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2326

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

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

Have you tried 'ALShow' already?

My system has never seen an installation screen of any codec pack, but this one seems to be able to play some of the "grown-up" content that I have without problems, while The KMplayer, VLC and MPC crash miserably playing those files.

They have more high quality freeware on that site besides the ALShow player.

2327

TFDocs / Re: tfdocs.com - first suggestions and criticisms

« Last post by Shades on December 06, 2009, 09:56 PM »

It appears you have switched data intended for output as input.  

As far as I know (and that is not too much) XML works like this.
First there is an application (A) where you want information from and there is an application (B) where you want to store this info.

This leads to two possibilities: application A is application B or application A is not application B
Either way, data when moving data between applications verification needs to take place. After all, you want no garbage output and definitely no garbage input. Besides this, there is also a issue with the way data is formatted, especially in the case where application A is not application B.

Verification takes place through XSD files that set the rules for exporting/importing data (including format).  

2328

Living Room / Re: Can there be a free Web if no one makes money?

« Last post by Shades on December 06, 2009, 03:02 PM »

I'm not sure who these people think is paying for all that infrastructure (copper, fiber, routers, web farms, electrical power, etc.) or web content - but there you have it.

-40hz (December 06, 2009, 02:26 PM)

In general I agree with you, but the subscription fee you pay to your ISP should take care of the infrastructure. If that is not the case, is that my fault? In my point of view it is not and because of that I don't see any reason why I should pay for the mistake between the ISP and whichever party is doing the infrastructure (maintaining/building).

Now I am not daft enough to think that I (as a costumer) will pay for such mishaps, but still.

Creating and hosting content costs money and should be non-subsidized. The only way I could see that happening is in the form of a plan similar to what cable-TV does. Besides the connection fee for your ISP, pay them an extra monthly sum for all access to sites in that plan. Content providers can be paid with that extra money.

Most people have a set of sites that they continuously visit and disregard most of the web anyway. Of course ads shown on the sites that are included in such a plan will become more valuable for both the content provider and the advertising agencies, so the money that people should pay for such a plan should not be that high.

All the Murdoch's of the web would agree with this model...as a short/mid-term solution anyway. Since I have worked several years for a content provider and nowadays just happily surf, I'm not sure if this balkanisation of the web will do us all much good in the long term though.

2329

Developer's Corner / Re: Programming Language Adapability

« Last post by Shades on December 06, 2009, 10:02 AM »

Allright, I'll give it a shot:

NYAWTBPLP
Not Your Average Way To Be Programming Lovable Programs

2330

Living Room / Re: Any old Amiga users among us?

« Last post by Shades on December 05, 2009, 07:04 PM »

Directory Opus and CygnusEd...those were the tools I used most on my Amiga's. Actually, I have switched between all existing models at some point in time (except the A3000 and A4000).

My latest was an A1200 which I stripped out of it original casing and put it into a high tower PC case, together with a hard drive (1GByte!), 68030 (50MHz), 18Mbyte RAM (2MByte internal with a 16MByte SIMM module on my Blizzard expansion) and rewired keyboard controller for a A2000 keyboard.

And I'll bet the thing would still boot if I could turn it on today...but alas, several thousands of miles are between my personae and that Amiga.   

2331

Living Room / Re: Good TV series. What do you watch? I used to watch Lost to unwind need successor

« Last post by Shades on December 04, 2009, 07:48 PM »

'The IT crowd' was not mentioned in this thread.

It is absolutely brilliant British humor. Here in PY that kind of humor does not go very well normally, but everybody I know over here laughed...hard, loud and sometimes even with tears in their eyes.

2332

General Software Discussion / Re: Needful of opinions on graphics cards/drivers ...

« Last post by Shades on December 03, 2009, 09:37 PM »

You can get adapters to convert one type of graphic connector into another.

Likely one of the outputs from your video card is from the type: DVI  and you have a second monitor with a VGA connector. An adapter that solves this situation shall put you back 2 maybe 3 dollars in a computer store.

With that adapter you don't need the onboard video from your mainboard (good riddance to that RAM polluter, I would say). Besides that, your new videocard is a lot more capable and only one set of graphic drivers will be required/maintained. Save yourself the headache and get one of those adapters.

2333

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 - Instructions

« Last post by Shades on December 02, 2009, 09:36 PM »

The only mug I care to see is on the bottom of the just emptied "shot" (tequila really brings out the color in my eyes)  

2334

General Software Discussion / Re: Needful of opinions on graphics cards/drivers ...

« Last post by Shades on November 28, 2009, 03:45 PM »

ATI cards:
Get one that support Eyefinity (definitely HD Radeon 5000 range only, likely the 5900).
Will set you back some 600 US dollars.
Specs are probably overkill and at this time hard to get.

Matrox cards:
Their latest model supports a lot of monitors but it comes at a very high price, 800+ more dollars. Slashdotters were not that positive about the price/performance ratio.

Is it not smarter to get 2 rather simple cards, each having 2 outputs and use them in CrossFire (ATI) or SLI (NVidia)? Check if your motherboard supports either one or both of those systems. Seems to me the solution that is easiest to implement.  

2335

General Software Discussion / Re: looking for an easy way to convert vhs tapes to dvd

« Last post by Shades on November 28, 2009, 08:24 AM »

If the source isn't that good (inherent to the whole VHS format) don't expect that the end result shows you a better quality picture on Blu-Ray than a DVD would.

Actually, both Blu-Ray and DVD are capable of showing high def. video, while VHS will not.

To be honest, if the video source is not coming from a high def. (digital) camera it ain't worth the effort to use Blu-Ray (besides it storage capacity I mean). Normally a Blu-Ray player is connected to a high def. TV (plasma/LCD) that has a higher resolution than a standard TV. When using a VHS source, put it on Blu-Ray and show it on this setup, the picture will be blown up to this resolution and that will not go gracefully (picture quality wise) most of the time.

VHS is dead for a good reason, let's keep it at that. 

2336

Living Room / Re: I'll donate $20 to Donation Coder if DC member PMs me a valid Google Wave invite

« Last post by Shades on November 26, 2009, 05:25 PM »

Google Wave is getting in gear...they gave me just now 16 new invites as well. That is a total of 66 invites! 40 of those I have spent, so there are 26 people who can get an invite from me as well. As the other members here who generously offer their invites, PM me if you want one.

2337

Living Room / Re: Bad Refurbs

« Last post by Shades on November 21, 2009, 09:13 PM »

Samsung harddisk have only one thing going for them and that is their low price.

Here in Paraguay where ambient temperatures are on average 38 degrees Celsius these hard disks drop like flies. The local stores offer those and their refurbed kin for very low prices, but I wouldn't use it if it was given to me for free.

Then again, what worth do those hard drive really have when you cannot trust them to last a month.

 

2338

General Software Discussion / Re: Waking up stand-by windows computer on Lan?

« Last post by Shades on November 20, 2009, 08:57 PM »

Now I know that AMD has made software with which you can easily "wake-up" PC's on a LAN/WAN. I even downloaded the software.

Now I found a link:
http://www.amd.com/u...lities/magic_pkt.exe

2339

Living Room / Re: Auto close tags

« Last post by Shades on November 17, 2009, 05:07 PM »

NotePad++ does automagically close tags...but only for XML (by default). Maybe it's worth to take a look at their plug-ins.

2340

Living Room / Re: I'll donate $20 to Donation Coder if DC member PMs me a valid Google Wave invite

« Last post by Shades on November 16, 2009, 04:27 PM »

The Google Wave people gave me 30 new invites for their Wave service. I had to spent one of those invitations, but there are still 29 left.

PM me if you want one.  And yes, they are valid...I had a thread here on DC for giving away 5 invitations to the DC crowd from my previous batch of invitations.

Even if you don't think much of this new Google service, but you are a fan of the TV-show 'FireFly', you owe it to yourself to get a invitation!!!

2341

General Software Discussion / Re: Images don't show up properly in Photoshop

« Last post by Shades on November 14, 2009, 01:29 PM »

For checking which version of OpenGL you are running, download a tool called 'glview' and run it. As far as I know OpenGL doesn't come with a tool similar to 'dxdiag' on DirectX.

The overview (on the first page) generated by the tool should mention the version of OpenGL that you are using. It will show you a lot more info on subsequent pages.

2342

Living Room / Re: Portable computer

« Last post by Shades on November 14, 2009, 11:12 AM »

Slow plying of movies depends on the type of compression that is used on such a movie file. Celeron's don't have problems showing a normal DVD. At least the laptop I bought for my ex didn't, it also could play Xvid compressed movies without any hiccup (on a 1Gbyte Vista machine).

The latest drivers for your video and/or audio cards together with the correct codecs will work wonders, even on a low end Celeron. I used to watch compressed movies on a Celeron 500Mhz back in the day.

You should not use a Celeron to create compressed movies, that will take forever. Most AA-class game titles will not run smoothly, even if you spend a lot on getting extra RAM. It is better to buy a 'fully equipped' processor instead of the Celeron, but for general use they are not so bad as Ath portrays them to be. Especially the newer versions aren't too bad.

My first encounter with the Celeron processor was the 300MHz one...and that was a really bad processor. We were setting up a helpdesk with 32 Compaq Celeron systems...but man, those processors were giving unreliable results when they work and had a habit of breaking for no apparent reason. At least 80% of all systems were replaced within a year...with Celeron 333MHz machines. And those were the complete opposite, reliable in any way. Intel learned their lesson with that one.

As always, your mileage may vary.

2343

General Software Discussion / Re: Images don't show up properly in Photoshop

« Last post by Shades on November 14, 2009, 10:43 AM »

Which version of OpenGL is running on your system?

2344

Living Room / Re: Dual monitor setup advice needed

« Last post by Shades on November 13, 2009, 05:19 PM »

I bought my ATI Radeon HD4670 last year for 90 US dollar and I do have to say that it is a very nice card for that price. It handles my favorite race games ('Race driver: Grid' and 'Need for Speed: Shift') beautifully on a resolution of 1920x1080.

Now I have to assume that the prices for that range of card has dropped since and since the new 5000 range is just out, there have to be some nice deals on the net from stores getting rid of old stock.

The reason I mention my card is that if you have sudden need to play a game, this card will do it nicely.

Now I do not know if support for DirectX11 is a requirement for you. If so, then you will have to buy an ATI in the low 5000 range but I'm not sure about being in compliance with your budget. Don't worry though, you will not be spending that much more. I saw today in a Dutch news article that Asus has an ATI HD5750 based card for the retail price of 120 euro's. That means that web-shops will be able to deliver it more cheaply than that.
NVidia promises DirectX11 support with their GT300, but that card is not out yet and will cost a lot more than your budget allows.

There can be a problem popping up though. New video cards are long (size wise)....really long! Depending on your PC case you can have some trouble installing a new video card.

My advice would be to install a card that supports DirectX11, Windows 7 comes standard with it. One of the tricks that DirectX can perform is Tessellation. Now I saw a demo from a game engine with that effect...it is awesome!   
 

2345

Living Room / Re: Netflix might delay new release shipping by 1 month

« Last post by Shades on November 12, 2009, 08:37 PM »

Here in Paraguay it happens that I can rent a movie sooner than it is shown in the theater. Theater releases 6 months after the US release is quite normal over here.

Those studios should really pay more attention to proper release schedules (outside the US, I mean). A theater ticket costs here 3,5 bucks, the refreshments (2x750cc Cokes and a big bag of popcorn) cost about the same. 10 Dollars for two, that is not a deal breaker. Now renting a movie for two days sets you back 1,8 dollars, renting for one day is 1,1 dollar. There are rental plans you can buy into, dropping the price even more.

My main complaint here is crappy release schedules and US prices for legal media. In general people make here about ¼ of US minimum wage here, so you can imagine why rely on rental plans with no intent of buying. A 30 day wait period? Where can we sign up for that?

Josh, you really should come and live here for a while to learn a thing or two about patience. I honestly think that 'mañana' (phonetically: man-jana) is the most used word in these parts of the world. Ah well, as long as the beer is cold, the girls are minimally dressed and the meat is on the grill...you will learn patience and to appreciate what raggeaton does to earlier mention girls

Ok, back to the story before my mind is too much sidetracked. Prices are very reasonable for services rendered. Granted, it is not on the same level as Netflix, but it is something I can certainly live with. Besides that, the general consensus of the people responding to the article is actually quite similar to mine.

2346

General Software Discussion / Re: Wanted: Version Control for non-software project for dummies

« Last post by Shades on November 07, 2009, 01:51 PM »

Being not really familiar with the plethora of version control systems out there, I do know CVS and SVN.

From SVN I know that it (by default) stores repositories in a database and that later versions also have an option to do file-based storage. this got me thinking and maybe this link [codeproject.com] will prove useful. It seems someone made a script to store (parts of) a MS SQL 2000 database into SVN.

As you were saying, don't re-invent the wheel.

2347

General Software Discussion / Re: Any XP users switching to Windows 7 yet?

« Last post by Shades on November 07, 2009, 01:28 PM »

@Innuendo:
Just a question regarding the Aero interface (definitely no trolling intended). Why would performance degrade when it is disabled? In my brain the idea of 'less is more' sounds very logically. However, you claim that is not true with Win7.

Now I can imagine that new hardware will work best with software that is designed for it. However, in my mind when I would choose not to go for eye-candy that would leave more (reserve) horsepower for the video card, in case one has a serious use for it like playing games, watching compressed video and what not. Would you be so kind to explain why my idea is based on a false assumption?

Maybe I should explain a bit more about my previous experiences. Sorry if sounds like a rant.
Coming from a test drive of Vista (home premium and pre-SP1) on a laptop that came with it I could not say that I was positively impressed with the Aero interface. Again, because of my idea I think that any general functionality in a piece of software (and O.S. for that matter) should be accessible in 5 mouse-clicks or less. Anything more demands a rethink of the workflow/design.

Vista fails in this regard. The laptop I mentioned was intended to be used in the WiFi LAN from my girlfriend and wireless networking was not too stable in that version of Vista. I was seriously underwhelmed in possibilities to try to fix that in the amount of mouse-clicks I suggested. Likely this has improved with SP1 and in Win7.

Now if Win7 is similar to that Vista behavior of hiding options 'too deep' without an option to disable all the eye-candy...where would be my reason to get into a new Windows, besides XP (which is very tweaked to my preferences)?

The comment I hear is that Windows 7 is 'snappy'. No contest from me there, it is very possible that all the windows to get to wherever you want to go in the O.S. open very quickly. My problem is that there will too many windows opening to get where you want to go in the O.S. making me (and you) in effect less productive.

An option to disable eye-candy to get more productivity back is 'stolen' from me in Win7 by Microsoft because they were too lazy/programmatically challenged to design Aero as a sub-system to be enabled/disabled at the whim of the user instead of a requirement from the O.S.

That is what keeping me with XP. I certainly see flaws in the workflow from XP and definitely wouldn't mind a change, but my previous experiences lead me to believe that Vista/Win7 are not that much of improvement. Certainly not at the current prices in this economy. Honestly, my personal (and old) laptop still runs on Win2000 and I'm still not bored with that interface.


Ah well, thanks for reading if you got this far.
   

2348

Living Room / Re: Open source remake of the classic game Elite

« Last post by Shades on November 01, 2009, 11:26 PM »

Guess I'm getting old, but this one could not capture me like the (rotating wire-frames from the) Commodore 64 version. That one I played for quite some time. Never got that far though

2349

General Software Discussion / Re: How the mighty have fallen: TuneUp Utilities 2010

« Last post by Shades on November 01, 2009, 08:37 PM »

A "rollback" feature is a step into the very wrong direction. If you don't have it, you'll consider twice if you should really perform an action. If you have it, you'll think "oh well let me delete anything and I can still recover it"... which is wrong, because it may be hard to recover something when you can't even log in anymore.

-Tuxman (November 01, 2009, 06:13 PM)

On this I totally agree with you. On every system I own all delete actions are real delete actions...my recycle bin is as clean as a brand new one, no thrash comes in it...ever. Brings a whole new level of file awareness and how to handle those with the proper amount of caution.

2350

Living Room / Re: Google vs. the rest: Is it fair?

« Last post by Shades on November 01, 2009, 08:27 PM »

Speaking form outside of the U.S.

Google is the one who delivers the best results in search, Bing delivers quite useless content when searching for things outside the U.S. The same is true for the other products from Google.

To me, if you live outside the U.S. the best deal (by far!) is Google. Alternatives only care for the U.S. Rather limiting in my point of view, but hey, what do I know right? Not to be trolling or something, but in that sense Google is more of a global player than any of the alternatives (including Microsoft).

Furthermore I can confirm that MS and other alternatives handle anything outside of the U.S.  I have (very sparingly used) mail accounts with Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft (since Hotmail)...and guess which account is getting the least (directed) spam. Again, privacy is not a word in the vocabulary of Microsoft or Yahoo!

Ok, a bit of explicit NSFW language follows: For me it is hard to understand that somebody complains about what Google might do regarding privacy, while the alternatives already sell us non-US'ers out

Spoiler

, in essence, fornicate non-US'ers from behind using sand as vaseline

while not even trying to keep up with what Google actually delivers. Because of that Google has a tremendous amount of goodwill all over the globe and (generally speaking) people are not that bothered with the advertisements that Google fires in their direction.

Let me put it this way, why people call searching on the internet 'googling' and not 'binging'? The latter term does not bring such a nice association to my mind...but again, what do I know?[/rant]