Recent Posts

326

Living Room / Re: Oracle Buys Sun - Your Thoughts?

« Last post by Lashiec on April 21, 2009, 06:40 PM »

This perspective over what future will bring to Sun open source projects sums up things pretty nicely, I think. It did not seem as a good idea to me when I first heard about it, but seems like Oracle is far more involved with OSS than I thought, something that sets a new light over the deal, and means that the most important assets of Sun are safe for now.

I'm kinda worried about the most consumer-oriented products, OpenOffice and VirtualBox. IBM takeover was good news for OpenOffice, because the project really needed a shakeup in the management to end up with many of its shortcoming and idiosincrasies, and IBM involvement in it made it a good candidate for that shakeup, but with Oracle I'm not so sure. I don't know if Oracle will even consider to go forward with it. This, coupled with the resentment towards Sun iron fist ruling over the suite, probably will end up in the creation of an OpenOffice Foundation, which has been discussed several times at OOoCons.

VirtualBox is a real enigma. The package never was meant to compete with heavyweights like VMware, so it's not exactly easy to monetize in its current state. To do that, Oracle would have to devote quite some resources for it, and even then it would take some time to catch up the big names, so maybe they won't even bother.

327

General Software Discussion / Re: Power drag - awesome Opera userscript.

« Last post by Lashiec on April 16, 2009, 07:45 PM »

Would be perfect if it did not get in the way of Ctrl + Shift + Left click to open pages in background tabs, it's a pain to do that with the "New" posts in the forum (the resize handler takes half of the size of the icon). You can always change the shortcut, I guess.

328

Living Room / Re: Stop-motion videos

« Last post by Lashiec on April 16, 2009, 07:23 PM »

The last one has been all over the web during the last days. It boggles the mind to think how much work went into it (looks like everything was done by a single person), and the results are outstanding.

329

Living Room / Re: Tweenbots: A Social Experiment with Human-dependent Robots

« Last post by Lashiec on April 12, 2009, 09:02 PM »

How sweet

330

Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by Lashiec on April 12, 2009, 08:50 PM »

Should music/movies be free or are the content creators well within their right to charge? It seems that society today has produced a group of people who feel everything should be free and that they are entitled to the hard work of others without any sort of compensation. What are your thoughts?

-Josh (April 12, 2009, 01:49 PM)

I assume that group of people will also do their work for free, then

Slowly, content creators are 'getting it', so things will turn for the better. How long it will take? That's another question. I'm also worried about the high probability of the big media companies doing something similar to what music labels did with the tape to CD transition. Cheaper medium, but higher quality. Let's double the asking price! Probably this won't happen with digital distribution, but I see them keeping the prices the same as if you were getting a physical copy.

In the end, that group of the people won't pay creators for their work, though. I mean, if something it's available for free, why pay for it? Perhaps I'm being a bit pessimistic about it, but when you see people pirating games even if they're available for maybe 5 or 10 € in any store (the cost of a mere beer in certain bars), and telling you not to pay for movies, music, even books, because they're up on the interwebz, you don't expect them to change.

331

General Software Discussion / Re: I'm Steaming About Steam

« Last post by Lashiec on April 12, 2009, 07:47 PM »

The Steam client had a few problems remembering the password for me. The first time was when I purchased something via the site, instead of using the client. When it launched the program, I was asked about my password, something normal. But when the following day, I launched the client, it asked about the password again, even when last time I checked the box for remembering the password. The second time, that it happened, it was completely random, though, I was told to type the password, even if I did not uncheck the box for remembering the password anywhere, nor did I launch the client from any other place than the desktop link

Fortunately (for what tinjaw and Crush tell us), I did not have to talk with the Support Team yet, so fingers crossed.

While complaining about Steam, why is it that buying the physical and presumably more costly boxed game in a local store is easily about half the price you'd pay online?

This whole Steam business is the biggest swindle being forced on us by capitalists in a long time. There is no competition so games are being 'rented' to us at prices far in excess of anything we were paying before.

-Eóin (April 10, 2009, 06:31 AM)

That depends. I don't know how is the situation in Ireland, but in Spain you don't save anything buying in a store compared to Steam. Of course, except certain offers, and the games published by a specific company, I always buy PC games online, as it's much cheaper to get them in the UK, for example, than buying it in any store of the country or Steam.

I do like Steam, it offers a bit more convenience than physical purchases, and it has another features that make it worthy (the community, achievements, etc.), but I never used it to buy new games, except indie ones. I buy the Weekend Deals whenever I feel like it, and I love that I can purchase old games unavailable elsewhere, but the prices are anything but competitive, and it's not like it lacks competition (Impulse, GOG...), but it seems there's a pact between game companies and physical retailers to not set prices lower in Steam to avoid mining their business. I'm sure than both Valve and the companies making business with them are not too sad to make the customer pay the full price, instead of subtracting the costs they save by distributing things digitally.

At least you own the games (Valve could do better in this respect, though), something that won't be possible if a service like onLive works as advertised.

332

DC Gamer Club / Braid - Awesome independent run 'n' jump game

« Last post by Lashiec on April 12, 2009, 07:14 PM »

If there's any XBOX 360 user in the forum, Braid will be old news to them, as the game was originally released in XBOX Live Arcade more than 8 months ago to critical acclaim, and receiving several awards during the year.

For those who don't know nothing about the game, Braid is simply a 2D platform game. Nothing more, nothing less. You run around and jump on your enemies heads while collecting jigsaw puzzle pieces. The final objective of the game is to rescue a princess, very much like Super Mario Bros. (there are various nods to this and other games during your playthrough).

What makes it different from another platform games, apart from the really nice graphical style that it uses, is the various ways you can manipulate the passage of time for your own benefit, either to grab a jigsaw puzzle which is completely out of your reach, to grab a key that lets you open the door that blocks your way, or simply to correct your mistakes. It starts letting you rewind time to save you from a certain death at the hands of the enemy (much like in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), but as the game advances you discover new uses based in how certain objects in the game world react to your time manipulation. The developer took advantage of this feature to implement various puzzles here and there that requires certain thinking in how to solve them, which manage to be not very difficult to solve but original at the same time.

The game was released for Windows just yesterday, and the demo is available at the various game distribution systems which offer the game, which includes Impulse and Greenhouse (Steam, for the time being, offers the game and a trailer, but not the demo). A Mac version is also planned. The system requirements are extremely low, so practically everyone can run the game, including netbook owners. The price is very adequate, which makes up for the fact that it seems to be a short game, although probably longer than certain games from the big names in gaming, which are everything but affordable.

333

DC Gamer Club / Re: Playing Grim Fandango on a modern PC

« Last post by Lashiec on April 12, 2009, 06:40 PM »

If it's related to antialiasing, perhaps you can create a profile for Grim Fandango in the control panel for nVidia drivers with the option to not use antialiasing at all, if such thing is possible.

334

DC Gamer Club / Re: Gothic 2 mod team looking for help with English translations

« Last post by Lashiec on April 07, 2009, 10:51 AM »

I assume it's because Gothic II is a german game with a mainly german following

335

Living Room / Re: Conficker - The Facts

« Last post by Lashiec on April 01, 2009, 12:36 PM »

So, it's April 1st...

Anything happening? (no reports in the news yet)

-Edvard (April 01, 2009, 10:21 AM)

Yeah, but at some point you can't tell if it's another joke or the real thing. What a date to choose to activate the worm... So far, everything seems all right, did not see any report other than Conficker becoming "self-aware".

What it bothers me is that browsing the Internet today is a major pain in the ass, because everything is loading much slower than it's normal. What's more, I've been trying to download a podcast during the last two hours, achieving some staggering download rates (2 KB per second), and the cablemodem took like 5 minutes to connect to the ISP this morning. I assume the Net is crumbling under the Conficker hammering, or perhaps it's just a particular problem with my provider.

336

General Software Discussion / Re: When was your last BSOD? I'm betting it was a long time ago

« Last post by Lashiec on April 01, 2009, 12:14 PM »

About one year ago or something. Only had two BSODs with this machine, both when running ping calling Google in the background (at the time I had several connection problems due to a faulty thingie outside the house), and one of them involved FARR. I suspect the use of the "Break" key to stop pinging might explain that particular BSOD. The fact that mouser is a lousy programmer doesn't help at all ;)

On my old 9x machine, I got a BSOD every time I inserted a CD-ROM into the drive, and let autorun do its job. So I deactivated the function, and the number of BSODs was dramatically reduced.

337

General Software Discussion / Re: Tiny PPT Viewer? (That is not Microsoft...)

« Last post by Lashiec on March 31, 2009, 01:12 PM »

Not to mention Impress does not always get PPT files correctly. Ah, the joys of Microsoft formats...

338

General Software Discussion / Re: Favorite Firefox Theme(s)

« Last post by Lashiec on March 31, 2009, 12:38 PM »

Kempelton or Camifox when I feel like it (rarely).

339

Developer's Corner / Re: Python performance boosting project launched by Google

« Last post by Lashiec on March 28, 2009, 03:24 PM »

I guess that Google's purpose here is for building web-applications, just like the way they've built their own custom Javascript engine for Chrome?

-mnemonic (March 27, 2009, 03:29 AM)

That, or merely Google employees doing something useful for their 20% of time for personal projects. IIRC Guido van Rossum works at Google, so there are plenty of reasons for doing it.

340

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft's Turn-off mode in IE8 not enough, says Opera.

« Last post by Lashiec on March 28, 2009, 03:14 PM »

By the way since 9.60 (I hope its not just me or I didn't miss a setting but it certainly didn't use to happen before) on my machine Opera makes itself the default browser when upgrading .
<sarcasm>That's very nice of them</sarcasm>

-rgdot (March 26, 2009, 02:26 PM)

There's an option during the installation phase to control that, and it's activated by default. I think it was included in 9.64, but you never know.

341

General Software Discussion / Re: Media player that uses tagged audio files to create playlists

« Last post by Lashiec on March 28, 2009, 02:56 PM »

That sounds like "mood" tags and autoplaylists, respectively. I call them "mood" because it's the de-facto standard for naming them, but nothing stops you from storing whatever you want there. So, yeah, it already exists, and you can tag audio files with such data as long as the player/tagger you're using allows freeform tagging, although I guess you can always input them in the "comment" tag for those which don't allow it.

As for the second question, autoplaylists can easily achieve this. I ignore how the implementation of these go in iTunes or Winamp (the two I know have such function), but in foobar you can easily create an autoplaylist based in whatever search you want. What you can't do is to save the autoplaylist automatically to an external file, although I think there's a component that allows that.

342

General Software Discussion / Re: Your most used SPECIAL programs

« Last post by Lashiec on March 24, 2009, 05:48 PM »

I once got a tour of a state forensic lab. It looked just like where I went to grammar school: beige cinderblock walls, yellowed linoleum floors, garish overhead fluorescent lights, doors with 200 coats of dark green paint...

-40hz (March 24, 2009, 09:07 AM)

So we can't expect to find a Temperance Brennan working there as well

343

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Lashiec on March 24, 2009, 05:41 PM »

A couple I found in a site whose name I have forgotten

344

Developer's Corner / Re: Does anyone know if there is something “very useful” in IE8?

« Last post by Lashiec on March 22, 2009, 01:31 PM »

IE8 seems to update the core rendering components used by other applications. Shouldn't this be a good enough reason to upgrade?

-nosh (March 19, 2009, 03:14 PM)

Yes and no. While it surely be damn useful for certain applications, waiting some time to upgrade while those apps fix possible issues with IE8 is also advisable, I think.

345

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Lashiec on March 22, 2009, 01:03 PM »

Quick! What Windows version is this from?

-app103 (March 21, 2009, 05:44 AM)

Win2K?

346

Living Room / Re: dvd burner crisis

« Last post by Lashiec on March 22, 2009, 12:58 PM »

thinking of getting this drive as a replacement. Anyone here anything about it? I've been told plextors are one of the best, is that still true?

-PaladinMJ (March 20, 2009, 07:59 AM)

Absolutely not. Plextor does not even make their own drives nowadays, and they're mere rebadged models by other companies (LG IIRC). Apparently Plextor could not compete cost-wise against all the big competitors, and so decided to stop manufacturing their own units. Quite typical in this times, as every other burner is designed and produced by a joint venture of at least two companies (ASUS & Pioneer, NEC & Sony, etc.). Seems like that's not enough for them to offer competitive prices, anyway, I suppose they have to keep the "better-than-the-rest" myth alive.

So, get anything you fancy. The technology used by DVD burners has advanced to the point that all companies are offering good enough units as to not consider brands when buying one. That said, some offer advantages over others that come in handy, like dealing with almost all copy-protection schemes, faster speeds with CD audio extraction or better results with *-RW discs (that's something almost no company still gets right). Pioneer has garnered a good reputation during the last few years, and Lite-On is not half-bad as well.

347

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 12-09

« Last post by Lashiec on March 22, 2009, 12:06 PM »

I'm very worried about the direction Pwn2Own took this year, with statements like this:

These contests contribute to the growing culture of commercialism that surrounds the art of exploitation. In an interview with ZDNet, Miller said that the vulnerability he used in the contest was one that he had originally found while preparing for the contest last year. Instead of disclosing it at that time, he decided to save it for the contest this year, because the contest only pays for one bug per year. This is part of his new philosophy, he says, which is that bugs shouldn't be disclosed to vendors for free.

"I never give up free bugs. I have a new campaign. It's called NO MORE FREE BUGS. Vulnerabilities have a market value so it makes no sense to work hard to find a bug, write an exploit and then give it away," Miller told ZDNet. "Apple pays people to do the same job so we know there's value to this work."

Be glad nobody found a way to exploit the vulnerability during a whole year

348

General Software Discussion / Re: Quicktime only available with iTunes

« Last post by Lashiec on March 18, 2009, 06:10 PM »

Quicktime alternative is just the codecs ripped out from the full QT package, isn't it? And how often is it updated compared to the main package?

-f0dder (March 15, 2009, 07:21 PM)

It's usually updated a few days after the official QuickTime.

349

General Software Discussion / Re: Bookmarks, I am frustrated

« Last post by Lashiec on March 18, 2009, 05:38 PM »

I wanted to try the free version but it looks like it tries install to some other programs which I have not liked it, so gave up on that one. And you cannot try the pro version so it is useless for me.

-kartal (March 17, 2009, 11:12 PM)

Huh? What kind of other programs does it try to install? The PRO version comes in the same installer as the Free one, just choose to try the PRO version during installation.

350

Living Room / Re: Building a Quiet PC

« Last post by Lashiec on March 18, 2009, 05:30 PM »

The main downfall is recovery, not an option that I know, so you would have to be sure to backup regularily.

-vegas (March 16, 2009, 09:09 PM)

The most important ones currently are price and disk capacity IMO. $327 for 128 GB is an awfully bad deal.

You have to do that anyway . Btw, when a SSD starts failing, does it actually lose data, or is it just unable to erase the failing cells?

-f0dder (March 16, 2009, 10:26 PM)

Once a cell excels the maximum number of erase/write operations, it remains in read-only mode.

Isn't it rather early to be making such a claim? These haven't had a lot of time out in the field yet. Are there anything other than simulated studies to support that claim?

-40hz (March 17, 2009, 09:28 AM)

No. What's the probability of a head crash? Do you have big chunks of metal spinning at 7200 rpm? SSDs are not rock-solid, of course, but people don't go smashing their drives with hammers.