Recent Posts

2101

Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?

« Last post by Shades on January 21, 2011, 10:28 AM »

In general, the more resources your computer has, the smoother any ride you plan it to do will be.

Video apps and games profit most noticeably from more RAM on your graphic card. The GPU that comes with these cards nowadays can be utilized in the more mundane tasks of a PC. But from what I read and understand is that more RAM on your graphic card will not do much in lifting your workload.

2102

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by Shades on January 21, 2011, 10:20 AM »

@Stoic Joker:
IIRC there is a setting (registry?) that enables the Windows device manager to show hidden devices. That includes All and every USB device ever connected. Uninstalling the troublesome device will help with this problem.

2103

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 Breaks Week Numbering

« Last post by Shades on January 18, 2011, 10:49 PM »

@f0dder:
Being not too proud to admit I could be wrong in my assumptions or logic, I will agree with you. Let's also stop pulling the thread off-topic.

@Stoic Joker:
Indeed, it is/was my frustration speaking. Sorry about that.

2104

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 Breaks Week Numbering

« Last post by Shades on January 18, 2011, 10:30 AM »

@f0dder:
Because these apps do not experience problems on Vista and 2008 R1 operating systems. Which is what makes me say that Windows is (unintentionally?) breaking things.

Granted, you are probably right about other apps being shoddily coded, but I have here an 3rd party app that just uses one oracle dll to connect to Oracle and that is it. That 3rd party app also communicates successfully with SAP on any os except with Win7 and Win 2008 R2.

2105

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 Breaks Week Numbering

« Last post by Shades on January 17, 2011, 10:20 PM »

Windows 7 is broken?

On way too many low levels...it is not even funny anymore.

I keep telling that Windows 7 is not ready for the enterprise, the PC's that have to work with big names like Peoplesoft, SAP, eBase. It still amazes me how much is broken and is/has to be rewritten to get the previous functionality (from pre-Vista OS's) back.

For general use Windows 7 is a sufficient replacement for the aging XP. That is as far as I want to go with it. I understand that SP1 is coming soon for 7, I really hope they sorted out the mess they created, but will not keep my breath...

It is not like I am not trying to like 7...as I am using it on my personal PC, but the problems I keep encountering are sure dampening the fun.

Talking about fun, try Oracle 11g Database server software on Windows 7 (or Win 2008 R2 for that matter). Now try to access that database with 3rd party software. 80% chance that you are locked out each time the app access it. Networking issue with Windows 7/Win 2008 R2 is the cause.

Yeah, I know, I know, time to consider using Microsoft's SQL server... *shrug*

2106

Living Room / Re: Cute jokes' thread

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

Brilliant rhetoric in style. 

You have to hand it to the British, they can say 'F..k off' so much more eloquently than practically any other person/nation that (natively) speaks English.

2107

Finished Programs / Re: Utility: Convert Multiple Columns in Excel to a Single Column

« Last post by Shades on January 11, 2011, 04:06 PM »

Why not? The square is not that far away...

2108

Living Room / Re: List the crappiest websites you know here. (warning: potentially NSFW)

« Last post by Shades on January 11, 2011, 03:36 PM »

It seemed to me that I already saw the picture of the girl in the tub during my Amiga days and those were over pre-1995...don't ask, misspent youth. One of my jobs during that time was to digitize old 80's German pron for a "kinky" adult website.

And if you think, how bad could that have been...well, I still regret not having asked extra money as hazard pay...or getting my brain brushed thoroughly with a steel brush or something.

2109

Living Room / Re: Can we stop with the diagonal screen length thing?

« Last post by Shades on January 10, 2011, 05:24 PM »

Less production lines for the manufacturer, perhaps? Bulk ordering of similar type screens (widescreen, but with different resolutions) is cheaper? And that is something the consumer is noticing as well?

Now I do understand why there are people who like their screens to have height. I am still using using two 1280x1024 screens for my computing, but I have to say that those 1920x1080 screens look very interesting.

To me the screen real estate is more important than the amount of monitors in front of me. The 1920x1080 ones do give me what I need. Almost all the width and a little bit more height from my current setup.

2110

General Software Discussion / Re: Word Processor OS

« Last post by Shades on January 10, 2011, 04:41 PM »

How about a Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (Core edition)? 

 As far as I know it has only a console and doesn't let you install too much extras in a severely limited graphical shell.

2111

Living Room / Re: most weird Ctrl key issue *ever*?

« Last post by Shades on January 05, 2011, 07:12 PM »

Which type of keyboards did you use?

My assumption is that both are USB.
In that case, did you use the same USB port for both keyboards?
If so, try different port(s).
It could be that for some reason the port you already tested on is worn out (physically).
It could also be that the USB controller on your mainboard is starting to get "flaky".

Come to think of it, is your keyboard wired or wireless?
When wireless, check batteries and sources that could cause interference on the frequency band that your keyboard uses. Changing the channel could help in that case.

2112

Living Room / Re: What would it look like if all DC visitors were gathered in one place?

« Last post by Shades on January 04, 2011, 06:19 PM »

Does anyone still think that 'the best defense is a good offense'? 

2113

General Software Discussion / Re: What is your preferred server OS for home use? And Why?

« Last post by Shades on January 04, 2011, 06:14 PM »

In my experience the communication between any PC that runs XP/2003 (or older) and the one that is running 'HomeGroup' (7, 2008R2) is not great...to put it mildly. If you plan to use such a mixed environment, than I strongly suggest to not use the 'HomeGroup' crap at all.

In Windows 7 it is possible to set up your networking for a 'Work' environment, which appears to "kill" the HomeGroup features.

According to Fred Langa you can actually gain 10 to 15% of raw networking speed just by disabling 'HomeGroup'.

2114

Living Room / Re: So, when you're working, do you...

« Last post by Shades on December 30, 2010, 02:07 PM »

One dominant personal preference is to avoid work like the plague.

-cranioscopical (December 29, 2010, 08:44 AM)

I avoid cliches like the plague

-timns (December 29, 2010, 11:20 AM)

I avoid plagues that like cliches...

Ontopic:
Lighting is no problem for me, voices are (kid's voices are a real disaster for my concentration). Headphones are preferred when I do have to listen to music that I already know when people are talking in the same room as I am.

Utter silence is the environment that works best for me, but it is no problem for me if other people are in the same room that are not in my field of vision and are quiet.

2115

Living Room / Re: complete 180 on mouse preference - what's the best cheap mouse?

« Last post by Shades on December 24, 2010, 04:07 PM »

Here in Paraguay there are not that many places that sell computer hardware. Here in the main capital everything is priced more or less like in Europe. But at the border with Brazil (6 hour drive) there is a city where you can buy computer gear for a lot less. But not the big names, only budget brands.

Now I found out that the top of these budget brands: Satellite have a cheap and remarkably durable mouse (A-21). Here these mouses cost around 6 dollar brand new. That particular mouse feels extremely comfortable to my (European sized) hand.

2116

General Software Discussion / Re: I want a game for Christmas: turn-based

« Last post by Shades on December 19, 2010, 11:02 PM »

Sins of a Solar Empire

Excellent strategy game in my book. Not too expensive, even with the expansion kit...and no DRM!

2117

Living Room / Re: Official DonationCoder song

« Last post by Shades on December 18, 2010, 08:49 PM »

The donationcoder.com website does not sound so pleasing to my ears, I'm afraid.

It is however a very long song, which is more than I can say from some of the big name websites I tried 

2118

Living Room / Re: Show us a photo of your mutt or other creatures..

« Last post by Shades on December 18, 2010, 06:28 PM »

When my friend was constructing his house here, the workers adopted a drifter dog (female) that since then guarded the place. When I fixed the electricity in this house, I also was endeared to this sweet girl. Two months ago she even produced offspring (5 puppies) and all seemed to be going well for her. She was even nurturing 3 puppies from another dog here in the neighborhood.

But then a disease struck her, I forgot the name, but it was lethal and transferable to humans. My friend has four kids running around the house, so it was quickly decided that she would enter the eternal sleep at the vet and soon. I understand that they did this yesterday.

It is indeed wonderful how dogs can capture your heart and become your friend. Losing them leaves an empty space in heart and mind. Luckily there is her offspring as legacy which I hope turns out as wonderful, gentle and caring as she was.

@timns:
Not only do I understand you, I sympathize with you as well. Dogs live in the here and now...and in the picture he looked happy.

2119

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: [eCommerce Script] TomatoCart - A First Look Review

« Last post by Shades on December 18, 2010, 06:00 PM »

Depends on your website hoster...with that I mean the webserver software that they use to serve your pages to the web and their rules or accessibility for configuring that software.

Likely they use a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) setup, as that setup has proven to be rock solid, fast (for most intends and purposes) and cheap (Open Source licenses). In that case, the Apache webserver can be configured by a text file. There are a lot of internet pages that explain how to configure it far better than I can.

There are also web interfaces built for this setup, so you can configure the webserver with your browser. But which one your ISP is using I don't know. Maybe that the one they supply for you to use has already an option to enable Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

2120

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: BlackJack

« Last post by Shades on December 18, 2010, 04:32 PM »

Unfortunately the minimal NET 2.0 requirement is false (on my XP SPIII), the minimal requirement appears to be NET 4.0.

Come to think of it...when you include a attachment to a reply on a post here in DC, there is a counter that says how many times the attachment is downloaded. I believe that was one of your questions in IRC. If there is code like that for the forum post replies, then I assume it can be used for an attachment in the original post as well.

2121

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder.com NEW SERVER ACTIVATED Dec 17, 2010

« Last post by Shades on December 18, 2010, 12:48 PM »

Watch out before this MySQL thingie becomes a dogpile.

2122

Living Room / Re: Can we compare file transfer protocols?

« Last post by Shades on December 10, 2010, 07:34 PM »

Personally, I use a VPN connection to create an intercontinental connection that is actually quite solid (from Paraguay to the Netherlands). With Cisco's VPN software. So my experience is totally different than yours, I'm afraid.

Today (Paraguay is in its rain season) rain fell for an hour resulting in blanking streets with 10 cm of water. In that hour the wind was blowing that amount of water horizontally. I use an wireless antenna to connect to my provider, but all the bad weather did not have any effect on my VPN connection.

VPN is quite hard to set up properly, but after that work nice...as long as nothing (dramatically) changes in either software or hardware on both ends. 

 

2123

General Software Discussion / Re: Can we talk about mkv files here please?

« Last post by Shades on December 10, 2010, 07:16 PM »

Proper resoure management is always key. Don't do (too) much background tasks when you are watching HD files. I find it also important to have two or four memory sticks (2/4 gByte) that work at least as fast the Front Side Bus (FSB) speeds of your mother-board helps a lot when processing/watching HD content.

I never encountered the problems you mention when playing 1080p content on my Win7 system, which has only 2GByte of RAM that is matched with the FSB of my main board. Also, my disk are on a weekly defragmentation cycle, which helps as well.

2124

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: For non-programmers: Editpad is the best text editor (for now!)

« Last post by Shades on December 10, 2010, 06:33 PM »

ARGH!...the Apple mentality is invading the mind of superboyac!!!!!!   

2125

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to create a video cd/dvd on a windows machine?

« Last post by Shades on December 10, 2010, 06:21 PM »

@techidave:
VLC can play a DVD image (as .iso file) directly, without burning it. Any kind of error that can occur when creating your own DVD's (for example: insufficient menu structure, sync errors) can be easily detected this way without waiting for the rewriteable DVD to be burned. Saves a lot of time and potential embarrassments.

After all errors are eliminated you can burn your mastercopy, that you can give to your coach or give/sell it to staff/students as school promotion...or whatever tickles your fancy.