Recent Posts

2301

Developer's Corner / Re: What's your *favorite* programming language and *why* ?

« Last post by Shades on January 25, 2010, 11:27 PM »

Hmmm, how to call people who actually like to program in Fortran.....Fortransvestites?   

[/bad joke]

2302

Living Room / Re: Book: Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)

« Last post by Shades on January 25, 2010, 11:23 PM »

[dark humor]

According to the index the list doesn't look to be that tame as people suggest.

However, what is the deal with nr 10? Is that 'playing with the vacuum cleaner' or '"playing" with the vacuum cleaner'?

But better yet, it would be better to let them experiment several of the items at once. Like (19)standing on a roof from a building with a lot of public (29) wearing your self-made sparking flying machine (24) falling into a dumpster (33) that is filled with gasoline (45) and glass (47).

Nah, I would finish the book way too fast...like maybe two or three regular Friday nights or so. 

P.S.
Hmm, maybe I finish it at once if could borrow someone else's kids 

[/dark humor]

2303

General Software Discussion / Re: Hardware/software for oral history archive?

« Last post by Shades on January 25, 2010, 08:33 PM »

See this DC thread about converting tapes to a digital format.

One of the links points to a fancy piece of hardware to do the conversion, but there are more options that are a lot cheaper (but do not look that nice  ). Anyway, the thread should give you a lot of leads on how to proceed from here.

2304

General Software Discussion / Re: post-screenshot editor, torn edge in between, and highlight lines

« Last post by Shades on January 25, 2010, 08:19 PM »

Well, at least my content wasn't deemed as unnecessary...

2305

Finished Programs / Re: SOLVED: Redirect clicks on files of a particular type to a *specific* single file?

« Last post by Shades on January 24, 2010, 09:43 AM »

Are there not some (portable) applications that manage extensions? That method would beat changing all extensions in registry and restoring them after-wards. IMHO nobody should be playing too much with the registry, especially when it isn't (absolutely) necessary. The suggested registry changes are easy enough to change, but still...

Here is a link to a freeware portable extension manager (actually: a program launcher) that might be doing all that you need.

Edit:
found a link to a DC thread about Portable Extension Manager (PEM) as well

2306

General Software Discussion / Re: Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« Last post by Shades on January 19, 2010, 11:22 PM »

As discussed  in a previous DC thread, it might be a good idea to designate one PC in the LAN as the 'Master Browser' and disable this functionality on all other (Windows) PC's in the LAN.

In each Windows version (2000, XP, 2003) the default setting for 'Master Browser' is enabled. When combining such PC's in a LAN each one continuously tries to become the 'Master Browser' introducing long waiting times for initial connections. My network only has one Master Browser and I cannot tell the difference between a network drive/share/UNC and a local drive when accessing folders. Directories and files show up instantly.

Now I suspect that the networking client from Win7 is setup the same way with regards to the 'Master Browser' setting, I could be wrong as I don't have Win7 to test it myself.

2307

Living Room / Re: Something on computer is fubar

« Last post by Shades on January 09, 2010, 11:14 PM »

You should, in my environment it detected bad HD's where the original software (Windows-based) didn't find any.

Here I discarded the drives...because they were relatively small sized anyway (and by discard I mean: putting them in box with other broken computer gear). However if you're out of guarantee and want to remap or discard the broken sectors, would you mind telling how the drive behaves afterwards?

2308

General Software Discussion / Re: recommendation: sabayon linux

« Last post by Shades on January 09, 2010, 12:55 PM »

Shades: the speed advantage of compiling-for-your-architecture of gentoo hasn't been very large in my experience - and iirc there were some benchmarks showing that for some people (and some compiler options) the system even got slightly slower than "vanilla" binaries. Kinda makes sense, most applications aren't CPU-heavy and thus don't benefit from aggressive optimizations; au contraire, some of those bloat up the binaries, so you end up with fatter and ever-so-slighty slower-loading more-memory-consuming without much advantage.

I use gentoo on my server, though - I like the level of control it gives me over what dependencies are pulled in. Vanilla binaries tend to be built with all options supported - this often includes (optional) X11 support... I don't need and don't want X11 on my server, and gentoo let's me achieve this.

For the desktop, I prefer something smoother and more polished... but that's why I don't run Linux on the desktop in the first place

-f0dder (January 09, 2010, 04:07 AM)

For 3 months now my servers are running on Ubuntu 9.04 Server, I have to say that the distro is very smooth and stable in operation. So I do agree with you about "vanilla" distro's and from other personal experience I can say that compiling any distro for your hardware results in an extremely stable OS. It was RedHat on a 486, its task was to register traffic for some 50 domains (including several p*rn sites) and generate web statistics for those customers and our billing department. Running 4 years straight and was then turned off because it had to move to a different office building. Ah, compared with my (celeron 300MHz) Win98 desktop at the time it was a relief to work with that PC.

Thank you f0dder for making me remember  

2309

General Software Discussion / Re: recommendation: sabayon linux

« Last post by Shades on January 08, 2010, 11:13 PM »

You forgot about the sandpaper...


Three years or so I tried Gentoo...took a full 48 hours to install but that was more than likely the fault of the internet connection I could get at the time. In theory it should get you the best (read: optimized and speed) Linux for the PC you are installing it on. In practice a sandpaper experience...coarse sandpaper at that.

 

2310

Finished Programs / Re: SOLVED: Run commands on computer remotely via email

« Last post by Shades on January 05, 2010, 04:56 PM »

Already existing software you could take a look at:
GetByMail
ControlPC  (could not find a link, but have an old setup file)

Another possible piece of software with less options:
TweetMyPC

2311

Living Room / Re: How can we *share* Donationcoder.com better in 2010?

« Last post by Shades on January 01, 2010, 05:20 PM »

Experiences of Paul Carr regarding marketing:
http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/bnttp.html

The full title of the story is:
Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore

Brilliantly written if you can appreciate British humor...and it's still very entertaining if you don't    
Reading it in one go took me several hours, it is sized like a (small) novel.

2312

General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have Windows Programs

« Last post by Shades on December 29, 2009, 05:30 PM »

@ Curt:
There can be a time difference between you giving the command to write to your USB stick and your system actually doing the writing to the USB stick. If the pulling out trick went good for you all this time you can be considered lucky. Speaking from personal experience, the file-system on your stick can be damaged in such a way that only formatting can fix.  

2313

General Software Discussion / Re: software to draw network map

« Last post by Shades on December 27, 2009, 01:57 PM »

Looks like this site [www.microtik.com] is containing a piece of software called: theDude.

It detects devices in your network and draws a graphic from what it finds. The only thing you have to do is order the items in the graphic to represent their actual position and you're done.
Easy to use and it's free.

2314

General Software Discussion / Re: Stop Windows from calling home

« Last post by Shades on December 26, 2009, 03:54 PM »

Here in the Americas the MSN network is not that popular, GoogleTalk is more reliable over the connections we have here. Internet is definitely not as developed and cheap as in the US and Europe. At least not that many people here use a webcam for communication and if they do, it is Skype what people use (to call to Spain), since it is not too much trouble to change from VOIP to standard telephone through their network. My suggestion would be my personal favorite Pidgin as alternative, although people here in Paraguay use Spark a lot.

@ Stoic Joker:
Now I do have a reason to be sorry about shooting my mouth off regarding your software without trying it myself. 

2315

General Software Discussion / Re: Stop Windows from calling home

« Last post by Shades on December 26, 2009, 01:48 PM »

Disabling the services and other stuff with Xpy (or similar software) is a good thing in my book.

How many times should MS be informed about my system and what I do with it? Only once to see if my copy of Windows is legal. All the other communication is rather pointless and only benefits MS not me. Now you can claim that feedback will result in higher quality software, but I think that when you adhere to the software and hardware standards set by the whole industry the problems you will encounter will be never be as high as when you do things your way. A thing MS is known to do.   

Did you check each time exactly what info is phoned home to MS? Or do you take their word for it? IIRC the newsletter Windows Secrets has reported several times that this info was not neutral and forced Microsoft to adjust their policies regarding the hoarding of info. Granted, this was all some time ago, but that should not be a reason to become complacent and let them revert back to their old ways.

Furthermore ,Windows messenger should be shot down on sight if you ask me, third party software is better,safer and has more features. Hence it is useless.
Same is true for Windows Media Player, especially version 9, 10 and 11 on XP. Since I don't have any experience with higher versions I will not say anything about those. But if their layout is created by the same person(s) who did 9, 10 or 11, they should be shamed into suicide for doing such a miserable job GUI-wise.   

Guess I don't have to mention that a tool as nLite and Xpy have improved my computing life drastically. (Xpy on already installed systems and nLite for new stripped systems). After all, what is not there cannot break. And disabling some services reduces network "noise" considerably. If you have to transfer files like I have to (60GByte Oracle dump files) over a network which does not change on a regular basis, all services that poll for any change on any system in the network are useless for all my intends and purposes. Less noise means faster transferring of data. The earlier mentioned dump file takes 17 minutes to transfer on a 100MBit network. 

Granted, the printer tool made by Stoic Joker will likely only work partially at best on my network...but hey, such is life (sorry Stoic Joker ). With all those PC users out there you can bet that there are a lot of them that want to filter out (some of) the noise generated by running background services. There a lot of legit reasons besides catching the illegal copy.

2316

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Teaser: Crush MCP (Master Control Program)

« Last post by Shades on December 25, 2009, 12:08 PM »

In Europe, German is still the primary language of many countries (Germany, Austria, parts of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, even in the Netherlands they speak German). English is not.
I wonder why these US-American weirdos think that their broken English accent is the one and only global language. Sort of arrogance, I guess.

 

-Tuxman (December 25, 2009, 09:20 AM)

In the Netherlands, the native language is Dutch. However, they also speak German near the border of Germany, English is obligatory in school and if you got higher education French was added to the list as well. Since our background (for centuries) is trade we had a lot to do with practically every Northern European country, so some kind of language developed between traders. Which is also why people from those countries have less problems learning each other languages, because by just listening for a while they discover a lot of similar words.

Besides, Germans are renowned for their technical skills and I followed a technical education so German was part of the package and I still can speak the language, albeit crudely since I didn't practice much after school. Even you Americans use German words in your language. Albeit would be one example.

2317

Living Room / Re: I'm beginning my experiment with Linux and other OS's.

« Last post by Shades on December 20, 2009, 10:47 PM »

... it is still not even close to the level I am accustomed to with Directory Opus.

-Shades (December 20, 2009, 04:09 PM)

If you don't mind going back to DOpus' Amiga origins you could try Worker.
From the Directory Opus 4 Research Project:

Worker  is a pretty accurate clone of the original Amiga DirOpus. It nearly looks and feels like the original. Distributed under the GPL.

-4wd (December 20, 2009, 04:53 PM)

Thanks 4wd    Till now I didn't even knew that this project even existed. If it works just as smooth, I'm in for a treat  

(sorry for repeating it but I am and always will be an Amiga fanboy)  

2318

Living Room / Re: I'm beginning my experiment with Linux and other OS's.

« Last post by Shades on December 20, 2009, 04:09 PM »

The lack of a decent file-manager similar to Directory Opus is my main reason for not jumping ship. Most of my time spent on a computer is more or less on anything except playing games.

But file-management in the linux GUI is like going back into the stone age...to a similar level as explorer in windows. Although Midnight Commander is a very reliable app and makes file-management a lot easier than any GUI solution, it is still not even close to the level I am accustomed to with Directory Opus.

Having said that, I do use several Linux servers in my setup and although they can be harder to setup initially, but are more reliable and their maintenance is a lot less problematic.

So good luck on your travels in Linux space, superboyac.

2319

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Batch download lyrics for your mp3 songs in your library to the ID3 tag

« Last post by Shades on December 19, 2009, 06:12 PM »

Songbird is a nice player but it stores lyrics in a database instead of the MP3 files. I would like to have a solution that puts the lyrics found by Songbird also in the corresponding file. Currently there is no option to do so (at least I didn't find it yet).

What if you could skip songs automatically after say 10 seconds and with a fast internet connection a collection of 3000 songs should be filled with lyrics in (3000*10)/3600 = 8 hours and 20 minutes.

2320

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone have any tips for ASCII formatting?

« Last post by Shades on December 19, 2009, 05:47 PM »

Maybe YAML is a solution. Not too much extra syntax (if you don't want to) and has already parsers for languages:
C/C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, C#/.NET, PHP, OCaml, Javascript, Actionscript and Haskell

2321

General Software Discussion / Re: Video player: What's the quickest (fastest/lightest)?

« Last post by Shades on December 13, 2009, 10:26 PM »

Then let me fill your mind with the following thought:

Societies that have a lot of taxes in general, also have a lot of rules and regulations for people to take their (fair) share out of the collected taxes. To keep all that administration and what not going...more taxes are required. 

Hence my previous post.

2322

General Software Discussion / Re: Video player: What's the quickest (fastest/lightest)?

« Last post by Shades on December 13, 2009, 03:41 PM »

or taxes?

2323

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« Last post by Shades on December 12, 2009, 03:13 PM »

It appears to me that the center two screenshots are the same...and I have the impression that you wanted us to show the content of each tab from your application. (tab 'Popup' is missing, btw.)

But as always...you created a nice solid application 

2324

Living Room / Re: 150 Widescreen HD Wallpaper images

« Last post by Shades on December 12, 2009, 12:49 PM »

Is it not possible to put all the info regarding your work (your name, the title of the work, URL, mail address, distribution license etc.) into EXIF? Pictures/photo's retain that info when copied as far as I understand, giving you an opportunity to supply anybody with the info they require to get back in touch with you about your work.

Ah well, it's maybe a stupid idea privacy-wise...but the principal sounds ok to me.

My collection of wallpapers has grown steadily since my first PC (1995) and I wouldn't mind seeing what some artists from those days have produced since their demo days. Problem is that they were not too generous with info, most of it was similar to 'Copyrighted by <insert nickname>' or a nickname in a corner. Finding out who did what is too much time robbery if you ask me.

Anyway, nowadays things have improved with sites like Interfacelift, though. All info and their other work is available right there. When downloading a picture/photo from their site it has a formatted and descriptive file name as well. Because of that site I couldn't be bothered to surf for wallpapers on (obscure) blogs anymore and I advice other people that see my wallpapers to go there instead of letting them making a copy.

2325

Living Room / Re: Are you a Gardener?

« Last post by Shades on December 09, 2009, 11:16 PM »

yep, Spring kicked in a few weeks ago here in South America and let me tell you that the concept of a siësta becomes clear very quickly when it cools down to 33 degrees celsius at 23:00. Summer has yet to start...

Oh yeah, to be on topic:
Personally I can really appreciate a well kept garden. Having said that, I'm more of a person who mentally supports the gardener. Before you call me lazy, I do bring enough beer with me while enjoying someone's garden, so it not too bad I hope.