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Recent Posts

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2176
* Crazy idea pops out *

Would it be possible to use either distributed computing or P2P protocols like BitTorrent to create a distributed search engine?
2177
I don't think this is going to change in the future. You see, ads are the only mean of revenue for Google. That's fine, and lots of companies usually do the same. Of course, when you deal with such a big company it's not exactly the same situation. One thing is clicking Google Ads and tolerating sponsored links between the actual searches, but a complete different thing is people at Google being lazy (in my opinion) and letting SEOs alter completely the search results, favoring commercial sites, "collective" sites (the ones that contain reviews of products, and are constantly plaguing every single search you do containing the word "review") and crap sites, who link one to another to another in an endless loop. Of course, Google is not whole responsible for this, but they couldn't do some changes to their algorithms to enhance the results.

What's not acceptable is the current state with Google Ads. It's been researched that most of the ads are pure crap who links to illegal sites, like some ones selling you freeware programs (do a search on "Firefox"). This is completely unacceptable. Google had been informed of this, and it's not clear if they did something or not. The recent purchase of DoubleClick, the tracking cookie kings worries me even more.

Another day we'll discuss the Google cookie... For now, I'll suggest Ixquick, which doesn't store any information about yourself, and works fine. Or maybe we should go back to Altavista... at least Babelfish it's essential to me ;D

Just my two cents.
2178
The changelog is nice, almost all my caveats with the program had been fixed but... does this means I have to pay $21 dollars to updgrade?. You only save $8 over a brand new license!
2179
My daughter found this one today.  ;D

HUH?
2180
Welcome back! Good to see everything is fine again. Scold Cody once you catch him, for trying to ruin his master's work ;D
2181
Living Room / Re: Help! PC hanging on first boot
« Last post by Lashiec on April 24, 2007, 01:08 PM »
12,5 and 12,9... Humm, I don't have the specs around, but I think that is surpassing the range allowed by the organization that issues the recommendations for PSUs (which more than recommendations are mandatory). Which PSU is?

A PSU I have been seriously impressed with is Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type R 580W Modular ATX2.2 PSU
-Carol Haynes (April 22, 2007, 04:10 AM)

AHA! So you're into fancy PSUs, don't ya? ;D
2182
Living Room / Re: gmail slowing down??
« Last post by Lashiec on April 24, 2007, 05:53 AM »
It's an error GMail is experiencing from time to time, but the same happens with the whole Google network. Although I'm using the webmail, not a separate mail program like you
2183
Zaine summarizes my feelings about the ads extremely well. The ads are not directed (they could think they are, but they're wrong) towards hardware and/or software enthusiasts, but to all name-brand PC buyers who, although they're the majority, would probably pass on the ads.

I didn't touch a Mac too many times, let alone tinkering with it, but this is exactly the public towards they're directed. That, and enterprises, since they also buy pre-assembled PCs in bulk, they never assemble one directly. Why? Because they exactly suit their needs, all the preloaded software you really use, and without the hassle of normal PCs, including the increased security due to the low market impact.

That's not saying they couldn't be used by enthusiasts, but you'd had to be more of a DIY type than a power user to really alter something at hardware level. Things change with software, it's true the number of good programs is significantly lower, but they have some great things, like a file manager I once came across, but I forgot the name of it. Or Quicksilver, the FARR killer ;). Or the Aqua version of VideoLAN, much better than its wxWidgets counterpart (yeech) in terms of interface design.

Have in mind that the great problem with many Mac users is they're great fanboys, and those ads are also directed to them, as a token of appreciation (or as a another medium of brainwashing...) from their beloved leaders ;D. Sure they giggle with them, and comment 'til the end of time, just as it happened with the famous pot smoker girl of the 1999 ads (I think), which became almost a legend, just because she didn't catch much sleep... Every public statement on big companies is always something "political" directed to their hardcore supporters, even if the majority of the company's working force doesn't adhere to these ideas. Microsoft's "open source communism" is just the same. Sometimes I wonder if those big guys are directed by lawyers and zealots, instead of people...

Yet another field in which the Mac could have a great advantage are notebooks. Notebooks, despite the struggle to replace normal computers, are notebooks after all, designed to go everywhere (almost) and give you most of the functionality of a big PC. After all, I don't care if I could play Crysis in a notebook or not, I probably can't do it on the desktop anyway... And since almost every notebook sold is a pre-assembled type, I yet have to see a Franken-one, the Mac is perfect for this task. If I really need a notebook someday, I would probably buy a PowerBook or similar, some of my friends at the university have one, and they're really cool, much better than the Dells and Vaios used by the teachers :)

on another note, Apple still relies on Microsoft to produce Office suites for the Mac..

I've been told that Mac Office is way better than Windows version. And what happened to Apple's "Office" offering?

It seems like they should just come out with an ad that asks "Are you an idiot that doesn't care what is inside the computer as long as it is pretty and performs all the basics?" and get it over with.

Well, it can't be denied that Apple products are pretty and some of them have a great design. I'm not saying that PCs are ugly (well, mine sure it is :)), but we have to give some credit to the guys. Also, the quality of the components is at least decent, and some of the high-end Macs have some interesting technology (water cooling and almost no noise)

Last meeting their was even a debate about whether a meember going to minister in remote North Western Australia should keep her Mac or get a Windows based machine.  (Only computer discussion I have ever heard where the ability of a machine to withstand dust ingress was debated).

Heh, I didn't know that these "PC vs. Mac" talks reached the church. In Spain I think they're still discussing the possible "evil" nature of the Internet.

P.S.: Any machine, even those with no air intake, will get lots of dust. Except, of course, a Linux based one, probably a bright mind already coded an add-on for Emacs to automatically clean it ;)

I recognise, and smile ruefully to myself when I do, this exact same behviour in myself! I'm *supposed* to be more productive when I'm sitting in front of a computer but instead I wile away hours and days of my time "tweaking" it to address perceived deficiencies (...)

Who was the member who said his computer was using him for something, and not the other way around? LOL
2184
Living Room / Re: Hunting bargains? Here's the ultimate tool for you!
« Last post by Lashiec on April 24, 2007, 03:38 AM »
LOL. I'll buy one for Christmas!
2185
Oh, hell! Let's pray for the safety of your hard drives, and thanks the electricity Gods for your well being.
2186
What the mug! I'll send you a mail ASAP!
2187
General Software Discussion / Re: foobar...honestly...WTF?! WTF?!
« Last post by Lashiec on April 19, 2007, 12:25 PM »
Remember that in those cases, Wikipedia is your best friend :)
2188
Living Room / Re: Apologese - I will be offline for a while ...
« Last post by Lashiec on April 19, 2007, 12:10 PM »
Ah! That explains everything! Earlier models have some problems with the Asus mainboards due to the high efficiency of the PSU, which conflicted with some of the functions of the mobo :huh: (or something like that ;D). I learned this the other day over at Silent PC Review while reading some Antec cases reviews, in this case the PSU got together with the Antec P150.

Well, I'm glad you solved the problems :Thmbsup:
2189
General Software Discussion / Re: foobar...honestly...WTF?! WTF?!
« Last post by Lashiec on April 19, 2007, 12:05 PM »
god, I cannot recognize a single artist in your screenshot, superboyAC :)

What?! You don't recognize Lynyrd Skynyrd, Norah Jones and Manfred Mann (well, I admit the latter were very famous only during the 60s ;D)?

30,000 songs... that's something like 3000 discs! My library is about 3900 tracks, and that's including video game soundtracks, and excluding most of my discs, which would amount another 700 songs, but with a 8 GB HDD, well... Anyway, 100 MB is something big, but I'll want to see Winamp 5 or iTunes with so many songs... The full installation of Winamp was almost 50 MB without anything on the playlist or the library ::)
2190
Living Room / Re: Apologese - I will be offline for a while ...
« Last post by Lashiec on April 19, 2007, 06:36 AM »
It seems that the forum doesn't mark edited posts as new posts... sorry for the double post.
And this is the day of resurrecting threads on my part. So, Carol, would your PSU happens to be an Antec NeoHE?
2191
Living Room / Re: Continuing the Lolcatz theme ...
« Last post by Lashiec on April 19, 2007, 06:12 AM »
Yet another thread in a Live Journal blog composed of cat macros as well. I found it through other blog, whose author warned people about "nude stuff and other unpleasant things". So approach it with caution. It's pretty hilarious otherwise, although maybe a bit "teenager" LOL
2192
General Software Discussion / Re: foobar...honestly...WTF?! WTF?!
« Last post by Lashiec on April 19, 2007, 06:06 AM »
* Casts the thread resurrection spell... *

urlwolf, and those having problems with the massive overhead caused by giant libraries in foobar, I finally found the tips I was talking about here and here. I hope it can help you.
2193
Developer's Corner / Re: The Best Introductory Language
« Last post by Lashiec on April 18, 2007, 05:42 AM »
Some things to consider:

1) There's no BEST introductory language. You could say this is a fallacy. As for the opinions of you guys, and the article it's clear that everyone has his/her favourite option, which is quite logical.

2) Since I'm still in university, and learning as well, I could give my opinion on this. When I started we used pseudocode and diagrams to create and design the programs that later we implemented with Pascal. During the second four month period (that'll be a semester for you, I think) we learned Java (simple, almost without classes) and assembly (a virtual machine with only 4 instructions and then 8085 assembly). This is my third year, and since then we've learned C++ and a bit of C for an optional subject. Oh, yeah, I forgot, add Unix shell and VI control 'codes' >:(

It's my opinion that Pascal is a good option for starters. You could also throw Delphi in the mix to help people understand classes and all the mess in a familiar language. Also, I feel that C++ should come before Java, but that's a personal opinion. I feel that classes and objects are easier to understand in C++ than in Java, and even then, I still have some problems (solved with some more time reading the theory and writing code)

3) Some simple languages (AutoHotkey, AutoIt, foobar's 'Tagz') are good options to immerse yourself into the programming world, but 'true' language are also needed.

4) The article is quite biased, and contradictory to boot. The guy uses Perl as its main language, and he also recommends it. Oh yeah, what an objective point of view. Then he says that universities like to use the hottest language available to teach people how to program, which is false (in my own experiences), and the he recommend Perl, Ruby and Python, which, incidentally, are the hottest languages around (Ubuntu is implemented in Python, even the kernel, the Internet runs on Rails, and Perl, well, it's Perl ;D)

I feel, that, just as it happens with real languages (English and such, ya know :)), the more you know, the better. Oh, and I really don't recommend Visual Basic for learning anything. It's a really bad option ;)
2194
Um, since I'm still running foobar2000 0.8.3 I don't have access to such luxuries ;D, but in short, foobar is capable of doing everything that Mp3tag, and maybe a bit more, after all we're talking of a full featured player, but still I think foobar doesn't have the capability of Mp3tag to obtain tag information from music databases like Discogs or All Music, among some minor things.

I know that the overlapping between the two is almost something of synergy, but still I prefer to use Mp3tag for my tagging needs, as I found the tag edition more natural, but maybe the improvements in foobar 0.9.x will change that (don't think so though...). Who knows? Give it a try to see if it's also good for you, it's quite common to have overlapping applications, particularly browsers ;)
2195
General Software Discussion / Re: opera 9.2 is out
« Last post by Lashiec on April 17, 2007, 09:37 AM »
Yeah, that's what I thought the first time. The main difference is that the 'Speed Dial' uses defined bookmarks, and that Showcase uses the active tabs, so it's a bit more useful. Now, if Showcase wasn't a shit of an extension, bloated with options (a trend within popular Firefox extensions) it'll great.

A better resampling algorithm for the thumbnails would also be appreciated :)
2196
General Software Discussion / Re: opera 9.2 is out
« Last post by Lashiec on April 16, 2007, 07:05 AM »
The problem with the Wand is that if something nasty happens (you forgot your password or you accidentally delete the passwords file), then it's over as it doesn't have a simple 'export' function to CSV or even TXT
2197
If I had some time this weekend or next week, I could give a try to the last idea. First, I have to find if desktop search programs have the necessary APIs (or command-line switches) to do that. Then, I've got to learn a bit about FARR inner workings, but it could be an interesting C++ exercise, providing that it won't be very difficult... but I'm not promising anything. Also, it seems mouser have some interest in developing this (and who don't)
2198
Sounds like it might be an interesting read, so I guess I might as well brew some coffee.

Make a cup for me ;). The site is going slooooowwww...
2199
I wouldn't recommend this piece of software. I've used it extensively in the past, although more as a tagger than a cataloger, and my problems with it made me go the foobar2000 + Mp3tag route. The renaming function is essentially broken, and it doesn't recognize the whole gamut of tag types nowadays. Also, it was a pain to re-tag files, and I think that you couldn't add custom tags. Seriously, if you want a cataloguer, there is a good range of them compiled by tomos here and for a tagger there are really good options, like the freeware Mp3tag or almost any audio player nowadays. Add to this that the project has been abandoned by everyone.

In fact, Mp3tag is the only tagger I would recommend. I tried one of two commercial offerings (Abander Tag Control and Tag Clinic) and I went quite disappointed. The first one is a terrible work of GUI design, although it seemed quite powerful, and Tag Clinic is overhyped by some people, since it's a really dull program.
2200
General Software Discussion / Re: Tweak VI — Don't waste your money
« Last post by Lashiec on April 16, 2007, 06:29 AM »
Not to mention in the past Total Idea software was a total waste of time and money. I remember trying TweakXP and comparing it to TuneUp Utilities and X-Setup Pro together and seeing it failing miserably in front of this two formidable programs.
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