Recent Posts

1951

Living Room / Re: Samsung hard drives - don't buy them unless you like subliminal mental torture

« Last post by Shades on August 16, 2011, 02:35 PM »

I saw one time a person who used rubber bands (the big, postal kind). He used two of those, twisted around the drive and the twisted ends were put through chassis openings in the 5,25" bays. The drives were suspended, creating a very silent PC.

Still not a good idea to subject the PC to sudden movements, but silent it will be...and no heat insulation issues. Brilliance in simplicity.

1952

Living Room / Re: Stop the Machine! (anyone seen this?)

« Last post by Shades on August 15, 2011, 10:49 PM »

@Rover:
At this link you can read the thoughts of Warren E. Buffett about the tax matter. Straight from the horses mouth...well, written down by the (business section of) New York Times.

1953

Living Room / Re: The Foreclosure Scam

« Last post by Shades on August 15, 2011, 10:17 PM »

Indeed, a very passive response for a country where everybody and their grandmother appear to have guns... 

1954

General Software Discussion / Re: Problem: I can't understand how to get a W7-64 machine into an XP-32 network

« Last post by Shades on August 15, 2011, 03:46 PM »

Hooray!

All stations on the network are communicating.

-cranioscopical (August 15, 2011, 03:12 PM)

Glad you got it working.

Windows 7 should be able to connect just fine to an XP workgroup right out of the box. I did two of them last week with zero issues.

Main tripping points tend to be Simple File Sharing (unless everybody is Home edition, then you're stuck with it), Blank passwords (MS killed that action by default in XP SP2), Firewalls, and selection the wrong network type/location:
Public (locks it down like a nun's knees)

-Stoic Joker (August 15, 2011, 03:29 PM)

[evil joke]

Spoiler

Than we should be thankful for the "God-mode" in Win7...(as nun's are the brides from God)...

[/evil joke]

1955

General Software Discussion / Re: Problem: I can't understand how to get a W7-64 machine into an XP-32 network

« Last post by Shades on August 15, 2011, 11:48 AM »

You should find out the IP(v4) number from each of your PC's in the network. (open dos-box and type the command 'IPCONFIG /all')
Normally those start with 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x. Disable any firewalls for the time being.

Then go the Win7 PC and open explorer or your favorite file manager and type '\\192.168.x.x'. The explorer screen should show the available shares from the PC you are trying to connect. If that is the case than DNS is not working like it should.

Enable them after you are done and retry, if you don't see anything anymore your firewall is blocking.

Now share a folder on the Win7 PC and see if you can access the Win7 shared folder from an XP PC.
If not, the share on Win7 is likely not "opened up" enough, because of security settings on the Win7 PC.

1956

Living Room / Re: Samsung hard drives - don't buy them unless you like subliminal mental torture

« Last post by Shades on August 15, 2011, 10:45 AM »

Some practical comments on Carol's suggestion.
Just don't use the chain for the on/off button...
And where would you put the reset button?

Hmmm, in case of a problem, which crapcleaner do you use?

 

1957

General Software Discussion / Re: Problem: I can't understand how to get a W7-64 machine into an XP-32 network

« Last post by Shades on August 15, 2011, 10:22 AM »

You have to adjust some network settings on the Win7 PC, so the other PC's can access it.

All (LAN) network communication is encrypted, Win7 uses by default 128-bits encryption, while XP (and lower) uses 56-bits variant. This is easily adjusted (advanced settings from the networking profile 'home'/'work' or 'public').

Fred Langa has an article on the Windowssecrets.com site where he explains some settings that will increase the speed from networking noticably by disabling HomeGroup (which is useful on Win7-only networks anyway).

Do not forget that Microsoft did it on purpose to setup default values that make it hard to use Win7 in heterogeneous networks. Some of these default values make sense, some really don't.

1958

Living Room / Re: Stop the Machine! (anyone seen this?)

« Last post by Shades on August 14, 2011, 11:26 AM »

The article only talks about percentages and that is just marketing BS...well, BS walks and (amounts of) money talks!

1959

General Software Discussion / Re: Speech to Text Software?

« Last post by Shades on August 14, 2011, 09:07 AM »

WAV to text (trial/USD149.95 single developer license) could be what you are looking for.

It certainly looks easy enough to implement and is supported in: Visual C++, Visual Basic, Delphi, C++ Builder, .Net languages, Java and scripts like Perl, Php, Python etc.

You do need a separate SAPI5 speech recognizer though. Office 2003 is the last version of Office that shipped with one (but you can still download it from alternative sources). Windows 7 comes by default with one. And J-Mac is right, that one is quite decent.

1960

Living Room / Re: Bought a desktop and monitor today

« Last post by Shades on August 13, 2011, 01:05 PM »

A monitor that has more resolution is always better. Especially if you take into account that Windows (and I assume Linux and OSX as well) allows the default text size to be adjusted system-wide.

By default your monitor uses the normal size (96 DPI on XP SPIII), there is also a 120 DPI option and one option for a custom value.

With these options you can keep optician at bay for some years more 

1961

Living Room / Re: Operation Facebook (will you rejoice?)

« Last post by Shades on August 10, 2011, 11:58 AM »

"Remember, remember...the fifth of November" - from the movie 'V for Vendetta'.

Likely they used it for inspiration. Good (enough) movie at least  

1962

Living Room / Re: Gefore or Quadro?

« Last post by Shades on August 10, 2011, 09:32 AM »

As far as I know the Quadra shines in applications like AutoCAD and similar 3D render software. Premier Pro is doing video editing and a Geforce is more than able to handle that.

Quadra cards are not intended to play games so their use is rather limited, require different drivers and they are not cheap.

1963

Developer's Corner / Re: Executing Remote Program

« Last post by Shades on August 09, 2011, 09:54 AM »

Yep, people use Putty (or something else based on Putty) to do what you describe...for years already. Putty rocks for what I want to do on Linux PC's. Putty is open source, available for all the main OS's (and then some!) and very solid.

1964

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: USB Safely Remove on GOTD

« Last post by Shades on August 09, 2011, 09:49 AM »

It even works after being 'virtualized'. At least on my system (XP SPIII) it does.

1965

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... opinions/reviews of IDEs & Editors for Web code

« Last post by Shades on August 08, 2011, 02:24 PM »

You could try Eclipse, it has plugins to support practically everything. But I do not know if it will be your cup of tea, its layout/workflow and Java roots may be too much. Besides this I do not know about the quality of the plugins. The only one with which I have a little bit of experience is the PHP one and that is quite ok (if the development PC has the computational resources, that is).
 

1966

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by Shades on August 07, 2011, 02:08 PM »

1/10th of a special mug?  

1967

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Autodesk Student Version-Free for Students and Teachers

« Last post by Shades on August 06, 2011, 01:18 PM »

Looks like a very good deal, especially as they do not ask for school references.

1968

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« Last post by Shades on August 04, 2011, 06:29 AM »

RagTimeSolo:
Way too advanced for the days it came out (around 2000). Practically the complete MS-Office experience in one program (including DTP!), where you could use all functionality (text, database, spreadsheet) in one and the same document.

It made a big impression on me at the time.

1969

Living Room / Re: Block a FOSS release because being free interferes with commercial interests?

« Last post by Shades on August 02, 2011, 04:10 PM »

If the software created by the government improves the workflow in their departments, hence lift the financial burden these departments have on society then the government did what these closed source companies couldn't/wouldn't do.

And these companies go to court over this? Sue each of those companies for obstructing the law and freeze their assets until proven otherwise.
Hey, if it is about a pissing contest,

Spoiler

I hopefully don't have to explain that is not for nothing why the law has a long arm...

As society already has paid the salaries, work environments etc. for the ones who created the software it appears to me that making the software open source is the only correct path to follow.

Go Swiss government! 

1970

Living Room / Re: Android tablets to rival iPad

« Last post by Shades on August 01, 2011, 04:32 PM »

maybe even a bit pre-mature...   

1971

Living Room / Re: It's Time to Fix Subversion Merge

« Last post by Shades on July 31, 2011, 10:32 AM »

SVN 'MacGuyver' edition?

1972

General Software Discussion / Re: Any Software that would record the Activity in a PC !

« Last post by Shades on July 31, 2011, 10:25 AM »

Loot at ManicTime
http://www.manictime.com/

You can open up the command prompt, and type below:

systeminfo

and hit Enter. You should be able to see the computer running time, which stated as uptime

-ha14 (July 31, 2011, 08:55 AM)

You don't need ManicTime to use the command 'SYSTEMINFO' in the command prompt. It is a default command in Windows. ManicTime is handy to see which application(s) have ran.

1973

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Babylon discount

« Last post by Shades on July 31, 2011, 10:22 AM »

@cyberdiva:
If you must know...that particular PC is not connected to any network...and I want to keep it that way.
As I use the PC to write to my Paraguayan girlfriend, it forces me to think more about what I say and not take the easy way out by writing in English and use Lingoes (that in turn can use Google or other web-based translation service) to do the complete translation for me.

My girlfriend only speaks Spanish (Latin-American) and Guarani...my level of Spanish is not that high I'm afraid to admit. Most of my days are spent talking/writing in English, Dutch and German...so that is not helping my studies of Spanish. Guarani I am not even going to try: that is a really "hellish" language to learn (which is spoken only in Paraguay, it is a very 'rich' language though and I understand from the Paraguayans here that the language is excellent for telling jokes).

Ah well lets expand this post with a travel tip for the time you might end up in the 'campo' from Paraguay. Never say: ejapiro, because people cannot translate its meaning even when they speak Spanish fluently, but it is highly offensive.
 

1974

General Software Discussion / Full-screen calculator (free and portable)

« Last post by Shades on July 31, 2011, 08:30 AM »

Just being informed about the existence of a free, portable and full-screen calculator (redchillicrab.com).

After seeing the screenshots and browsing through its quite extensive manual (direct link), it looks more than interesting enough to share it with the DC crowd.

1975

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Babylon discount

« Last post by Shades on July 31, 2011, 07:45 AM »

I wonder what people think of lingoes. It does the job. I'm also stuck with babylon 5, which I don't use because they wanted money even to retrieve my lost license. The greedy bastards. Lingoes it is for me...

-urlwolf (July 31, 2011, 05:11 AM)

Lingoes is quite nice, I use it only in off-line mode, which hampers the translation of full texts, but for translating word by word it is great because there are a lot of (free) dictionaries you can download. Besides this it is free, portable and works like a charm on Win7 (64-bit).