Recent Posts

726

General Software Discussion / Re: Edit this Autoexec.bat?

« Last post by Shades on September 01, 2017, 12:15 PM »

Thank you for taking out time to explain things. So far i h' tried all the tools necessary to achieve n make a live usb freedos.
But its not working , i h' already bricked a 16 gb brand new drive i bought recently.

-hulkbuster (August 31, 2017, 03:57 AM)

Was that device made by SanDisk, by any chance? Because I have several of these with varying capacities that work fine, except for turning them into a boot-able device. And that while using the exact same creation software and/or iso file with a different brand of pen drive results in a boot-able device 100% of the time.

727

Post New Requests Here / Re: Separate Out STOCK Symbols From Large Text File

« Last post by Shades on August 27, 2017, 05:34 AM »

Are you sure that Windows allows you to write in that folder. Run the exe with 'Run as administrator' option.

If you don't want to do that, you better place the executable in your user folder and try again.

728

Living Room / For those with a CrashPlan...

« Last post by Shades on August 22, 2017, 11:25 PM »

Apparently you do not have such a plan after all.

The company behind the CrashPlan cloud service, just announced that they stop with their services for consumers and only focus on companies. That is until 23 of October 2018, after which the whole service wont be available anymore (for consumers).

Perhaps solutions like Borg backup prove to be the best action plan for online backups. Well, you can host all of your backup needs yourself, but it also allows for (partial) hosting at family, friends or others.

On a personal note: because of this sudden turn in business plans I don't have much faith in cloud based backups, especially for the consumer market.

*edit*
Looks like arqbackup is a decent enough alternative for those that do not wish to host any form of cloud themselves.

729

General Software Discussion / Re: Etcher - A better way to "burn" disc images to SD cards and USB drives

« Last post by Shades on August 19, 2017, 01:15 PM »

For me it is weird that a tool like Rufus (which writes .iso, .img, .zip, .vhd, .gz, .bzip2, .xz and .lzma files) only needs around 850KByte to its job, while Etcher claims more than 18MByte for doing the same, while hiding everything in a dreadfully simple interface. Rufus has always been among the fastest when writing an .iso/.img file as boot-able pen drive. It even allows you to make a portable hard disk boot-able if you so desire (but that requires the portable hard disk to be formatted).

Etcher comes with an interface that is dreadfully similar to a lot of websites today. All graphics and barely any useful content. I guess that is what is Etcher's most appalling "feature" to me.

730

General Software Discussion / Re: Etcher - A better way to "burn" disc images to SD cards and USB drives

« Last post by Shades on August 19, 2017, 03:08 AM »

How is this better than, for example: Rufus?

731

Living Room / Re: Which call app consumes the least data?

« Last post by Shades on August 17, 2017, 10:30 PM »

Intercontinental calls with Skype are the calls that fail the most in my experience of late. Not sure if that is only the case in South America. National/international Skype calls with neighboring countries are quite ok.

The Skype executable takes about 200MByte to 250MByte of RAM when idle or in text-only chats. At least my portable version of Skype does. It also barely claims CPU resources. With modern computers you will hardly notice any slowdowns or other negative things when Skype runs in the background. But I also think that all modern chat/call software has no real problems in these regards.

But even if you find the application that is the most efficient, getting anyone else to use it...that will be your real problem. Which is also why the current big names in this area are so entrenched. There is a lot of inertia in this particular part of computing.

732

DC Gamer Club / Re: Deadlight free on GOG for the next 2 days

« Last post by Shades on August 15, 2017, 10:04 AM »

Ah, ok...my bad, didn't went to GOG to read anything about the pinata. Just remembered the positive feelings I got from a somewhat similar concept in the Netherlands, that's all.

733

General Software Discussion / Re: The Ghost Process

« Last post by Shades on August 15, 2017, 02:40 AM »

Broken monitors:
The electronics in the section of your monitor that converts power from your national power grid to the voltages that the screen needs can break. Usually it is one or more capacitors that have "plopped". Something which happens sooner or later. Depending on the quality of these capacitors. Replacement of such capacitors is easy if you know how to (de-)solder components.

Plopped capacitors is the most common cause of failing monitors. The parts that convert the 220V grid power to the 5V/12V that the parts in your monitor need follows next as common cause of failure. Also rather easily fixed, but it helps if you have diagnostic equipment for electronics at hand, besides knowing how these sections work. This section is the most likely section that has one or more "burned up" components. this is something you usually can smell. Repair of that is tricky. it usually ain't difficult, but finding all components that have been damaged as a consequence of the actual burned up components, that is the tricky part.

Most people simply replace a monitor when that happens. Easier and something new and shiny to play with.


Uninstalling Dexpot"
Did you also reboot your computer afterwards or you just uninstalled? Graphical drivers use software that hooks in the hardware at low levels. Which is why you better do a full reboot when installing or uninstalling anything related to software that manipulates the way how Windows is able to show any kind of graphics on your screens in the first place.

Graphic drivers have improved significantly over the years, but it often is still better to make Windows go through a full reboot. 

734

DC Gamer Club / Re: Deadlight free on GOG for the next 2 days

« Last post by Shades on August 14, 2017, 11:21 PM »

In Dutch movie theaters you used to have a somewhat similar offer as the pinata on GOG. Every week on Wednesday after 22:00 there was a movie showing.That movie was not officially out yet. You paid half price for admittance, but they wouldn't tell you anything about the movie you were about to see.

That showing time was also not randomly chosen. Wednesday evenings are usually occupied by (international) soccer matches, so "soccer widows" and people without any interest for soccer would go. Usually that is middle class people. Loved the concept, enjoyed many movies that way. In all those years, I only walked out of one movie before it finished. If you must know:

Spoiler

The Talented Mr. Ripley

.

If I had a credit card, I would not mind playing the pinata at GOG. 3 USD for a bit of 'prentertainment' shouldn't be breaking the bank. And if you don't like it, there is always the option to gift it to friends/family (who would be entertained by these). Heck, you might even be pleasantly surprised with what you get.

Fully realizing that games are not like movies (in how you "consume" them), I think that the concept behind the pinata concept works for both forms of entertainment. Still, I might be weird that way. 

735

General Software Discussion / Re: The Ghost Process

« Last post by Shades on August 14, 2017, 09:42 AM »

In Process Explorer you have a symbol on top that looks like what you see when you look through the visor of a rifle...the (infamous) cross-hair.

You can drag this symbol over the window that you have a problem with and when you release the mouse button, the process behind this window is selected in Process Explorer. That should make the "hunt" much easier.

736

General Software Discussion / Re: The Ghost Process

« Last post by Shades on August 13, 2017, 04:58 PM »

From Sysinternals you can use 'Process Explorer' to get a real-time overview of running processes and you can use 'Process Monitor' to capture an in-depth view of what processes do on your system. To do that you must use/create filtering rules. How you do this, you can find out on the web. These results you can store for later use.

737

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 12.15's source code has been leaked online

« Last post by Shades on August 11, 2017, 10:41 PM »

There are many chat thingies out there. Skype is quite often very slow when we communicate between continents as of late. So I took it on myself to look for a relatively similar chat application that is browser based and that I am able to host myself. Installing (unvetted) clients is a definite no-no in the places with which I need to communicate. But browsers are much less of a (legal) problem.

Mattermost is one of the more interesting self-hosted options out there, but it relies on NGINX (or however you spell their name) web server software. And that is not what I'm using. Alternatives are a dime a dozen, but not nearly as useful as they promise to be. So I do get where Tuxman's "aversion" to yet another chat app comes from. At least I think I do.

738

General Software Discussion / Re: Decision Analysis

« Last post by Shades on August 07, 2017, 07:55 AM »

Unless some very specific features from Office 2013 are used in the AHP template you found, you can open it in Office 2010 without issues.

But you only know if that is true by opening the excel file.

739

General Software Discussion / Re: Decision Analysis

« Last post by Shades on August 06, 2017, 10:46 PM »

The link to the creator's website is an expired squarespace website. Doesn't bode well.

Alternativeto.net suggestions:
http://www.decisionaire.com/
http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/odm
https://sites.google.com/site/simpledecisiontree/
http://www.genview3d.com/
http://www.openmarkov.org/

Not sure if these links are helpful, but these are decision making software alternatives.

* Edit *
https://www.microsoft.com/es-py/store/p/decision-making-wheel/9wzdncrddccl?rtc=1

740

Living Room / Re: Badly explain your occupation

« Last post by Shades on August 06, 2017, 10:36 PM »

@Edvard:
If that is entertaining to you, then you should try the 'Cards against Humanity' card game...with a set of good friends, of course. The time I played that, I found it to be more fun than I cared to admit. But I was with a crowd that appreciate the 'a dirty mind is a joy forever' mindset.

Mixing and matching words, concepts and sentences that any sane and/or p.c. person would never dare to combine...shouldn't be that funny. 

741

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

« Last post by Shades on August 01, 2017, 08:40 PM »

Some pic I grabbed from FB today:

[ Invalid Attachment ]

Made me think of mouser...

-Ath (August 01, 2017, 02:58 PM)

A 3-legged kitten?

742

General Software Discussion / Re: Search for any string in a web (even in the code : hyperlinks, etc) TOOLS for

« Last post by Shades on July 31, 2017, 08:37 PM »

Web development plugin(s) for your favorite browser. That should show you lots of content and how it is linked. Of course, it helps a lot if you are versed in HTML, CSS, Javascript...etc.

743

Living Room / Re: bicycling suddenly a British speciality?!

« Last post by Shades on July 23, 2017, 12:09 PM »

City bikes are much more useful for casual cycling and have the advantage that you can do much more with it. Now a mountain bike is an excellent bike for the purpose it is designed for. But you are not inclined to take your bike out to get a few days worth of groceries on it, because it ain't that practical.

And for most people that is enough to not consider doing any bicycling., while a more practical model could. I grew up in the Netherlands, which has dedicated infrastructure for cycling and you can easily move 30 to 50 kilo of gear/groceries/children/whatever with a properly loaded standard bicycle. Sure, travel time is longer, but you hardly need any time for parking and often you can leave your bike much closer to the entrance of the place where you need to be.

To me, it is weird that so many people are afflicted by mountain bikes. Even here in the capital of Paraguay there are many cycle stores, but you cannot buy any other type of bicycle than mountain bikes. Friends I know here, are shipping a sea-container here from NL and I asked if there was space for a city model bicycle. Unfortunately, that is the most practical way to get a non-mountain bike here.

The activity of cycling is healthy, but I have my doubts about the posture the cyclist must assume on a mountain bike. Sitting straight up on a city bike model is less efficient aerodynamically. But if you cross your arms in front of your torso and bring your torso down towards the curved handlebar, so that your hands have good grip on the straight part of the curved handlebar, the aerodynamic efficiency is almost equal to that of a mountain bike, there is no strain on any injured elbow or wrist and you still have the advantages of the city bike model.

Speaking from personal experience, I always found that way of cycling very comfortable and makes you more stable as you lower your point of gravity during cycling, which comes in handy when wind batters you from either your right or left side (instead of head on).

*edit: better description of body positioning on city bike model

744

Non-Windows Software / Re: Android: (Wired) File Transfers from PC

« Last post by Shades on July 21, 2017, 08:18 AM »

The Android version of Total Commander with its LAN plugin. Works both with wire and WiFi and is free, but you can donate any money.

745

Living Room / Re: Hard Drive SMART Stats - from the BackBlaze Blog

« Last post by Shades on July 16, 2017, 01:51 PM »

With the price of hard drives my opinion these days is that the first sign of the smallest amount of trouble from a drive means the data gets migrated off it and it gets put into retirement.

-mouser (July 16, 2017, 11:32 AM)

While I agree with the point being made here, you can still put those drive to some use. By using software like MHDD you get a clear idea where bad sectors on the failing disk are located. If these occur near the beginning or the end, you can partition the disk to size that won't "touch" these bad sectors at all. That extends the life of the disk considerably.

For example, you have a hard disk with a capacity of 1 TByte and errors occur in the first 200 GByte of the disk. You can then use partition management software from companies like MiniTool or Eassus to create 2 partitions on that disk. The first partition will be 250 GByte in size, the other partition 750GByte. The first partition should not have a drive letter, just a label stating it contains errors.

Now the disk could be used as a backup disk (for non-essential data) in a USB cradle. If you have a few of these faulty disks, you can make several copies of such backups. Afterwards, disconnect them and store these disks properly. Then these disks will serve you for quite some time still.

Heck, even if the disk is completely toast, you can take it apart and use the platter(s) for a wind chime, the neodyn magnets (strong!) for whatever and the engine that drove the platter(s) can be re-purposed too. The engine is actually a very well manufactured stepping motor with extremely precise tolerances. You will be hard pressed to find better ones anywhere.   

746

General Software Discussion / Re: Eisenhower Method - Matrix Decision Method-Covey Matrix Decision

« Last post by Shades on July 16, 2017, 01:14 PM »

This link should show you a really big overview from all different kinds of applications that you can host yourself...as in on your own computer (if you have a web-server installed there), on a computer in your home network (if you have a web-server installed there) or on your own website/domain.

For the first two options, you could use software like: XAMPP  (free, comes with the Apache web-server, PHP and MySQL database) There are many alternatives for XAMPP, take a look in this forum, as many have suggested alternatives or look for those on website: AlternativeTo.

With XAMPP or any of its alternatives, the following must apply: make sure that all the ports they require are available to them. Normally this should not be a problem, but if you happen to use Skype on the computer you plan to use as your internal web-server, port 80 is often claimed. Port 80 is the port web-servers require and it is best that you kill all running Skype processes completely and after the web-server has started successfully, simply restart Skype. Now your web-server and Skype work peacefully next to one other.

Some general information you should take into account when going through this list:
All these applications come with manuals on how to install them. Do not expect the DC crowd to know about any of these applications or how you should install them. Sure, the DC crowd can make very educated guesses, but you should go through their manuals first and ask on their forums about any problem you might encounter.

Also, it is possible that you find your ideal application can only be used on a Linux-based web-server. You seem to know how VMs work, so create one, preferably using a Linux server distribution, like Ubuntu Server, Debian, CentOS or OpenSuse. Whichever you prefer. Personally, I like Ubuntu Server 16 LTS, but the others are great as well. If you can, do not install any GUI system. This way you don't need to allocate much of your RAM to it.

Once you have created such a VM, start it and access it by using the SmarTTY software in your Windows installation (I use the portable version myself). Think of this software as a supercharged Putty in functionality. Any instruction in the (online) manual(s) you see in Windows can be easily copy-pasted into the SmarTTY session you have opened to your Linux VM. And that makes it much easier to manage a Linux server. To top it off, install in this VM the WebMin software. That will give you the option to fully manage this Linux server through your browser, so you really have no need for a GUI.

By keeping your VM this lean, you can get away with allocating only 4 to 8 GByte of storage space, between 512MByte to 1 GByte of RAM and only the bare minimum of video memory. You will hardly notice that this VM is running on your host computer.

With all of the above, you should be able to start on the journey of finding the self-hosted application(s) that suit your workflow best.

747

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Shades on July 15, 2017, 11:14 PM »

@J-Mac:
12 processors? That must have been a very expensive computer...with 12 i7 processors in it 

1 processor with 12 threads is more likely what you bought, all those years ago. I still work/surf/watch movies (1080p/x265 HEVC encoded) without any problem on an almost 10 year old 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, practically without any problem (sometimes a minor stutter occurs and that is fixed by restarting the WMI service).

You would think that with the shitty power grid here in Paraguay my computer would have died a long time ago or that I was fed up with it. But it keeps working just fine and after adding a SSD hard disk to it, it works great. With that in mind, you hardly need to think about getting a new computer if your usage pattern is similar to mine. But if have not done so already, add an SSD hard disk and boot from that disk. Your i7 will perform better than new.

But ok, say you do buy a new PC from Puget. While Windows 7 will work just fine on any model of new processor (from Intel or AMD) you will notice very quickly that Microsoft will make your Windows 7 installation obsolete. That is, when updating Windows with (future) MS patches, you will get a message saying that your Windows 7 installation won't receive any patch anymore because it runs on a too modern processor.

So, you will end up with Windows 10. Maybe it takes 2 or 3 months after you purchased your new system, but by then the lack of MS patches will make you install Windows 10.

The AMD Ryzen 1700 series processor will beat the performance of your current setup easily and it costs much less than an equivalent Intel processor. The several 100s of USD that you save, can then be used to buy/upgrade Windows 10 Enterprise edition if possible. And if that is not possible, go for the Pro edition of Windows 10. Don't accept anything less, if you work with custom software on which you depend for your income.

All lesser forms of Windows 10 will be updated when Microsoft deems it necessary. You have virtually no control over this and your custom software may or may not survive that update. In case it doesn't, tough luck for you. The Pro and Enterprise edition allow you more time to verify if your custom software remains working or gives the makers of your custom software time to fix whatever problem it encounters. Of course, if you don't have such software and/or don't need the new system for your income, then you can go for Windows 10 Home or worse.

Please understand, I think that Windows 10 as an operating system on itself, isn't bad at all. And there are lots of free tools available that curtail the "phoning home" capabilities, if having a sense of privacy is important to you. My only experiences with Windows 10 are with the Enterprise edition and that edition works well for my purposes. But as I tried to explain earlier in this post, the "rolling release" update method that Microsoft imposes on any Windows 10 Home edition (or worse) is unacceptable for my needs.

748

General Software Discussion / Re: Twist app - "My Company Tried Slack For Two Years. This Is Why We Quit."

« Last post by Shades on July 15, 2017, 11:54 AM »

Here in Paraguay internet services can be "spotty" and lately (intercontinental) Skype communications are suffering because of that. Slack was presented as possible alternative. Although it looked kinda powerful, the need to "sell" the others on this one wasn't something I was looking forward to. Mainly because it looks like you need to communicate through their servers.

Anyway, I started to look at alternatives for slack, and found Mattermost. This one is powerful, allows for fine grained authorization schemes and supports even Markdown. Best of all, I can host it myself, there are Android/iOS clients and there are projects that say they can integrate email and the Jira issue tracker into it too. After setting up a test server and local test session (because Skype was failing once again), the general consensus was that we liked it. But the lack of VOIP/Video calls would still make it a hard sell.

But now I see that there is Riot, which appears to do everything that MatterMost does on web, desktop, Android and iOS, but also includes (conferencing) VOIP/Video calls.

How Slack compares with Mattermost according to the Slant website. Unfortunately there is no indication when which versions of Slack an MatterMost were compared with each other, so some of the listed Pros/Cons might not apply anymore.

Still, the 'vs.' feature on this website allows for a lot of alternatives to be pitted against each other. Unfortunately I didn't see Twist App in this 'vs.' list. 

749

Living Room / Re: Routing issue?

« Last post by Shades on July 14, 2017, 08:14 PM »

WireShark has a steepish learning curve, but with that tool you can identify where things go wrong when you surf to these problematic websites. This software sees all network traffic going through your network and you can gain a lot of deep insight in what your problem is and where it occurs.

Tools like traceroute and perhaps nslookup (regarding DNS) are the first troubleshooting tools you should use to find out about simple networking issues. But for a more thorough investigation, use: Networkminer or when things are getting complicated: Wireshark.

Both can be obtained for free, but require that you install the latest version of WinPCap (also freeware). The pro version of Networkminer is more powerful, but comes with a hefty price-tag: 900USD, but the free version is likely already helpful enough.

750

General Software Discussion / Re: I'm so fed up with (software or hardware) KM / KVM switches working so badly

« Last post by Shades on July 14, 2017, 10:20 AM »

Relais are made to take a "beating", so noise is to be expected, but that isn't worrisome. If you have a mechanical switch that uses PS/2, any problem you experience can be blamed on that standard. It is designed to be under continuous power and therefore reacts very badly when power is interrupted. For work I used to have one with 4 channels and it came with its own power supply and circuitry to keep everything under power whether their channel was selected or not. For years I used it to operate 3 PC's with NT4 and Windows 98 on them. That KVM switch worked flawlessly, but with the caveat that you didn't exceed the maximum supported screen resolution.

In current day prices, that thing would have costed 600 Euro easily. Any other type of (electro-)mechanical switch? Hardly worth the hassle. USB based KVM switches are supposed to handle power interruptions much better than PS/2. Still, get a model without separate power supply and circuitry to keep unselected ports under power and it remains misery. These are also not cheap, but I hardly bothered with them as I went to another employer, where I discovered the Synergy KM software.

Back then it was free and worked very well, once you got your head around the strange way to configure it. Used that for years, but then went to an employer that would afford multiple monitors on decent enough hardware. About 6 months ago, I had a need for KM software again, but found out out that Synergy wasn't free anymore...and I couldn't find the installer in the software repository that follows me around since way back when.

First I tried InputDirector, but that wouldn't work. Then I tried Sharemouse, which, after setting it up only once, keeps on working flawlessly. Your comments about Sharemouse continuously needing to be configured sound therefore a bit strange to me.

There is still another device you could try, which uses the ethernet port on your computer to transfer the KVM signals. While those are expensive, they hardly have limitations. You could even get WAN access to such a device if you really want to. Google for 'IP-Based KVM' if you are interested.