Recent Posts

601

Living Room / Re: UK amateur photographers: if you're good, don't use Boots!

« Last post by Eóin on April 14, 2010, 12:57 PM »

I think it's more correct to say that had Ireland not been in the EU we would not have had such a boom time. And now it's not too much of a stretch to believe that were we not in the Euro we could well be in a situation like Iceland.

And boy has this thread gone off topic

602

Living Room / Re: "The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows about you"

« Last post by Eóin on April 14, 2010, 12:51 PM »

Interesting, must check it out.

Regarding this thread, I've been following bits of it and though I still tend to think Google ain't so bad I have decided to switch from Chrome and Google to Iron and Scroogle. Two very simple changes which haven't affected my online productivity in a negative way at all

603

Developer's Corner / Re: .NET Framework 3.0 Officially Released

« Last post by Eóin on April 14, 2010, 08:50 AM »

We also see the release of F# 2.0, very cool stuff!

604

Living Room / Re: Apple Attacks Adobe

« Last post by Eóin on April 13, 2010, 08:06 PM »

Of course if Apple were a monopoly like MS then the EU would probably already be stepping in to prevent this nonsense.

Here's an interesting development. It seems HTML 5 offered enough scope for Google to finally develop a long desired Google Talk app for iPhone, an app which Apple consistently refused to allow into the App Store.

It'll be interesting to see Apples response, my guess is they'll move to disable this application and close the hole they left open.

605

Living Room / Re: Great examples of humorous 3D CGI creature art

« Last post by Eóin on April 13, 2010, 06:15 PM »

Actually I checked most of them but no joy.

On related note- of course it's the artists own prerogative to offer a wallpaper sized image, I'm not questioning that. But I honestly think it would be in their best interests to so.

606

Living Room / Re: Great examples of humorous 3D CGI creature art

« Last post by Eóin on April 13, 2010, 09:48 AM »

It's just such a waste they don't release a big enough picture so that it can be cropped for use as a background. Beautiful as most of those images are I'll have forgotten them all by tomorrow whereas I remember dozens of other artists names and regularly checkout their galleries because having some of their work as wallpaper.

You simply cannot appreciate an image properly unless you leave it somewhere you can actually see it

607

General Software Discussion / Re: Need Windows 7 alternative to RED (Remove Empty Directories)

« Last post by Eóin on April 12, 2010, 12:39 PM »

Ah well that makes sense. I was worried buy the quote "...as they does not mean anything if they don’t have any contents in them." from the technixupdate.com link. I had visions of users purging all the empty folders on their system and then suffering inexplicable crashes  a week or two down the road.

608

General Software Discussion / Re: Need Windows 7 alternative to RED (Remove Empty Directories)

« Last post by Eóin on April 12, 2010, 12:12 PM »

Well once done with care then each to their own. For me I'd consider the risks to far outweigh the benefits.

609

General Software Discussion / Re: Need Windows 7 alternative to RED (Remove Empty Directories)

« Last post by Eóin on April 11, 2010, 11:13 PM »

Why would you want to do this might I ask? Seems rather pointless. Also seems a touch dodgy as (buggy?) applications could well rely on those folders existing.

610

Living Room / Re: First iPad Reviews Are In

« Last post by Eóin on April 07, 2010, 06:23 AM »

Now this does shock me;

It gets worse. There is no way to share the same document with more than one iPad app. For example, a Word document imported to Pages cannot be accessed by any other iPad app, even other apps that can open Word documents.

Even from a lock down OS perspective I can't see the reasoning behind it?

611

General Software Discussion / Re: Video overlay on second monitor under WIndows 7?

« Last post by Eóin on April 05, 2010, 06:10 PM »

Ok sorry, not sure myself.

612

General Software Discussion / Re: Video overlay on second monitor under WIndows 7?

« Last post by Eóin on April 05, 2010, 04:37 PM »

I watch video on my second monitor all the time. Though I tend to use Media Player Classic HC and manually drag the program to the second monitor.

Is that similar to what you mean? I'm not really familiar with the Nvidia tools (though my graphic card is Nvidia).

613

Living Room / The little bug who grew up to become a feature

« Last post by Eóin on April 05, 2010, 02:23 PM »

This is a cool little story about a programming arithmetic bug which caused such a cool effect it became a feature. It's a post Bug or feature? from Shawn Hargreave's blog.

614

Living Room / Re: Be the author of a scientific paper

« Last post by Eóin on April 03, 2010, 04:57 PM »

Going to have to completely disagree with you there rxantos, I don't think there is any evidence of such a thing thankfully. This instance was different, it was the commercial side of bogus conferences and doesn't reflect either reputable conferences or journals where peer reviews are tough and thorough.

615

Developer's Corner / Re: Release the source without the program being open source

« Last post by Eóin on April 02, 2010, 08:37 PM »

If you have a good reason to want to keep control over the "official" version of the software, you can offer the source but restrict distribution and forking - that's something i've thought about and continue to think about.

-mouser (March 31, 2010, 05:33 AM)

Care to offer some rational? Just curiosity on my part. I could see for example a dev being quite happy for folks to take bits of code and integrate them within their own apps while at the same time not wanting someone to fork when they could offer their additions back to the original application.

616

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 Requests

« Last post by Eóin on April 02, 2010, 05:43 PM »

I realize dodgy drivers can wreak havoc on a system, but so can dodgy applications. If the requirement could either be turned off, or if the fee was within the afford ability of a hobby programmer I'd have no problem, but without those I see greed before the user.

617

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 Requests

« Last post by Eóin on April 02, 2010, 05:27 PM »

Ye serious? Truecrypt, Sandboxie, ImDisk Virtual Disk, and lord knows how many other excellent and often free opensource application currently have to pay at least $230/year just so people can use their products without resorting to dodgy hacks like Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider w/ Remove Watermark.

How does such a system ultimately benefit anyone but Microsoft's greed?

618

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 Requests

« Last post by Eóin on April 02, 2010, 04:17 PM »

Don't require driver signing for 64bit versions!

619

Living Room / Re: Cheers as Large Hadron Collider smashes atoms

« Last post by Eóin on April 01, 2010, 10:03 AM »

Honestly I suspected as much. But given the hype and media publicity that point of view has gotten it no harm to always sit a rebut beside it.

620

Living Room / Re: How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords

« Last post by Eóin on April 01, 2010, 10:01 AM »

I'm happy to believe my common password isn't human guessable, but I'd say it is bruteforce-able. I don't use it for any site which deal with money but still if someone guessed it there'd probably be a way to go from it to some of what I'd consider by more secure passwords.

621

Living Room / Re: Cheers as Large Hadron Collider smashes atoms

« Last post by Eóin on April 01, 2010, 09:10 AM »

Anyway, even if they create a black hole it's unlikely to do anything other than evaporate instantly. So no end of the world destruction even if they create one, which they probably won't

622

Living Room / Re: First iPad Reviews Are In

« Last post by Eóin on April 01, 2010, 08:45 AM »

There's already a rather... shall we say critical thread for the iPad so I'm not going to go down that road.

One of the main selling points of the device is media consumption. And I do appreciate it's abilites there but I also think it over stepped it's mark by sacrificing too much portability. The iPhone couldn't fill that purpose properly because it only had a 480x320 resolution, but at the moment my HD2 has a 800x480 4.3" screen. So it's fantastic for browsing the web, full web that is not sites optimized for mobiles. Also eBooks work great and PDFs, though not perfect, are very readable.

I'm not suggesting that such a phone is up the iPad standards for those purposes but the fact that I can fit my phone in my jeans means I always have it with me.

623

Living Room / Re: Low energy use always on pc -- what's better, a laptop or a mini (htpc) pc?

« Last post by Eóin on March 31, 2010, 10:29 AM »

Not to hijack, but I never heard of a wonk before 

624

Living Room / Re: Low energy use always on pc -- what's better, a laptop or a mini (htpc) pc?

« Last post by Eóin on March 30, 2010, 09:36 PM »

here's another idea, the Viewsonic VOT132. iI admit it doesn't address either power or longevity questions but one cool feature is CUDA and you did say you're interested in running simulations and generated art on the display.

625

Living Room / Re: Low energy use always on pc -- what's better, a laptop or a mini (htpc) pc?

« Last post by Eóin on March 30, 2010, 02:48 PM »

I ordered myself two of these BeagleBoards just recently for a similar purpose to what you're suggesting.