Recent Posts

426

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 52

« Last post by Lashiec on December 29, 2008, 12:05 PM »

Wow, CastleCops closed, that's absolutely awful. I did not hang around the forums, but the wiki was an essential resource for fighting malware. I'm even more astonished to see this did not appear anywhere in my feeds.

* Lashiec subscribes to /.

427

Living Room / Re: site:donationcoder.com [your username]

« Last post by Lashiec on December 29, 2008, 11:41 AM »

10,200 directly searching from the address bar, 9,840 results in Google.es, 9,660 in Google.com. Cody is even more famous, but just in the first case (11,100). In the last two cases, I'm more famous than Cody :P (6,210 and 6,220 respectively).

428

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Lashiec on December 29, 2008, 11:04 AM »

Question:
Is there any reason why I would want a wired keyboard?  I'm not a gamer, and from my initial research, it seems that all the premium keyboards are targeted to gamers and they are wired.  I love wireless keyboards, but I'm not finding many choices besides one or two from Logitech and Microsoft.

-superboyac (December 28, 2008, 01:48 AM)

Not really, apart from not having to recharge batteries, and avoiding possible receptions problems. The first concern can't be helped, but keyboard batteries last quite a bit (except in my case, I have to recharge them once every three-four weeks) and they get recharged in less than one hour, and if you buy a decent keyboard, you won't have reception problems. Those things have large reception ranges, and obstacles rarely get in the way of their waves.

Genius or Saitek also have wireless keyboards, although I ignore how good they are. Saitek has a good reputation, but in gaming keyboards, not regular ones.

I haven't installed mouse or keyboard specific drivers for years :) - but I only do use the standard multimedia keys that is natively supported in XP, and I don't need tons of mouse buttons either. I've never been a fan of the keyboard and mouse "drivers" (which afaik don't even include driver components these days, but is more like always-running apps that intercept keys/buttons and launch applications/whatever), especially logitech have been really good at creating monster bloatware.

-f0dder (December 29, 2008, 10:47 AM)

SetPoint is surprisingly lean, as long as you disable a couple of autostart items, it provides good help with media players and they let you access many functions that would go unused otherwise (including encryption, for the paranoids :D). Their visual cues for using certain keys could be a bit less obnoxious (they take a good chunk of the screen), but they're mostly OK.

429

General Software Discussion / Re: Copy protection FAILs :(

« Last post by Lashiec on December 26, 2008, 09:11 AM »

Because either you don't have a modchip on the console or it does not detect the one you have.

430

General Software Discussion / Re: How do I stop selling myself v1agra?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 26, 2008, 09:03 AM »

It's probably all due to e-mail spoofing, the "From" address is easy to forge, and what address better than yours to pass the spam filtering. Spam filters that analyze the mail body in search for certain words will flag it as spam without problems, GMail's filter is a good example, which has blocked Viagra spam that apparently I send to myself (which is ridiculous, why would I have any need to remind myself to use something I don't need? :D)

431

General Software Discussion / Re: Copy protection FAILs :(

« Last post by Lashiec on December 26, 2008, 08:39 AM »

You had me for a moment there with the "PSXfin" name (the official name is "pSX").

Basically, the screen says you're a filthy little pirate ;). But it's fixable (search for "Crash Bash"). More.

432

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Lashiec on December 24, 2008, 12:23 PM »

How about a Q9400? It comes with a Intel water bottle :D. The most expensive Intel Quad Core offer I would get is the Q9550, from there, price increases exponentially and the returns of the inversion are much lower. The sweet spot should be the Q9300, but for some reason, it's more expensive than the Q9400 right now, although it runs at a few less MHz.

If you prefer a Dual Core, the E8500 is nicely priced.

433

General Software Discussion / Re: The OS that won't die!

« Last post by Lashiec on December 22, 2008, 09:49 AM »

I'll gladly kill it when Microsoft releases Windows 7, provided they do deliver something finished, and not an OS requiring a Service Pack to work correctly. The truckload of architectural changes and new features in Windows Vista, combined with all the nice things in Windows 7 they have showed 'til now will mean a kickass upgrade :D

434

General Software Discussion / Re: Is software 'regional'?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 22, 2008, 09:37 AM »

I wouldn't say it's a dumb question, because it's something quite common with certain pieces of software. For example, KDE used to be more used in Europe than in the rest of the world, and enjoyed a significantly higher market share than Gnome, although I think that with the continued success of Ubuntu this probably has changed a bit in the past years.

Firefox also has a bigger market share here than in the USA, particularly in the Eastern countries, Poland and the like. Opera has excellent figures in Russia (around 15% or something), and IE shells like Maxthon are widely used in China. Of course, in the latter case we switch to local-developed software, and in the case of China there are a few other examples, like the QQ IM, which seems to be the craze over there.

Restricting myself to my homecountry, this a land where the only IM client ever used is WLM, the rest practically do not exist (although there was a surge of Google Talk usage a while ago). And a few years ago, the Panda antivirus was the most used here, but with the appearance of better alternatives that were either free or paid, it lost a lot of its appeal. Now only certain magazines sing their praises about it, and not exactly because they really like it, if you know what I mean :)

435

Living Room / Re: Gift-giving season cometh. What computer hardware/peripheral would you like?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 21, 2008, 03:13 PM »

At least I bought this.

-fenixproductions (December 21, 2008, 02:43 PM)

That's a pretty sweet offer, although it seems Amazon UK does not deliver electronics outside the UK and Ireland. Besides, I was thinking into getting an OEM drive and an enclosure, it's a more flexible setup I think.

436

General Software Discussion / Re: How can I dual boot between Vista and XP?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 20, 2008, 10:04 AM »

Well, the problem is finally solved, and dual booting between Vista and XP is working as it should. Thank you so much for the help, guys!

437

Living Room / Re: Can you throw a shoe at Bush?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 19, 2008, 08:07 PM »

Looks like he threw many more things at Bush

438

DC Gamer Club / Two games for the holidays

« Last post by Lashiec on December 19, 2008, 07:57 PM »

Christmas is the time for games, and I found two that look fun and use novel ideas, either in how you control characters, or how you solve the problems you encounter

The first one is a Flash game called Straw Hat Samurai, and as you may imagine, you are a samurai. The objective of the game is to defeat the warlords that are raging war across the land, and between you and them stand tons of other samurais. The cool thing about the game is that the control is mouse-driven, and to kill the other samurais you have to slash through them using mouse gestures. Aim for vital parts and cut them in group to get higher points.

The second one is the work of a company called ratloop, and is competing on the 2009 IGF. It's a 3D platform game, where you play as two characters, the Engineer and the Actionaut solving puzzles and collecting items. Nothing groundbreaking. What it's groundbreaking is the way you can solve the puzzles, which is explained in the link below. My jaw simply fell to the floor.

If you don't want to play or your hardware does not support DX9 (unlikely), watch the video and prepare to be amazed. And curse everything for not having a scanner.
via Pixfans and TIGSource

439

Living Room / Greek computer rebuilt

« Last post by Lashiec on December 19, 2008, 06:46 PM »

They say life was better in past times, and for computers this is true, as they were used for something useful instead of surfing for pr0n. Michael Wright, a former curator of the Science Museum in London, rebuilt a 2,000 year old Greek machine that can be considered as the world's first computer. Called Antikythera, the machine was used to track the movements of the planets known to humankind back then.

There is also a video showing how it works.
via Unhandled Perception

440

Living Room / On photography

« Last post by Lashiec on December 19, 2008, 06:30 PM »

Today I collected a couple of links to interesting pages that involve photography in various degrees. So I decided to include them in just a single post, instead of one per page. Let's start.

The year in photographs

The Boston Globe, like the Wall Street Journal, has a daily section devoted to posting high-quality photographs illustrating different news around the world. Today they posted the last part of a special edition dedicated to showing in photos how the 2008 was. It's pretty amazing overall.

Part 2 and Part 3. The three pages are pretty heavy in graphics, so they may take a while to load. Word of warning: The most striking photos are not showed by default, so be sure to read the description below each one before clicking in the frame to see the picture. A couple ones really are not for the faint of heart, so proceed carefully.

Photo retouching: Before and after

It's not a secret that most photos in professional publications nowadays are retouched using the ubiquitous Photoshop, or similar photo editors. In his page, Glenn Feron exposes some of the work he did for his clients, showing us the retouched photo and the original one if we move the cursor over it.

Weight is lost, wrinkles disappear, breasts get bigger and, in general, everyone is younger in the hands of Glenn. The results sure are better than plastic surgery :P

How to get better pictures

Even if digital cameras are far easier to handle than traditional ones, Chris Foresman at Ars Technica teaches us a few tips on how to get the best out of that gorgeous new digital camera, and make better shots, complete with some graphical examples.

Seasoned photographers will probably not learn anything new, and a few ones are common sense (flash, blergh!), but with the commoditization of digital cameras, knowing how to make good photos sure come in handy.
via Fotografía Microsiervos and the Ars Technica feed

441

Living Room / Re: New Body Spray For Men

« Last post by Lashiec on December 19, 2008, 05:45 PM »

MY GOD, ROFLMAO!

442

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Lashiec on December 19, 2008, 05:26 PM »

The Cosmos is an excellent case, and one of my personal favourites. But I think you can get away with a cheaper case that is still silent, like the Sonata cranioscopical and mouser mentioned, which is built to achieve that. The Antec Solo also has sound dampening material IIRC. In any case, the choice of the cooling components also helps here.

One plus of the Cosmos though, is that is quite roomy, and is built to keep components as cool as possible, as the result of its enthusiast-oriented nature. I don't think you'll have much problems with temps, not getting a fancy GPU, but perhaps you will appreciate the space if you plan to have many drives and swap them often.

443

Living Room / Re: Gift-giving season cometh. What computer hardware/peripheral would you like?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 19, 2008, 05:10 PM »

I'd like an external hard drive for backups. Yeah, that's all I want, I could make the case for more RAM or a new GPU, but I don't really need them right now.

...or a bigger desk for the puter, with enough room to fit a third monitor... I'd buy the monitor myself, thank you, but I can't be bothered to hand over hard cash for a stupid desk!

-tranglos (December 19, 2008, 03:22 PM)

This. Well, not the third monitor, but a second one and more desk space for it would be useful in certain situations. Alt-tabbing gets maddening after a while.

444

General Software Discussion / Re: How can I dual boot between Vista and XP?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 19, 2008, 09:02 AM »

I will try your tips, many thanks

Yeah, after some googling this morning I realized that installing Vista first was not the brightest idea, but unfortunately it was the only way to save the contents of the old drive to the new drive. My friend did not have backups of the files, so nuking the old HDD first was not an option. There are a few workarounds to this, but they would have involved quite a bit of work, and the whole job took much more time than I expected.

Having said all this I must mention that I don't like the concept of dual-booting Windows at all. The novelty wears off quickly and I assure you that your friend will be working in the latest and "greatest" product from the Redmond stables sooner than you and he/she thinks.

Me neither. I barely see myself dual booting between Windows and Linux, which are completely different affairs, so booting between two similar OS in nature to work with the same apps is something I can't see me doing. I suppose he wanted to keep XP just in case, but after a while he was pretty enthused with Vista, so...

445

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft Update. Worth it?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 19, 2008, 08:34 AM »

AHA! Found the post I was talking about. Good thing I remember who was involved in the discussion, and the existence of ZillaSearch :)

Have in mind that Microsoft Update and Windows Update are two different things, although they probably share many traits. Never had a problem with Windows Update in any case, apart from being offered the odd update that is already installed, or software that is not installed at the computer (like Windows Search 4.0). If CPU usage jumps to 100% with Microsoft Update, I can always revert to Windows Update, I guess.

446

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: And... The Ultimate Steal makes a comeback

« Last post by Lashiec on December 18, 2008, 08:52 PM »

If your university has an arrangement with MS through www.dreamspark.com, you can get 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 and 2008... FREE!

-Darwin (December 18, 2008, 08:48 PM)

Hehe, just mocking Carol a bit. Thankfully we have arrangements with Microsoft so we can get for free nearly all of their important software, except for Office, of course.

Even then, without this arrangement, my fellow students know where to get them for free

447

General Software Discussion / Microsoft Update. Worth it?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 18, 2008, 08:48 PM »

With the recent truckload of patches for every software package produced by Microsoft, and the impossibility of tracking patches for the Office viewers, I was wondering if Microsoft Update has been fixed during the past couple of years, and as such, it can be used without fear of seeing the old issues creeping up. I recall we discussed these same issues in the forum, but I can't find the right thread.

448

General Software Discussion / How can I dual boot between Vista and XP?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 18, 2008, 08:41 PM »

So one of my friends finally upgraded his computer (good stuff, I was thinking into stealing some of the components for my personal usage ), and dropt me a call to install the OS, and make some post-assembly work (moving his old hard drive there basically).

The thing is that, while he installed Vista in the main HDD, he wanted to keep XP in the old one. Since the original installation was beat up, and new components would not do any benefit to it, I simply got the HDD there, and left it disconnected. Besides, Vista complained about the new HDD not being the main one, and thus the OS installation phase was halted at that point.

So I installed Vista, changed something here and there, while admiring Vista idiosyncrasies and hunting for moved options. Also, it seems now you need an antivirus if you want to fully "enjoy" WLM chat facilities (and they wonder why I don't use it...). Everything ran fine, though, so I copied the old files to the new drive, turned off the computer, and proceeded to connect the older one and install XP. Just like before, everything went fine, and with my job nearly done, I went to Google for fixing up possible bootloader issues.

You see, apc published a few tutorials of how to dual boot between various OS, including Vista and XP, so I followed their tips to the letter. The problem is that: first, unlike they say there, XP didn't mess with Vista bootloader, and second, EasyBCD did not find XP in the other drive, so here I just opted to fix such thing myself with the tool, because in theory it should work.

OK, it didn't. XP did not start in any way, but fortunately Vista remains fine. I did some googling, and found another way to do it, old-schol, but reliable, using bcdedit. According to the guy who wrote the guide, it should work with two separate drives, but did not again.

So, the question is how to do it correctly. In my mind, a few explanations for the failure cooked over, like that the old drive was disconnected when I installed Vista, and he does not like it now, or that because of the peculiarities of the motherboard southbridge (SB700), everything is running in IDE mode (I nearly panicked when I peeked into the BIOS, and did not see SATA in any place), and the fact that the old drive is in channel 0 as the master device, and both the optical drive and the new HDD are in the channel 3 as slave and master respectively (weirdness) causes them to fight over bus dominance or something. Or perhaps that I should get some sleep, because I'm making up extravagant explanations with no basis in reality, and missed something very evident.

So, I'll appreciate if someone did something like this before would tell me how they did it, or where did they find the information about how it should be done.

449

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA -- ConvertXtoDVD need license key please

« Last post by Lashiec on December 18, 2008, 08:03 PM »

Sorry, but if you want a license for that program, you have to buy it yourself. DonationCoder only offers free licenses for the software it produces, and sometimes they also offer a few ones for external software if there's a giveaway. Such giveaways are previously discussed with the authors of the software that's being offered.

The site also offers discounts for some software (again, in accordance with their authors), but ConvertXtoDVD is not one of them. Although I think it has been featured in one way or another on the site.

450

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Lashiec on December 18, 2008, 07:23 PM »

Is there a website somewhere that does reliable reviews of monitors?

-superboyac (December 18, 2008, 07:05 PM)

X-bit labs do some roundups from time to time, and it used to be a reliable source. bit-tech also does comprehensive reviews once in a while.

Also, be sure to check nudone's monitor recommendations for ak_'s sucky new PC . If you really have the money, high-end Dell monitors are widely regarded as excellent, but such quality demands some big bucks and I'm afraid that if you want two, the budget will rise through the roof.