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2726

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your music player of choice?

« Last post by Shades on October 14, 2008, 10:07 PM »

The one(s) who invented the utterly useless and loathesome UI from WMP9 and higher should be shot, quartered and then burned! That is how much I hate WMP.

Recently the existence of Songbird was brought to my attention. As far as I know it uses the Mozilla codebase (and licensing) to play music and it does that beautifully (it even has tabs  ). The interface will not be everybody's cup of tea, I presume...but I love it as much as I hate WMP.

Some stuff you would expect to be in any basic player is not there yet but it improves with each build. Last week I was invited to participate in a questionnaire about new/missing features and which of those items the programmers should work on first.

Beat that, MS!!!

2727

Living Room / Re: My computer is older than YOUR computer!

« Last post by Shades on October 14, 2008, 02:02 AM »

In the place where I was living in the Netherlands I know I have some fully functional 286's, each with 4 Mb RAM and 40 Mb harddrive. 

2728

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Self Distruct

« Last post by Shades on October 14, 2008, 01:38 AM »

About the delete option as suggested by f0dder, I have to disagree. you would be amazed what a program Testdisk retrieves.I was at the time. after running that piece of freeware, there was a boatload of files retrieved and there was stuff in between those files that was over a year old. The only problem from this boatload was that the original filenames were not retrieved.

In my "defense" that could have been a setting that I missed (lack of GUI).
However, information that I thought was overwritten at least three times (I download a lot) was right there.

Let's just say that you don't lose that pr0n collection that easily ;-)

2729

Living Room / Re: Should Microsoft become an OEM (PC manufacturer)?

« Last post by Shades on October 12, 2008, 11:42 PM »

We all have seen how well this idea/concept went with IBM.

Any company that 'designs by commission' (like M$ and IBM) more often than not fail or fail miserably. Being ruled by a dictator (like Apple) is either success or failure.

South-America is Playstation, I can tell you. More or less the only XBoxes you will find here, are owned by US embassy or US military personnel. Getting anything for the Nintendo Wii is already hard enough and even more expensive than in the US and/or Asia (XBox is also not that popular in the Eurozone as M$ would have expected).

My comment is not intended to label the XBox as a bad gaming rig, it is just not popular at all here in South America. Honestly, I have never touched one in my whole life, so I cannot tell anything about it.

The fact that the XBox division is separate from the main M$ company would be a reason for it's success. The main company would likely be responsible for the design of this machine...and the commission would think that the name of this machine should be 'Windows Computer'.

They however didn't envision that this name would be abbreviated to 'WC'...and the natural association of crap with that abbreviation   

2730

General Software Discussion / Re: Iobit smart defrag vs o&o defrag pro

« Last post by Shades on October 11, 2008, 04:04 PM »

The last freeware version from disktrix is what I use. the GUI is not one of the nicest...but I let it do its work at night when I go to sleep anyway.

What I like from this one is that it first defrags files and moves them afterwards to the inner or outer part of the harddisk c.q. partition depending on the setting that you prefer. In my case the files I used most are put on the outer part, improving the access speed.

Since I tried this one, I dropped all the others.

Oh yeah...what I also like a lot from this is that it doesn't keep b.tching about lack of space on the harddisk/partition, while others start complaining that 10%-15% has to be free on the harddisk/partition before commencing or don't start at all before this 'requirement' is met.   

[rant]
What is that about anyway? (that there is a need to have free room is logical to me, but why put the percentage behind the number? To me the fact that 10 Gbyte of free space should be more than enough on a 500 Gbyte harddisk....but no, it has to be 50 Gbyte? What can be so big?
[/rant]

2731

Coding Snacks / Re: Docs and Settings Deletion Warning

« Last post by Shades on October 06, 2008, 09:29 AM »

Found these for you:

• WatchDirectory - site is in Dutch...but hey, you live in SA, so it should not be a huge problem ;-)
• DirectIT Directory Monitor - TechRepublic hosts the file. You have to login though (free registration)
• File Alert Monitor - again TechRepublic
• DirectoryMonitor - guess...again TechRepublic!

You can find a lot more in the treasure trove that is called Techrepublic... :-)

2732

Living Room / Re: Drive by malware ... ouch

« Last post by Shades on September 26, 2008, 07:03 PM »

Cookies are small text files as far as I know, so it shouldn't take too much effort to read their content. What I would do is boot from a linux live CD (or when you feel adventurous, create a Bart's PE bootdisk using your Windows installation CD) and access the websites you need for changing the passwords.

Just to be on the safe (and/or paranoid) side...

2733

DC Gamer Club / Re: [FIXED TOPIC] TrackMania Nations Forever - Free, fun, and totally awesome!

« Last post by Shades on September 26, 2008, 06:04 PM »

After your recommendation I did download it and find it a more than enjoyable racing experience. You sure as h.ll can lose a lot(!) of time over racing a track that should take not more than a minute to finish...at least the computer is able to do so ;-)

It truly is something different to have to race a curvy track with a 90 degree angle.....

@wreckedcarzz:
Where can I find your tracks?

2734

Living Room / Re: Introduction To Public Key Cryptography

« Last post by Shades on September 25, 2008, 10:27 AM »

For the interested...download the (Windows version of) OpenVPN software. It contains all software to make your own complete PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) based on RSA. All for free.

Truly interested should also download: abylon READER (Windows only). This is an excellent tool which amongst other things will give you a clear insight into the way certificates are used in your system.

2735

General Software Discussion / Re: Reading Administrator account files from USB

« Last post by Shades on September 24, 2008, 07:34 PM »

If it is looking that you want, a method that will work is booting from a Linux Live CD (or their USB version). Linux does not know/care about Windows policies/ownership etc.

Likely you can even strip all that kind NTFS info from a file when storing it on a non-NTFS filesystem and copy the copy to your new system.

2736

Developer's Corner / Re: Universe Project

« Last post by Shades on September 24, 2008, 06:46 PM »

Sins of a Solar Empire is what I play lately...excellent strategy game with epic battles in space!

@f0dder:
Those battles turn into nice light shows (if you zoom in into the action ), but the game is otherwise also very nice graphically. Besides that it scales very well to the capabilities from the hardware it runs on.

2737

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a good freeware program to backup/restore installed drivers (Win XP)

« Last post by Shades on September 22, 2008, 06:47 PM »

@gexecuter:

Depends. Those files can be useful if you add hardware through the Windows Device Manager. This is not the way common users would want to take when installing their hardware after (re-)installing...but if you are a power user (a bonafide registered one instead of thinking so!  ) this method can prove quite useful.

Then again, the freeware that is suggested earlier in this tread makes life easier. Personally the Management Console charms me a lot more than the interfaces those backup-software forces on me.

2738

General Software Discussion / Re: Gbridge

« Last post by Shades on September 20, 2008, 12:40 PM »

Is google talk popular?
I don't know anyone using it.

-cmpm (September 19, 2008, 11:18 PM)

Me and a whole lot of people here in the South Americas use it. The net is not that stable and fast here but when you experience a lot of outages and/or other flukes with the MSN messenger, GoogleTalk doesn't experience any problem.

This made the switch to use a multi-messenger tool like Pidgin a necessity for me.

2739

General Software Discussion / ASUS mobo dead

« Last post by Shades on September 20, 2008, 12:10 PM »

With IDE, was it not that the slowest device dictates the speed of all devices connected to the same cable?

Anyway, when I was in the PC repair business this was a golden rule. IDE harddisks are already slow enough as they are, why cripple them even more?

2740

Living Room / Re: News Article: Microsoft & Cray Release $25,000 Supercomputer

« Last post by Shades on September 18, 2008, 10:34 PM »

"No, not tonight Brain. I have other engagements tonight!"

(It's Pinky....Pinky and the Brain...Brain...Brain...Brain...)
Ah thanks, now that stupid intro music is playing again in my head

EDIT:
Then again...with that super thingy it should not be so hard to store each episode from that cartoon.

More EDIT:
At least we now know the (minimal?) requirements for Microsoft's Windows Home Server product.....

2741

Living Room / Re: You might want to skip the whole Blu-Ray generation

« Last post by Shades on September 18, 2008, 09:16 AM »

How do the VM companies setup their common denominator(s) for their virtual hardware and how long are these viable?

Good questions and not easy to answer. Personally I have seen a lot of companies (employing more than 5000 people) that only recently have made a switch to XP for their offices. In one extreme case I know of an IT department that is still looking for old IBM clones (with those cases made from forged iron) for use on the workfloor.

This situation not uncommon in the Netherlands, so I think it is safe to assume that this is common practice in more countries globally (the current global economic environment does not help either).

Would it not be that the common denominator the VM's support is based on the update scheme's companies use? At least it is my assumption that virtualization is most used in companies and not on personal PC's.

My guess is that it could easily be 2015 before ATA support is fased out of VM's, let alone the follow-up standards like SATA.

2742

Living Room / Re: You might want to skip the whole Blu-Ray generation

« Last post by Shades on September 17, 2008, 08:24 PM »

@f0dder:

It is very likely that you heard of and/or maybe even tried this one, but is Bacula not the right solution for you?

Using it here and although it is a b*tch to setup, but after that it's as reliable as the Linux distro you are using to run it (CentOS 4.x in my case). 

2743

Site/Forum Features / Re: New Member Map Mod for the Forum -- Configure Your Profile Location!

« Last post by Shades on September 17, 2008, 07:57 PM »

Hmmmm, I was actually more interested in that Japanese Pin-Up Model Serena Kozakura 

(but that could be me ofcourse)

2744

Living Room / Re: The Office of the Future: Can you exercise and work at the same time?

« Last post by Shades on September 15, 2008, 09:31 PM »

It would have (at least) one bright light....

2745

Living Room / Re: Hard Drive electrical failure... trash it?

« Last post by Shades on September 11, 2008, 12:40 AM »

Just trying to not p..s off the censor/moderator(s) from this forum 

2746

Developer's Corner / Re: Best way to sync programming projects?

« Last post by Shades on September 11, 2008, 12:34 AM »

Webmaster will likely not teach you anything about Version Control Systems like CVS, SVN and the rest. At least that is my experience here with the people that do that particular computing course at the (national) University here (the private ones really suck here by the way).

It's original intention is for big(ger) projects that require more than one developer. However, you can use it also as a backup because both systems contain the actual files and I personally helped out people that lost/damaged their website because of their own (or ISP) fault.

They really think you are some kind of magician when you can deliver within seconds the correct version (or any version of any file since you use the VCS of your choice). With proper commenting for each change you make these systems can save you a lot of work and time.

When you are swallowed by a big software house this kind of know-how will definitely be in your favor.

As suggested before, try the VisualSVN server (use it's default settings) and try to work with it through TortoiseSVN. You will get the hang of it soon enough and at that moment you will think how you could ever have done serious coding without.

Let those systems do the thinking about which version of which file should go where and how. Don't burn up (too many) of your braincycles on that 

Ok, preaching is over....please leave money in the collection boxes when you leave 

2747

Developer's Corner / Re: Best way to sync programming projects?

« Last post by Shades on September 11, 2008, 12:06 AM »

I see this one lately on Slashdot:
"Give a man a fire and he is warm for a day, put him on fire and he is warm his whole life."

 

2748

Site/Forum Features / Re: New Member Map Mod for the Forum -- Configure Your Profile Location!

« Last post by Shades on September 10, 2008, 11:50 PM »

There's a huge pin outside in my backyard? 

-Cpilot (September 10, 2008, 10:04 PM)

Be glad that it is in the backyard...if you had better aim you could have hit your house   

2749

Site/Forum Features / Re: New Member Map Mod for the Forum -- Configure Your Profile Location!

« Last post by Shades on September 10, 2008, 11:48 PM »

According to my first attempt I had been cast adrift on the South Atlantic. Later I was marooned on Greenland.
Now I'm somewhat closer to home.

-cranioscopical (September 10, 2008, 09:17 PM)

And then you tell us that you never have crossed the borders of the house/community/village/city (cross out what does not apply). But now we know. 

Let's hope that the adrift part was done on a wooden raft else you would have a terrible time in Greenland (a rubber dingy doesn't burn that good) 

2750

Living Room / Re: Hard Drive electrical failure... trash it?

« Last post by Shades on September 10, 2008, 11:42 PM »

Ah well....live and learn.

Don't try this with high voltages though...it takes a whole lifetime to learn and before you know it the study course is over while saying the mantra of those right about to go on the travel beyond return.

That mantra would be: 'oops' or 'ohoh' (clinical studies still have not lead to a decisive answer on that one)