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5401

General Software Discussion / Re: Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2008, 05:55 PM »

Ssssh! Don't tell anyone that I did rip copy-protected CDs edited by Sony

-Lashiec (April 01, 2008, 05:46 PM)

<offtopic>Which drive did you use? I haven't found a drive that will let me rip those pesky protected CDs at even 1x speed, and I don't always get perfect results either at 0.1x :/ (plextor PX-716A).

And yes, I obviously do own those CDs, but I want them in bit-perfect FLAC archival form, rather than taking the easy route and warezing from the internet in MP3. Since I bought the CDs, I only think it's fair I can play them in foobar2000, thus avoiding constantly going into the living room and changing CD.</offtopic>

5402

Living Room / Re: Dropclock - 137MB screensaver

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2008, 05:52 PM »

I guess it's 137megs because everything is pre-rendered?

Would've been cooler with something real-time rendered... the demoscene could probably do it in 64kb and almost as nice looking

5403

General Software Discussion / Re: Creative Labs

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2008, 05:43 PM »

As long as they're as separate company and write their own drivers

5404

General Software Discussion / Re: Creative Labs

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2008, 09:42 AM »

Creative have always been bastards - dropping support for "old" products very early, bankrupting Aureal3D (who had a product superior to botchy EAX), not providing proper drivers, et cetera.

5405

General Software Discussion / Re: Creative Labs

« Last post by f0dder on April 01, 2008, 09:10 AM »

Think Phil O'Shaughnessy will get fired for that? Cause he's really done a LOT of damage, especially considering his position. Not handled very well at all...

-Renegade (April 01, 2008, 01:38 AM)

Why would he? If they do it as a desperate attempt of damage control, then that has HYPOCRITES stamped all over it, since he just represents official corporate decisions.

For my new box I ended up buying a Auzentech HDA soundcard and I never looked back.

-ChalkTrauma (March 31, 2008, 11:24 PM)

Are they any better, and is it a separate company? I know they use creative hardware parts...

5406

Skrommel's Software / Re: Skrommel in PC Magazine 91 Utils

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2008, 10:38 PM »

Coolness!

5407

General Software Discussion / Re: Creative Labs

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2008, 10:06 PM »

Creative support has always been... creative.

customer: "Hi, I have a problem with my audigy - whenever I use it in my dual-cpu machine, windows BSODs randomly after bootup."
creative support: "umm, are you saying you actually got windows to *boot* with our drivers on a dual-cpu machine?"

5408

General Software Discussion / Re: Cause of Vista crashes

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2008, 06:59 PM »

Never the less, there's no right way to eject the C: drive while the machine is running. Unless you're trying to crash the machine for fun ... which I tried (successfully...) on some of the boxes that came through the shop.

-Stoic Joker

Hm, I was never allowed to eject the system drive... but back on nForce4, I was allowed to eject half of a RAID mirror, not a very fun experience.

5409

General Software Discussion / Re: Cause of Vista crashes

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2008, 06:34 PM »

Stoic Joker: remember that SATA supports hot-plug... that's why the drives are added there. Might not be the smartest thing in the world, but lots of stuff isn't . I think intel drivers used to do it, too, but my drives aren't listed in the safely-remove list now, so perhaps I was wrong, or it has auto-"fixed" itself.

5410

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Finally a Quality 3D Box Shot Maker On Sale !

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2008, 06:08 PM »

f0dder, you are in a small group that doesn't care about a pretty box. Most people do, to some degree. It is all about professional first appearances to the person cutting the check.

-tinjaw (March 31, 2008, 01:28 PM)

Well, I do care about screenshots, and those have to look nice - I've often passed on downloading/testing a piece of shareware because there were no screenshots, or because the UI was horrible (horrible includes, but isn't limited to, custom skinning where not necessary (all the blue-gradient Office2007 wannabes, for instance, ugh)).

If the image of a box impressed me enough to write a check, I'd want to see that freaking box when the order arrived! 

-mrainey (March 31, 2008, 02:27 PM)

Amen, brother

5411

Living Room / Re: RAM PROBLEM?

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2008, 09:56 AM »

Nope, you have to burn it to a CD or put it on a floppy and reboot your machine, and then let memtest run for several hours...

5412

General Software Discussion / Re: Good video codec for playback on older machines.

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2008, 09:10 AM »

Codec packs are generally a bad idea, you often get more than you need, and some of them have shown stability problems. They do make life a bit easier if you play a zillion different filetypes, but if you just need divx/xvid, AC3 sound and H.264, it's not like you need to hunt down a lot of codecs.

Eóin: iirc Koepi's xvid builds are a bit more optimized than the stock ones, and for H.264 playback the (payware) CoreAVC helps a lot.

5413

Living Room / Re: RAM PROBLEM?

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2008, 08:59 AM »

Put both sticks of RAM in the machine, and let http://www.memtest86.com/ churn away for some hours.

5414

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Finally a Quality 3D Box Shot Maker On Sale !

« Last post by f0dder on March 31, 2008, 08:58 AM »

Even $30 seems a lot for an application with such a simple purpose :/ . OK, this particular app does seem to have a bunch of options, but still. I also never quite grokked why people make these box shots when they only offer software for download, without any physical box product...

5415

Living Room / Re: Upgrading Video and Power Supply on an Dell XPS 400

« Last post by f0dder on March 30, 2008, 01:36 PM »

Also, Dell have started to use BTX in a bunch of computers - that's quite a different layout (motherboard as well as case) than standard ATX, and I believe the PSU is also different. But you should be able to buy aftermarket BTX PSUs... dunno if Dell does more customization than that?

Btw, I have a GF8800GT/512meg, 2 x 74gig 10.000rpm raptor drives, a quadcore Q6600 overclocked to 3GHz, and 8 gigs of ram... and my system totals at ~210W under load. You might not actually need more than a 350W PSU after all, as long as it works stable under load

5416

Living Room / Re: Computer will not start!

« Last post by f0dder on March 28, 2008, 09:11 PM »

So, which is your PSU?

-Lashiec (March 28, 2008, 08:59 PM)

I had money to burn and wanted to eliminate points of failure, so I went massively overkill and got a 750W ThermalTake... but hey, at least that means I only run at ~30% capacity; less stress, less heat from the PSU. At least theoretically

5417

General Software Discussion / Re: are email clients sofware a dead industry ?

« Last post by f0dder on March 28, 2008, 08:23 PM »

Dunno if it's dying, but between Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird (and exchange for the corporate world), you have to come up with a reaaaaally good product to be able to gain even a speckle of attention.

5418

General Software Discussion / Re: Cause of Vista crashes

« Last post by f0dder on March 28, 2008, 07:00 PM »

allen: drivers have to be signed, generally... especially for x64 systems.

Since has a lot of new code, I guess 17.9% crashes caused by MS's own code isn't that bad... it'll obviously take some time before it's as mature & stable as XP SP2. I wish software development didn't work that way, but unfortunately it does.

Also, considering that the graphics driver model has changed radically with Vista, it's no surprise that graphics drivers take such a big pie slice. I would have expected ATI to be worse than nvidia, though.

5419

Living Room / Re: Computer will not start!

« Last post by f0dder on March 28, 2008, 06:55 PM »

first: unless you have a really wicked system, 350W really should be enough, as long as it can deliver those 350W with stable voltages (even my overclocked Q6600@3GHz and a GF8800GT/512 graphics card, 2 x 10.000rpm raptor harddrives only goes to ~210W under full load).

As for what the problem is, I really dunno - could be PSU related, but computers are so wonderfully indeterministic...

5420

Living Room / Re: Made the JUMP! --- X-STATIC About it!

« Last post by f0dder on March 28, 2008, 06:50 PM »

Best of luck, matey - no more slaving for The Man^TM and his dirty dollar!

5421

General Software Discussion / Re: XP boot display problem

« Last post by f0dder on March 28, 2008, 08:19 AM »

I don't think a BIOS flash would help anything... probably some other software conflict, wish I knew what :/

5422

General Software Discussion / Re: console: a great CMD.exe replacement application

« Last post by f0dder on March 28, 2008, 06:12 AM »

I couldn't get tab completion to work anyone else had more luck? This is essential for me being a keybaord junkie

-justice (March 28, 2008, 04:39 AM)

Works fine for me, but it's really a cmd.exe setting, not a console² setting afaik... iirc on XP it's on by default, while on 2k (and vista?) you need to fix a registry setting. If tab completion works for you in vanilla cmd.exe but not console², I dunno

5423

General Software Discussion / Re: Monster Cables- The World should know!

« Last post by f0dder on March 27, 2008, 11:52 PM »

So, you picked a couple of the least offensive bits from the FAQ

See what I found (or rather, what somebody posted somewhere so late last night that I forgot how I stumbled upon it).

Worse, Steve encouraged people to use SpinRite to "recover" areas that had
been detected and marked as defective at the factory, a bad idea that
leads to more failures in the long run, since end user controllers are not
as sensitive as factory test equipment -- they are simply incapable of the
kind of thorough testing done at the factory.  Then of course SpinRite
would be "needed" again to "fix" those failures, a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

As for the people that swear by SpinRite, there are lots of people that
believe in astrology, but that doesn't make it any more valid.

-John Navas

5424

UrlSnooper / URL snooper mentioned in "Alt Om Data", 2008/#2

« Last post by f0dder on March 27, 2008, 09:44 PM »

This is a few months old, but I didn't have a scanner handy back then... URL Snooper was mentioned in the Danish computer magazine "Alt Om Data" (Everything About Data) in #2/2008. My engrish transliterification of the snap goes as such:

This program is a clever little bastard. It's a so-called "packet sniffing" program. The program finds al lURLs to multimedia objects on a page, and if you want something else, you just choose the function "show all". You can filter your search with keywords and specify favorite URLs, so you can access them quickly. But what does this all mean? It means you can download just about any elements of the page you're visiting. You do need a third-party program for this, though, for example flashget which is our third reviewed programs this time.

(Yeah, that was horrible, but the Danish version wasn't exactly a good read either... the magazine has been going downhill for a while ).



PS: gotta love how they were too lazy to do a screenshot of their own, and just grabbed one from www.klitetools.com , without posting any proper credits...

5425

Living Room / Re: Flash Game: Spin the Balack Circle.

« Last post by f0dder on March 27, 2008, 07:02 PM »

Wouldn't say it's difficult in the "have-to-think" way, but my timing sucks... so it gets frustrating. And for some reason, I tend to confuse up & down, so I mess up the whole gravity thing.