

Looks kinda fake (the object that is being suckled upon, I mean) 

1787

General Software Discussion / Re: programming language for math

« Last post by Shades on August 11, 2012, 04:50 PM »

'R' is a (and for some, THE) programming language for math. Maybe that could be the answer to the question.

1788

General Software Discussion / Re: "Do copy acceleration utilities actually lower file transfer speeds?"

« Last post by Shades on August 10, 2012, 07:55 AM »

Teracopy shaves easily about an hour to two hours off when copying Oracle dump files to and from network drives. And yes, quite regularly I need to transfer 350GByte of dump files.

"Funny" thing is that extracting to the network drive directly is slower than extracting dump files locally and then transfer these with TeraCopy.

Also, I concur with the others about TeraCopy being a reliable way of copying data without supervision. Something that is nigh impossible with the Windows Explorer or any file-manager that uses the default explorer facilities.

1789

Living Room / Re: Awesome Desktop Background and IE Icon Placement

« Last post by Shades on August 09, 2012, 08:43 AM »

Owls normally puke out the bones and other indigestible parts of their prey.

So...this owl ate a computer mouse?

Or...is it (negatively) amazed what it just puked out?

 

1790

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

« Last post by Shades on August 07, 2012, 11:10 AM »

Sorry, Dutch version of black humor. It's an acquired taste, I know.
However, I always noted that Dutch and British humor lie not that far apart.

Here in Paraguay they do not appreciate British humor. At all!
Dutch jokes also do not do that well. 'Demasiado bruto' is what they tell me.

1791

Living Room / Re: Happy Birthday C=64

« Last post by Shades on August 06, 2012, 03:19 PM »

Interesting (and lengthy!) article about old  and/or fading computer games.

1792

Living Room / Re: Happy Birthday C=64

« Last post by Shades on August 06, 2012, 02:59 PM »

Elite II never captured the charm that Elite had, if you´d ask me.

The game I talk about I saw while visiting a local computer club annex copyshop (in more ways than one).

1793

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

« Last post by Shades on August 06, 2012, 02:52 PM »

It is a good thing they didn´t ¨photoshop¨ a lolly (or other candy) in the hand of prince Charles. That would give the picture a whole different meaning...

1794

Living Room / Re: Hidden Netflix Marathon Gems to Watch Online

« Last post by Shades on August 06, 2012, 02:38 PM »

Vouching for Inspector Lewis as well. Dutch public TV would show Inspector Morse in its day. Still think those are well worth watching.

If you want to take a look at the 80´s again, you could also watch Tatort (with the character: Schimanski). German Krimi that sometimes could match Morse. At least you will see some mullets...
 

1795

Living Room / Re: Hacked "hard" via the cloud.

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

Don't use the cloud for sensitive data. Done.

-Tuxman (August 05, 2012, 02:20 AM)

Don´t use the cloud. Period.  FTFY

1796

General Software Discussion / Re: Activate/deactive a windows service with a script

« Last post by Shades on August 04, 2012, 05:40 PM »

Watch out with 'sc'.

At least read the manual very carefully, as it is quite a powerful tool. And it can wreak havoc in your system if you select (unintentionally) the wrong option for any (critical) service running in Windows.

Just sayin'.

1797

Living Room / Re: Happy Birthday C=64

« Last post by Shades on August 04, 2012, 05:23 PM »

Last Ninja was also nice on C64.

Can't remember the name of the game anymore, but I think it required 3 disks and you commander of a team of people. And you commanded a space vessel, you could board other vessels in space, battle in space, travel through solar systems, excavate planets for stuff to buy and sell, enter the planet's cities and houses, trade with the locals etc. Quite extensive, especially for that day and age.

Ah well, enough miles on the the memory lane...soon I'll hit level 60 at Skyrim. 

1798

General Software Discussion / Re: Immersive Explorer: Oh God why?

« Last post by Shades on August 04, 2012, 05:13 PM »

@wraith808:
Worked in help desk?   

1799

General Software Discussion / Re: (Free) Wallpaper Manager? Dual Screen!

« Last post by Shades on August 02, 2012, 04:22 PM »

Look in this forum or the internet for 'John's Background Switcher'. That is an amazing piece of freeware in its field.

1800

Living Room / Re: Hidden Netflix Marathon Gems to Watch Online

« Last post by Shades on August 02, 2012, 04:19 PM »

I'm in total agreement with TaoPhoenix. The series I follow lately are about 55 minutes in length, but only have 12 to 14 episodes per season for (Dexter and Breaking Bad). Game of Thrones only has ten episodes per season!

What these series lack in amount of episodes, they make up for with "density", so to say.

I really look forward to new episodes, which has not happened in a very long while. In fact I hardly watch any commercial or public TV anymore as most programs do not ignite any interest in me.
When I was still living in the Netherlands I was only watching Discovery Channel (from the 40 channels available through the normal broadcasting system, never got into pay channels and/or satellite).

Breaking Bad I completely recommend, it grows on you, each season becoming better than the previous one. The season 4 final made a big impression on me.