Recent Posts

451

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

« Last post by Lashiec on December 18, 2008, 06:57 PM »

It's also interesting looking at the listed versions of windows that qualify - I thought MS initially said that only Windows 2000 and XP qualified for upgrade prices to Vista?

-Carol Haynes (December 18, 2008, 08:11 AM)

We students are poor fellas that still have to work with Windows 98. A little help is always welcomed ;)

Your dream might come true:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2008/12/16/odf-implementation-notes-for-office-2007-sp2.aspx
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/16/microsoft_office_2007_sp2_odf_support/

-fenixproductions (December 18, 2008, 06:13 PM)

Cool, Microsoft doing things right! :)

452

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

« Last post by Lashiec on December 18, 2008, 06:50 PM »

Thanks Lashiec, that's helpful information.  What's your opinion on the Cooler Master case I've chosen?  I like the brand, I think they make well-built products.  The case supports up to 7 120mm fans.

-superboyac (December 17, 2008, 12:24 PM)

Looks pretty nice to me, and Coolermaster is a reputable maker as well. Just make me sure you don't install those 7 fans if you plan on having a silent computer

453

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Lashiec on December 17, 2008, 11:21 AM »

go on -
give us a bit of noise - if f0dder can post his industrial stuff no reason for you not to get heavy on us ;) :D
someone introduced me to Ramstein lately - dont know them well enough to recommend anything but I enjoyed what I heard, including the noisy bits - mind you it it was a saturday night after a few drinks...

-tomos (December 16, 2008, 01:43 PM)

OK, don't complain later :P. Since I can't find a decent video (with decent sound) of the song I wanted to post, I have to opt for another one, The Grand Conjuration. Don't be deceived by the first part ;)

Now for something completely different. Depeche Mode's Suffer Well. The video is pretty funny, and the song is cool. Playing the Angel was a really good album.

454

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

« Last post by Lashiec on December 17, 2008, 10:57 AM »

Is it me or is it a bit odd to have the power supply at the bottom of the case under the motherboard? Two things strike me:

• first heat rises so the PSU will add to mobo heat (OK with a cood PSU and a decent fan it shouldn't be a big problem but it is an odd placement)
• second all the cables to connect to the motherboard are likely to have to cross the motherboard and this will disrupt air flow and hence cooling. It is to be hoped that the DVD power cables are long enough to stretch that far - but generally the ATX power socket is towards the top of the board or the right of the board so the thick cable is likely to be in the way of any air flow from front to rear fans????

What do others think?

-Carol Haynes (December 16, 2008, 07:35 PM)

Actually, it's pretty common in high-end cases, though they use partitioned cooling zones. A good example of this is the Antec P182.

Precisely by what you say in the first point, it's a better idea to have the PSU in the bottom. With the PSU on top, normally you have to expel not only the heat produced by it, but also the heat that raises from the CPU, and possibly from the GPU, and let's leave aside the heated air that is circulating around the case. You have a hot spot there, and for example, in my computer, when it's idle the only 'hot' zone in the entire case is the PSU. With the PSU in the bottom, even if the heat raises from there, it's minimal because the PSU is closed tight, and has no vents, so the only heat you get is the one that heats the air that is floating around the top part of the PSU. All in all, it's more efficient, and if you isolate the PSU zone you get even better results.

As for the second point, yes, you're right there. You need longer cables to reach some places, and to not disrupt the air flow you have to some cable routing. Perhaps that's why as lately some cases are designed to let the cables to be routed behind the motherboard tray. Cables are usually long enough, but there's always the odd PSU that is not, and you need extenders.

455

Living Room / Re: How will the Earth end?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 17, 2008, 10:25 AM »

There are already some people out there who won't have children because of the "environment".
Meet the women who won't have babies - because they're not eco friendly

-Cpilot (December 16, 2008, 09:46 PM)

o_O, that's something new. I wonder if it would not be better for everyone, including these women, to adopt children that are already born, and being raised in orphanages around the world. The "carbon footprint" of these kids is already there, but they would be able to provide them a better life while also teaching them how to maintain a sustainable lifestyle. Everyone wins, and despite that radical choice, by reading the article these couples look like just guys who like to maintain a environmentally conscious lifestyle and could be excellent parents able to give a healthy education to these kids.

456

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it finally time to abandon IE?

« Last post by Lashiec on December 17, 2008, 09:52 AM »

Is it finally time to abandon IE? How many more chances do we give IE, or is it finally time to switch, given the many good choices available?

That depends of your security practices. If you patch Windows regularly, you run the browser with limited rights (or use Vista), and you're behind a firewall (hardware or software), I guess it's OK to continue with it. Personally, I switched long time ago. Well, I never switched because IE never was my main browser (unless I was forced to use it), but that's another story.

IE might have security holes, but please show me, how many have working exploits in the wild and what is the percentage of users affected by said holes? I don't mean what is the POTENTIAL number of affected users, I want to know what the ACTUAL affected user numbers are.

That you have never been infected, or that there are not actual numbers doesn't downplay the severity of the hole. Given the time window between the hole is discovered and patched, it's almost impossible to quantify how many people was infected, and if it was due to the 0-day exploit or not, there are many variables in play, so you can't have reliable statistics. But it happens. I've ever witnessed a live exploit of this particular hole, thank heavens for AV and DropMyRights.

In any case, the patch is right round the corner, so patch as soon as you can. And that's specially important for the IE users who are not as security-savvy as the users around these forums, for one reason or another.

457

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Peggle Extreme now free on Steam

« Last post by Lashiec on December 16, 2008, 09:47 AM »

And thanks, lanux, for posting about the nVidia offer again! I never took advantage of it before because I wasn't interested in just a demo of portal. But since I see it comes with some other things, I'll be getting that as well!

-Deozaan (December 14, 2008, 06:54 PM)

And if you have an ATI card, the older offer by Valve is still up and running

458

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR window narrows by itself at random

« Last post by Lashiec on December 16, 2008, 09:29 AM »

My solution for the narrowing window involves deleting the "FindAndRunRobot.ini" file in the installation directory, and running FARR again (you have to reconfigure the program to suit your needs, though). Essentially, it's like starting with a fresh installation. That reverts the window back to its original size. I observed the latest version does not narrow the window as frequently as older ones, but it keeps happening from time to time. Hope this helps :)

459

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Lashiec on December 16, 2008, 09:12 AM »

Heh, I was thinking into posting one of Opeth^w heaviest songs, but perhaps it would be too much for some members :P. So, I think I'll post Burden, it still has a certain edge, but the song is more of a ballad than anything else. Quite beautiful, I should say, perhaps the best track of the album.

I was surprised to see Emilíana Torrini^w has so many music videos, which made very difficult to choose one. Heartstopper is not my favourite song of hers, but it's a really sweet tune, and the video is just fantastic.

460

Living Room / Re: Creative, awesome uses for Google

« Last post by Lashiec on December 16, 2008, 07:16 AM »

Hey, didn't know about the time, pretty useful thing. I use the converter all the time, so cheers to Google for having these features.

461

DC Gamer Club / Re: The Best Gaming Moments of 2008

« Last post by Lashiec on December 16, 2008, 07:12 AM »

Hmmm, pretty puzzling those BioShock crashes, it runs like a champ here

462

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

« Last post by Lashiec on December 16, 2008, 07:07 AM »

I take issue with your choice of hard drives. While the VelociRaptor is OK (despite its price premium), the Segate 7200.11 is definitely not OK. It's not that it's a bad drive, quite the contrary, just that Samsung and especially Western Digital make better drives. My choice would be the Caviar Black, which although it's a bit more expensive, it performs better overall, and it has a 5-year warranty. The Caviar Green is also OK, though the performance difference with the 7200.11 is not that big.

Also, have in mind that Seagate will no longer offer a 5-year warranty in HDDs starting January 2009, so buy fast!

Regarding memory brands, a well-known one is OK. Kingston, Corsair, Crucial, GeiL... I personally prefer Kingston, but that's because it's the biggest manufacturer of all, and its Value RAM is everywhere, and never gave me problems.

As for the rest, my recommendations in the other thread still apply. And remember that first you choose the CPU, then the motherboard, not the other way around

I would not personally go for a Core i7 yet. You're paying a big premium for the CPU, the memory and the motherboard, and unless you're going to use the computer for some processor-intensive tasks, you're really burning money at this point. When the entire platform lowers its cost, it's more than recommendable, but Intel is not going to do that 'til later in 2009, possibly in the second quarter, when they'll introduce new CPUs at a lower price. The Core 2 Duo (or Quad) still will be a great choice for a time.

It would be helpful if you also tell us what you will use the computer for, whether it would be just surfing the Internet and working with it, or if you're also going to game with it, or do some other more exotic things, like graphics or video editing.

463

Living Room / Re: Childhood Memory

« Last post by Lashiec on December 16, 2008, 06:37 AM »

So do I, because it's the same as back then

464

DC Gamer Club / Re: The Best Gaming Moments of 2008

« Last post by Lashiec on December 16, 2008, 06:34 AM »

Believe or not, I have not played any recent PC game, as I've been clearing my huge backlog :). I've played a good number of demos, though, with the conclusion that gaming critics like to over reward winners (that have been declared as such before the game was even released), and over punish losers, being the most recent example a game like Legendary, a run-off-the-mill shooter that does not contribute anything to the FPS genre, but still it's a fun game that has been panned by critics, with some reviewers even pointing to inexistent flaws.

I've been more in tune with 2008 console games, where I've been impressed with Mirror's Edge, a game full of nice ideas but ultimately handicapped by a short duration and a inflated price. Originality can only take you so far when you decide to release a game at the end of year, competing with such behemoths as Gears of War 2 or Fallout 3, and you only offer 8 hours of gaming time for nearly 70 €. Also, thanks to a friend, I got into Rock Band 2, which is really a blast, even if I'm disaster with any of the instruments :P

LittleBigPlanet is really fun as well, and I just love you can play it with another friend, there are not many platform games that allow co-op play, and that makes it even funnier to the point that you're laughing like mad when playing. I'm not sure about the 'social' features (the ones that makes it part from the 'gaming 2.0' genre, or something, blergh), all the levels created by the players I saw are mostly 'meh' to me, and I doubt such feature will sustain interest for the game in the long term as mods have sustained FPS game along the years. We'll see, but the sale figures agree with my doubts, perhaps a console still it's not the best place for DIY games.

GTA 4 has been dull as expected. Don't take it personally, just simply that the GTA franchise does not have the slightest appeal to me. Oh, and the game of the year is TrackMania :D

465

Living Room / Re: Look what Santa brought us!

« Last post by Lashiec on December 14, 2008, 10:32 AM »

Hmmm, weird, when I open the link avast! warns of me of JavaScript-embedded malware in the page (a exploit actually). The curious thing is that it only happens with Opera, with Internet Explorer or Firefox there's no warning.

I could post here the link of the affected page, but for security reasons I think it's better not do so. In any case, the code contained there surely looks peculiar.

Enough offtopicness, I might call p3lb0x in a few days for he to sign a record contract . In the future, I recommend to be wary of sharing audio files with scancode

466

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Teaser: Trout

« Last post by Lashiec on December 13, 2008, 04:40 PM »

Excellent! I was wondering what happened with the project

467

Found Deals and Discounts / Peggle Extreme now free on Steam

« Last post by Lashiec on December 13, 2008, 04:28 PM »

Deozaan brought to our attention on the IRC channel that Valve has made available for free Peggle Extreme, an Orange Box^w-themed variation of a well-known puzzle game with an insanely addictive gameplay. Note that you need to have the Steam client installed to be able to play it.

In related news, as usual there's a weekend-only offer running on Steam. This week, the acclaimed multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 is sold by a mere $9.99, down from its normal $19.99 price.

468

Living Room / Re: Crash course in MUSIC: mp3/meta_Data/compilations/download_sites

« Last post by Lashiec on December 10, 2008, 06:48 AM »

That's pretty cool! I hope they continue to expand the catalog (to satisfy some of my niche preferences ), and the buying options in a near future.

469

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 10.0 Alpha 1

« Last post by Lashiec on December 05, 2008, 12:46 PM »

Since Opera does not have a public roadmap or public discussion lists like Firefox, we can only make assumptions about where it's directed. But in the Choose Opera blog, they wrote:

Note that this alpha release is not intended to show off the full feature set of Opera. It is the first public release of the Presto 2.2 rendering engine, which will be present in Opera 10, made available so you can start trying out some of the new web technology support.

And the timeline shows that the Alpha version includes the changes in the engine, and the beta the new features. Why new features in the alpha version? My take is that they have been worked on for a bit of time. After all, one of the developers, Olli, talked about auto update and spell checking in Opera 10 back in October. Besides, with some of the features, it's key they work as intended, otherwise it would mean major problems, so they give them extra time.

Of course, that means future new features won't be as big as they could be, so maybe we can forget about extensions for now . Or not, we can only speculate at this point.

470

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 10.0 Alpha 1

« Last post by Lashiec on December 05, 2008, 12:25 PM »

It's an alpha guys, Opera Software has clearly stated the full feature list will be unveiled as 2009 rolls along. At least one thing it'll surely get is a redesigned GUI, hopefully a *new* one instead of a light facelift with a different skin. Jon Hicks is working on it, so I expect great things there.

As for the features, there's nothing other browsers already have, even in the web standards department, BUT, they included some things long desired by the majority of users, so props to them. Also, it may be just me, but it seems like they're changing Opera's development method quite a bit, rolling out big features with each major version (alpha x, beta y, etc.), and fixing bugs in the weekly builds, instead of fixing and rolling features as they go, like it happened before. More Firefox-like, which hopefully it will be better for the overall quality of the final product (so I don't have to rant again :P)

471

General Software Discussion / Re: XP SP3 blocks .NET security patches

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

Hmmm, when I reinstalled Windows a few months ago, I applied XP SP3, and later .NET 3.5, and I was offered the security updates for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0, as well as .NET 1.1. What I wasn't offered yet on WU is 3.5 SP1 (and I don't remember installing it), so this may explain the reason behind it.

Windows Update could be better than it is (for example, it does not offer me updates for the Office viewers, but it does for Windows Defender, and sometimes updates fail to download correctly), but I agree with you guys that WS is a bit too jumpy for a simple matter. Not to mention two glitches don't amount to "a long series", even more considering that the first one wasn't Microsoft's fault.

472

Site/Forum Features / Re: New feature added to the forum: "My Personal Area"

« Last post by Lashiec on December 03, 2008, 08:15 AM »

I think mouser said a while ago he planned to add those features (or at least, deletion and moving it to any section of the forum), but we're still waiting...

473

Living Room / Re: Can someone help with my understanding of TOR (The Onion Router)?

« Last post by Lashiec on November 30, 2008, 06:40 PM »

By default µTorrent only allows the connection to the tracker to be proxified, but it has an option to specify if you also want the peer to peer connections to work through the proxy as well. I can only imagine how immensely slow that must be though, even more if someone uses Tor.

474

General Software Discussion / Re: Is XP really that good?

« Last post by Lashiec on November 30, 2008, 06:35 PM »

I don't know about you, but I prefer Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

Oh well, it got much better since then, I'm sure. Probably you used some of the first versions, which even by Nick's own admittance were terrible in the toolbar department. And with the new changes coming in 2.8, things are like these UI-wise. Personally, I prefer this kind of interface to the lean one used by NetNewsWire (not to mention this one seems to lack the newspaper-style to show the feeds).

HA! I knew you were going to mention Pixelmator . There's a lot of software for the Mac that looks great, but it always baffled me that most of it it's payware, and not exactly cheap. When considering the initial price of a Mac, and the extra you have to pay for most software, the design-advantage starts to feel smaller :-)

475

Living Room / Re: Can someone help with my understanding of TOR (The Onion Router)?

« Last post by Lashiec on November 30, 2008, 12:04 PM »

Errr, actually several torrent clients allow connections using proxies, including BitTorrent as it's based on µTorrent (unless they stripped such feature).

I guess that for those programs not allowing connections through proxies you could use Torcap.