Recent Posts

2026

Living Room / Re: Is the Core i7 2600K really worth the extra cost over Core i5 2500K?

« Last post by Shades on June 01, 2011, 11:52 PM »

Nope, I watched LAN parties over here in Paraguay between rich kids. AMD is definitely not bad at all (and in your case a MAJOR improvement), but but Intel quad core does blow it out of the gaming waters.

Strange as it may sound, in my experience Intel processor with ATI/AMD videocard(s) and AMD processor with NVidia videocard(s) perform best.
One of those kids I know is an NVidia fanatic and has 2 GTX460 (SLI) on his Intel quadcore. But some time ago he listened to reason and bought a huge ATI/AMD (HD5870). As I sometimes observe what he is gaming on his PC I saw a lot less "flickering/pausing" in games with the single ATI card, then with the dual NVidia cards.

When I mention this I get his typical fanboy answer including the obligatory benchmark numbers, but I am not blind and yes, he is using up-to-date drivers for his Windows 7 64-bit.

2027

Living Room / Re: Now you're REALLY screwed...

« Last post by Shades on May 29, 2011, 11:36 PM »

But not too long, or you'll be cross-eyed...

2028

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by Shades on May 28, 2011, 10:59 PM »

For Oracle and MS SQL Server, their footprint is simply massive. The download and installation is again a major thing to deal with.

-Renegade (May 24, 2011, 06:30 PM)

You can say that again.I install mostly basic Oracle 10/11 databases (practically all features are turned off), but still you lose 700 Mb of RAM per database. But the "fun" doesn't stop there, because it runs quite some supporting software, losing a total of 900 Mb of RAM.

I don't know about the footprint of MS-SQL, but I don't think that it will be far off as both Oracle and MS-SQL have a big feature-set.

However, it is dead easy to install the XE (express) version of Oracle, it is even configured quite fast and stable right out of the box as well. And its web-interface is quite workable too. So I do not share the notion of databases being hard to install.

Of course, an professional product will only "shine" in professional hands.

2029

Living Room / Re: Now you're REALLY screwed...

« Last post by Shades on May 28, 2011, 12:51 PM »

The threading goes on for quite a bit now...

2030

Living Room / Re: Which is more important: the gadget, or the software and apps that runs it?

« Last post by Shades on May 28, 2011, 12:49 PM »

Why socialism?

A lot of profit lies in the mismanagement of waste. Profit is one of the main ingredients of capitalism, last time I heard.

<rant>
Many US citizens are immediately up in arms when their sacred short-term profit mantra is being questioned.
The current crisis is in my point of view a good reason for adapting the thinking style to long term profit and resource management.

If I may be so bold, the lack of this simple wisdom brought the US economy (almost) to its knees. And it negatively affected the position of the almighty dollar as global currency. That is also why the powers at Wall Street are busy to hurt the IMF with baiting Strauss-Kahn , which will hurt Greece (in getting/paying their loans), which will cause a lot of trouble for the stability of the Euro as a whole. A currency that grew to a very important important position on the global market in a very short time. Very much to the chagrin of Wall Street.

Businesses in China think about 25 to 50 years ahead. A trait similar to good chess players. And something future generations will appreciate. That the US should learn (again). The US is a lot like Bobby Fischer...(in his day a genius, to become insane destroying everything in his wake.

Fortunately though, the DC crowd has their heart and mind in the right place.

Sorry, I saw yesterday the documentary 'Inside Job'. That doesn't help my view on the world.</rant>

2031

General Software Discussion / Re: additional mouse option for synaptics driver

« Last post by Shades on May 27, 2011, 10:53 PM »

If the mousepad on your laptop does not support multi-touch, I would think that your request will be impossible. I have worked with MSI laptops (X600 (laptop priced in netbook range, as such a very good deal)) and these have a multi-touch mousepad. After installing Windows 7 Ultimate on them, a driver still needed to be installed to support multi-touch.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the following to be true: Windows 8 will support multi-touch by default, Windows 7/Vista will require drivers and XP or lower....well, forget it.

2032

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Faster boots combining hibernate and restart (Boot Snooze)

« Last post by Shades on May 26, 2011, 11:47 PM »

I think that Boot Snooze is about the most misunderstood app I've written.

-skwire (May 26, 2011, 02:04 PM)

That's the thing that relaxes one's footware, right?

-cranioscopical (May 26, 2011, 06:17 PM)

 
And I was thinking that its meaning is: kicking with a "sleepy" foot...

2033

Living Room / Re: Strange phone problem - can anyone help?

« Last post by Shades on May 23, 2011, 06:43 PM »

You use to have a 'pulse/tone'-switch on telephones/base-stations. Don't know if DECT phones still have those as I didn't use a landline for years now. But if it has one, you could try to set the switch in a different position.

My father used his telephone with rotating disc (pulse) on the Dutch phone grid till he passed away last year. Most neighborhood switch stations still accept those pulse phones and convert their signal to tone.

Given this I think it is highly likely that your neighborhood switch is also still accepting those signals. If there is still such a switch it never hurts to try.

2034

General Software Discussion / Re: looking for a program to close other program in a batch

« Last post by Shades on May 22, 2011, 02:14 PM »

1 - Open a command shell
2 - In this window use 'sc' to find out the names of the services you want to turn off
3 - Either in this window or in the normal Windows GUI, create a .bat file
4 - In this file for each of the services you want to stop, fill in the following:
     NET STOP <service name>
5 - Create a shortcut to this file to your desktop or wherever you want to store it

When the time comes to play a game/see a movie/whatever, use the shortcut or execute the .bat file, which will work always. If you have only one version of Windows in your LAN/set of computers, you can copy this file without problems to each system and it will work as well.

When you need to enable the turned-off services, see the previous mentioned steps and replace step 4 with:
NET START <service name>

If you run multiple versions of Windows, check for each version the services you want to stop and just add them to the previously created files.

Nothing more to it, this solution works always in every version of Windows, from now till kingdom come (darn, one day too late... ).

2035

Living Room / Re: DHCPV6 Server for Windows 7

« Last post by Shades on May 21, 2011, 11:55 PM »

Saw your problem and wanted to see if your problem only occurs on Win7, but I can (happily?) report that XP SPIII returns the following error:

Could not start the Dibbler - a DHCPv6 server service on Local Computer.
Error 1075: The dependency service does not exist or has been marked for deletion.

After seeing that error, I would suggest to use a tool that checks for (static and dynamic) dependencies like 'Dependency Walker' (freeware, portable, runs on XP and higher).

On my system DW said that the msjava.dll was missing in the dibbler folder. Got that one from the net and used the Dependency Walker again.
Now the following error was returned by DW:
Warning: At least one module has an unresolved import due to a missing export function in a delay-load dependent module.
and the icon from 'mpr.dll' is colored red(-dish).

Hope it helps.

Alas, my brain starts to succumb heavily to the charms of the (mighty) mistress called sleep. However, I think that with DW you'll get a better idea of why the service is failing.

2036

Living Room / Re: Force USB Drives to use Drive Letter X

« Last post by Shades on May 20, 2011, 06:00 PM »

This link has a lot of tips and code that is supposed to accomplish the task you have in mind.

The link above also mentions the use of the SUBST command, which might be a solution for you as well.

Found one link more regarding: 'Reassigning drive letters automatically'.

Hope it helps.

***EDIT***
This link discusses a useful trick making use of standard Windows functionality.

2037

Living Room / Re: Wooden Horse Art

« Last post by Shades on May 16, 2011, 11:01 PM »

At least you can without problems cross deep(er) rivers with these horses...

2038

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Shades on May 16, 2011, 05:42 PM »

That festival is the perfect example from a waste of time, money and effort.

Many dictator would spend a fortune to get the skill of the ones rigging it and for the media covering up.

Utterly pointless drivel TV.

2039

Living Room / Re: Batteries charged?...Away we go!!!

« Last post by Shades on May 16, 2011, 11:08 AM »

@40hz:
Then we have something in common, regarding to the accident I mean. In my situation replace the pickup truck for a truck that was carrying 30.000 liters of milk. Luckily seconds before impact I saw the accident coming so I lay my head and as much of my body against the steering wheel for damage control. My neck did not get a "full" whiplash, but was also not the same after-wards.
But hey, when my neck gets warm I don't have any troubles falling asleep.

Ok, on-topic again:
I wonder how far you could get on a battery charge. As the construction does not have (too) much weight to push around, my guesstimate would be 2 or 3 miles?

2040

Living Room / A real bicycle that you can grow?...from nylon?

« Last post by Shades on May 14, 2011, 07:12 PM »

More for the mechanically inclined:

A link to a bicycle that is 'grown' instead of constructed.

2041

Living Room / Batteries charged?...Away we go!!!

« Last post by Shades on May 14, 2011, 07:03 PM »

This post is for the mechanically inclined:

Here is a link to a battery charged vehicle.
And these particular batteries you can buy already in the (better) hardware store, which do not require much in recharging time and and are switched within seconds! 

2042

Living Room / Re: Anyone here using a standing desk?

« Last post by Shades on May 11, 2011, 06:26 PM »

If that was one sitting I should be "precious" instead of president!  

2043

Living Room / Re: PORTAL 2 AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER

« Last post by Shades on May 11, 2011, 06:25 PM »

@Carol:
Stamina makes up for experience? 

2044

Living Room / Re: Anyone here using a standing desk?

« Last post by Shades on May 11, 2011, 04:16 PM »

I watched the trilogy in the cinema, the extended trilogy on DVD (twice) and the extended trilogy on BluRay...Where do I fit in? 

2045

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 Power Users Guide.pdf

« Last post by Shades on May 09, 2011, 10:51 PM »

For a free book, one should not complain...but I don't know if it is just me, the layout from the book is either done by a 12-year-old who's hobby is puzzles or something. 

Clear and concise it isn't, because of that I didn't get too far so I could have missed out on some real "treasures".

2046

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: [Freeware] TimeClue - a simple time reminder that fades the desktop

« Last post by Shades on May 09, 2011, 04:06 PM »

TimeClue is designed to help you develop a habit of resting your eyes every 15 minutes (recommended for heavy computer users).

-musetips (May 08, 2011, 04:36 AM)

Rest them how? Whenever my dad said he was resting his eyes that meant he was taking a nap.

A nap every 15 minutes seems like a good way to live a stress-free life of unemployment.

-Deozaan (May 09, 2011, 12:44 AM)

But not when you are a tester in a mattress factory 

2047

Living Room / Re: Save Stargate Universe

« Last post by Shades on May 07, 2011, 01:16 PM »

@worstje:
Yep, it was the one where a girl visits a house. That episode grabs your attention and makes you look twice at any angel statue afterwards.   

2048

Developer's Corner / Re: C# : Object Lifetime is Not (entirely) Determined by Scope ?

« Last post by Shades on May 07, 2011, 12:40 AM »

42 is the answer :-)

...as far as I know (and after any HGTG quote you can take that as literally as you like it  )


Sorry, lack of sleep makes me "melig" which is Dutch for: rambling (in a positive way)

2049

Living Room / Re: Save Stargate Universe

« Last post by Shades on May 06, 2011, 11:55 PM »

The strangeness was what I meant with 'off the beaten path'.

I also enjoyed Farscape immensely, that show improved a lot during its seasons. Make sure you also see the 'PeaceKeeper's wars' episodes from that series (and I have to admit that there is something about Claudia Black that kept me glued to the screen).

FireFly is/was also amazingly good.

A couple of weeks ago I saw an episode from Doctor Who (the latest series) about statues that were actually aliens...and that was a freakingly good episode! So if there are more of those I am inclined to follow that series as well.

2050

Living Room / Re: Can Download Sites Be Held Responsible for the Software They List?

« Last post by Shades on May 06, 2011, 11:50 PM »

Sue everybody for having ears to (being forced to) listen to rap.