Recent Posts

2051

Living Room / Re: should I ragequit?

« Last post by Shades on May 03, 2011, 12:02 PM »

Most talk (relatively) light-hearted about taking someone's life.

Having spent quite some time fulfilling my duty to my country, I have not spent too much time on the firing range, because:
a) Communication was exempt from a lot of military stuff, as the army thinks it is a waste spending time and effort on people that can be blown to bits 24 hours a day in an active war zone.
b) The time I did spent there I contemplated that I would get into mental trouble should a human being replace the target cards.

Last week I saw an episode of 'Game of Thrones' and there one character spoke some wise words...The one who gives the death sentence should carry it out as well.

Now if someone deserved to die it was Osama Bin Laden, so I agree with the common consensus here. Then again, I do understand where housetier is coming from.

2052

General Software Discussion / Re: Pirated Software and Viruses? Ahem... No. I don't want to help you...

« Last post by Shades on May 02, 2011, 01:10 PM »

Wraith was mentioning that after the programmer in question was not able to get/find a demo he would use the cracked version.

Sums up the whole problem for me. If you want to sell your software, have an easily available demo. Microsoft is generous in this regard and is actually a good example (for putting up trail versions, not the fact that they still get pirated as hell).

But hey, if you want to be "high and mighty" about your software...well, all bets are off (and you should be standing in a corner contemplating your stupidity unenlightment, if you ask me for my 2 tuppence).

2053

Living Room / Re: Five Reasons Why People Hate Apple

« Last post by Shades on May 02, 2011, 01:07 PM »

I saw the option in the 'Oracle SQL Developer' to connect to Access database and there is a transfer option to move data between databases. Depending on the complexity it should not take that much time.

Then again, I understand you are married to MS-SQL and I do not have too much experience with that one to say anything useful about its management tools.

2054

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft Search Server 2010 Express: a (free) hidden gem?

« Last post by Shades on April 30, 2011, 11:26 PM »

Looks indeed interesting, especially for the amount of items that can be stored in the search database.

However I use the free search engine provided by IBM together with Yahoo. Omnifind Yahoo edition eats a lot less resources and has practically no dependencies, but the free version has a limit of 500.000 items. Go above that amount and you have to pay (dearly) for it.

Now I just visited the website from Omnifind and I see that support is not available anymore after 30 June 2011. That is a bit of a downer. Then again, I never needed support as the installation and maintenance is very easy to do.

So for as long as it runs I will not change, unless the performance of Search Server 2010 Express is dramatically faster. Do you know of any site/blog that did a benchmark test with several of the freely available LAN search engines?

2055

Living Room / Re: USA Deadly Tornadoes

« Last post by Shades on April 29, 2011, 08:28 PM »

Chuck Norris spins too fast before he kicks your lights out...

2056

General Software Discussion / Re: corrupt office 2003 file

« Last post by Shades on April 29, 2011, 08:24 PM »

You tried opening the 'bad' powerpoint slides in LibreOffice? In the past I encountered similar problems with Microsoft Office not being able to open its own files, while OpenOffice/LibreOffice had no trouble. In there I 'save as'-sed the files in the native format from Office 2003 and suddenly Microsoft Office is able to open the files again.

I have downloaded the portable version of LibreOffice from PortableApps.com not too long ago and it could be a decent fallback in cases similar to the one you are experiencing now.

2057

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Windows 7 Pro Academic Discount

« Last post by Shades on April 27, 2011, 03:15 PM »

Brown noser....as he spent quite some time in North Africa (Marocco, if memory serves me right).

2058

Living Room / Re: Techno-Addicts

« Last post by Shades on April 25, 2011, 11:13 PM »

Confused about this cricket rule:
'Bat out of hell'

Is that a zone in the playing field or what? 

2059

Living Room / Re: Apple - least green company

« Last post by Shades on April 22, 2011, 09:01 PM »

The best things to do if you want to become "greener" is to consume less of everything and do not eat meat everyday. I do not need GreenPeace to tell me this.

Apple...one bite....this does sound eerily similar to the poison apple from the fairytale 'Snow white'.

Guess I understand the turtleneck from Jobs now...

2060

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Babylon discount

« Last post by Shades on April 22, 2011, 08:22 PM »

@Cyberdiva:
In case Babylon does not work on your Windows 7 64 bit PC, get a tool to virtualize the application, so it can be used as a portable application. Cameyo is the one I used to do this trick, but there are others.

I Use a small and very efficient tool called SQLtools to handle Oracle databases and it works fine on Win2003 and lower. Now I have to run Windows 2008 R2, which is 64-bit and my tool doesn't work anymore.

When virtualizing the application a complete setup is created inside the resulting executable, including folder structure, registry, etc.
As it is contained inside it's own environment, just the way the application likes it, the application will work without problems in whatever Windows version it is used.

What to do:
1 - Get Cameyo (there is a freeware version)
2 - Preferably install Cameyo on a 'fresh' Windows XP installation. Some versions of Windows 7 64-bit come with a virtual-PC based XP for backwards compatibility. that is one option you could use for this.
3 - Cameyo warns you when you are able to install Babylon in the virtual PC. Do so.
4 - When you are done installing, use the 'Finish' button from Cameyo.
5 - Cameyo will start making a second snapshot of your system and stores the differences as created by the Babylon installer
6 - After Cameyo is finished you will have one executable file that stores the complete Babylon installation (I do not know how big the installation of Babylon is, so I can not tell how big the resulting executable will be).
7 - Run the executable in Windows 7 64-bit.

That should be it.


It worked out beautifully for me, at least. Hope this info/tip will be useful in case Babylon 6 doesn't work in Windows 7 and you don't want to activate the virtual XP resource hog all the time.

2061

Living Room / Re: Hoppy Easter~!

« Last post by Shades on April 22, 2011, 01:32 PM »

Don't worry, thats what those NSFW (or mental health) buttons are for right?

2062

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PhraseExpress v8, Pro Edition, on BdJ, Tuesday 12 April, 2011

« Last post by Shades on April 21, 2011, 04:46 PM »

@CMPM:
BartelsMedia warns in the first paragraph of his post that explains the resource use of the product he represents that the content might be below your understanding and that you can disregard it as such.

To me it appears that BartelsMedia receives a lot of unnecessary "flak" for explaining some concepts regarding resource use and how those are handled by PE, the only application he is at professional liberty to write about. I can see nothing wrong in that.

Sure, sometimes the comments made by BartelsMedia are very pro-PE and anti-Rest, but I don't hold that against him. He gets (hopefully) paid to do so. As such I regard his comments on DoCo threads.

2063

Living Room / Re: Apple is Still Apple - Sue After Stealing...

« Last post by Shades on April 21, 2011, 02:24 PM »

Dropped calls is really a feature only US carriers have added to their cellular networks...

2064

Site/Forum Features / Re: I think we should close the Company Complaints and Compliments Section

« Last post by Shades on April 21, 2011, 01:37 PM »

It is possible to ignore individual threads in the DC forum. Would it not be a good idea to be able to have an option like 'ignore forum section', so none of the threads created in that section will appear for those who do want that?

Seems the best compromise to me, giving anyone the option to ignore sections if they so desire.

2065

Official Announcements / Re: Server - Apache problem running out of memory

« Last post by Shades on April 19, 2011, 04:44 PM »

Maybe a stupid and very obvious one, but:  is it not possible to add more (physical) RAM to the (virtual) server?

2066

Living Room / Re: Salaries of Charity CEOs

« Last post by Shades on April 14, 2011, 10:36 PM »

@cranioscopical:
Why limit that rule to charities only?

2067

Living Room / Re: Salaries of Charity CEOs

« Last post by Shades on April 14, 2011, 01:51 PM »

@Carol:

Churches are also exempt from (practically) all taxes. I am sure of that in the Netherlands, but I think that is the case in most countries (especially the 'old world').

Besides that they own the grounds on which their churches (and associated buildings) are standing. As such they have a lot of value on which the Vatican can bank. And does. And is tied up as well.

But this does not mean that no money is required for the internal/external upkeep. You would not believe (no pun intended) the cost involved to keep those old buildings standing. And how much the work of the required level of expertise in masonry/woodworking/metalworking costs nowadays.

2068

Living Room / Re: Thoughts on switching to IPv6

« Last post by Shades on April 12, 2011, 05:19 PM »

Most of the recent cable modems (DocSis 3.0) will be upgradable by software.

But for your home router you really have to look for one with full support. Most of these only have partial support and are possibly upgradable. As far as I could with Google is that the latest high(er) grade D-Link routers have this, but others are severely lacking. So at this time it is tricky to get one for home use.

2069

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

« Last post by Shades on March 25, 2011, 05:44 PM »

@gpetrant:
Seriously?!?  Marylin Manson (Sweet Dreams) on a 50th wedding anniversary?!?

The original song by the Eurythmics is good...and that one I would expect to be played on a 50th wedding anniversary. Annie Lennox sure has a great voice, especially in those days. And as covers go, Marylin manson did a marvellously good job with it.

2070

General Software Discussion / Re: which is the best free virtualization software?

« Last post by Shades on March 25, 2011, 05:25 PM »

@Steeladept:
VMWare player v3.x does create VM's...at least I was able to create 8 of them for a test I wanted to do.

Actually if you have the installation discs or iso's of those discs it is actually a breeze creating a new VM with VMWare Player. It recognizes the Windows version you want to install and adjusts some VMWare settings accordingly. Those settings are a very good starting point, making it really, really easy.


To be honest, I was busy creating VM's in VMWare Server and that gave me a lot of problems, especially with Windows 7 VM's. After spending/losing 3 days, I noticed the option to create VM's in VMWare Player and what took me three days to complete, was now done in 4 hours.

2071

Living Room / Re: Android tablets to rival iPad

« Last post by Shades on March 23, 2011, 11:43 PM »

For me it is not the price that would prevent me from purchasing one. For the price that these cost, they do not deliver. Period. Also, the only tablets easily attainable are ipads (so fat chance in hell I will ever buy one of those). Those things should not cost more than 200 US dollar at the maximum.

Deozaan is totally and utterly right in getting an i7-based PC for the money that (whatever) pad costs. Granted, I feel the same way about netbooks, they should cost a maximum of 300 US dollars, in any circumstance. For those prices I can live with the limited functionality these things offer (including whatever lockdown method).

Right now the price for this kind of gadgets is an insult for intelligence!

Sorry for the rant.


[bad joke]

Hmm, maybe I should read less posts from Renegade... 

[/bad joke]

2072

Living Room / Re: Software is Boring, Apps are Fun (Hint: Apple Discussion again)

« Last post by Shades on March 22, 2011, 05:03 PM »

@JavaJones:
See the opening scenes from the movie, "the invention of lying'. Those show you the perfect example of awkwardness that voice input can establish   

2073

Living Room / Re: Amazing LEGO Great Ball Contraption Breaks World Record

« Last post by Shades on March 18, 2011, 04:34 PM »

I guess it does work, but in some locations it can take quite some time for the necessary amount of balls to arrive. As it is viewed by a lot of persons (as part of an exhibition) and given the declining attention span from most people, it becomes a necessity to drop in extra balls at some locations.

To me it is still a work of art and I am a bit jealous for not having lego anymore or the time to play with it.

2074

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by Shades on March 16, 2011, 01:05 PM »

I follow this thread with great interest, but lack of time got me never further than actually using the software.

So keep up the good work! 

I do have a question though: I assume it is possible to search for a particular change by a particular user using any of the GUI tools?
(the lack of that option is something I absolutely hate from WinCVS / CVS (which I am forced to work with).)

2075

Living Room / Re: England Is Grinding To A Halt.

« Last post by Shades on March 11, 2011, 07:25 PM »

A bit more ontopic:

Jaguar is a famous British brand who made a nice looking "green" car, which uses concepts that would please Stoic Joker's mindset...I think.
(but correct me if I'm wrong).

This is pure awesomeness in my book...and I would seriously consider becoming deaf for a chance to drive this monster!!!