Recent Posts

901

General Software Discussion / Re: Wikidforum - New forum software with wiki and CMS support

« Last post by JavaJones on January 19, 2011, 11:57 AM »

I have some experience using a wiki-like theme for SMF and honestly it's a far cry from a real wiki. A good wiki will have comment functionality as well so that, even if normal people don't want to edit the wiki articles directly, they can comment, and then - as you said - their feedback can be incorporated. But that's obviously not the ideal scenario. Teaching people to actually use a proper wiki is certainly advantageous where possible.

One of the *major* differences with SMF (or any forum) from a wiki is version control/history, which can be very important for informational articles and where you have lots of possible editors. Interlinking/structure and categorization some other important differences where a wiki has unique value. Bottom line I think a wiki is a lot better for certain purposes than a forum, and the combination of the two - if done well - could be very good. I haven't had a chance to test Wikid yet but I'm definitely intrigued. Unfortunately their own forum is not (yet?) very active and has few examples, but still promising.

- Oshyan

902

Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 17, 2011, 07:47 PM »

Truth be told no, I have not used a newer, good SSD. But I do know how much they cost and their data storage restrictions, and I just don't personally find it worthwhile at this point. Of course it's worthwhile for some, and could be a replacement for or addition to the built-in drive on the Lenovo as well, if desired.

- Oshyan

903

Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 17, 2011, 07:27 PM »

I just came across this rather awesome sounding Lenovo option:
http://www.tigerdire...ls.asp?EdpNo=7120341
It's only 4GB of RAM (upgradeable of course) but it's using the latest Intel "Sandy Bridge" generation of Core i7 CPU, so it's going to be very fast. It has reasonably fast discreet graphics. Weight is average, battery life OK ("up to 3 hours"), it's 15.6" with 1366x768 which is about as good as you'll get without a high-end screen (that will be hard to read without "big fonts" at that resolution and screen size anyway). Best of all IMO is it doesn't have a separate numpad and the touch pad is therefore centered and not offset (a huge complaint for me with last generation 15.6" laptops). It includes Bluetooth but no USB 3. Has both HDMI and VGA out. SSD is not that big a benefit IMHO, and not worth the cost.

Price is reasonable at $899, no tax with TigerDirect to most states. I'm contemplating buying this one myself...

- Oshyan

904

General Software Discussion / Re: Wikidforum - New forum software with wiki and CMS support

« Last post by JavaJones on January 17, 2011, 02:50 PM »

*Very* interesting. I shall investigate!

- Oshyan

905

General Software Discussion / Re: Mother of all video player discussion threads

« Last post by JavaJones on January 17, 2011, 02:42 PM »

What recommends MediaRevolution over free, powerful, play-anything options like KMPlayer, SMPlayer, SPlayer, etc?

- Oshyan

906

General Software Discussion / Re: Mother of all video player discussion threads

« Last post by JavaJones on January 17, 2011, 12:47 AM »

SMPlayer is a front-end to MPlayer. As far as I know MPlayer is essentially a commandline (no GUI) video player, originally for Linux (each platform evidently has one or more GUI front-ends like SMPlayer). MPlayer has very broad format support, largely enabled through use of the common ffmpeg playback libraries. Thus SMPlayer (SMP) has similarly broad format support. The focus of SMP seems to be squarely on functionality and format support, with theming and other more aesthetic touches being absent or very secondary.

I am testing SMPlayer version 0.6.9 portable. It has a simple but functional GUI, no real "skinning" to speak of. It has a lot of visible controls for things like switching audio streams and subtitles, which I appreciated. Startup is extremely fast, in fact I would say it starts up and plays videos faster than KM or LA in most cases (though only by a second at most). Playback of most test files was generally good. Audio switching worked in most files, with the exception of OGG. However it was unfortunately unable to play blu-ray rips from simple drag-and-drop of the rip folder (which both KM and LA handle just fine). Seeking in one .TS file I had didn't work very well either, and playback had some visual errors, but otherwise files from MKV to AVI to WMV all played well. As noted above SMP and LA played a WMV file I have better than KM, which was interesting (just a slight but noticeable difference in smoothness).

SMP also comes with some interesting additional features such as looking up subtitles online for a playing movie. It also boasts of its ability to remember settings for all movies that have played, including things like which audio track was selected. I didn't personally find the "remember" feature that useful, in fact I disabled it for testing purposes as it just hampered fair testing, but I could see its appeal. I tried the online subtitle feature, but wasn't able to get it to work right. I didn't try very hard though. I found SPlayer's similar feature to be more obtrusive because it was automatic (but at least it worked). Every file I played it would try to automatically find a subtitle. This can be disabled in Splayer of course, more on that later.

Options and customization are fairly good. There are some obscure options, mostly to do with the MPlayer underpinnings, but most settings are clear and many have tool-tip style help text. I was able to setup my preferred mouse and keyboard settings easily due to a nice system of provided controls. Controls for adjusting video settings, e.g. contrast, are provided in a non-modal window which allowed me to still control the video while adjusting settings (better than LA in that regard), however the built-in video settings did not actually have an effect (I think this may be because my graphics card is overriding them for video overlays). I also found a chance to test the built-in deinterlace functions which performed fairly well, although I did see some slight jerkiness once or twice, which I am not certain is related (but seemed to be). CPU use was not overly high at the time I saw this.

Overall SMPlayer is a nice option. It is simple and straightforward, plays a majority of formats well, and is very fast. Although theming is not a big focus of mine, I did find the aesthetics of the UI to be somewhat lacking. Somehow the UI experience is also just a bit less "smooth" than KM, though it's hard to put my finger on exactly why. Quite frankly though, I was surprised and impressed by how good an MPlayer front-end could be. I initially expected something much more clunky, closer perhaps to VLC than anything, but I would say SMP bests VLC in many - if not most - respects, and is overall a good contender for the best player in my opinion.

So thus far SMPlayer comes closest to dethroning KM, and I will probably revisit it a few times more to see if it can complete its coup...

- Oshyan

907

General Software Discussion / Re: Mother of all video player discussion threads

« Last post by JavaJones on January 16, 2011, 09:50 PM »

Alright, on to Light Alloy, a player I've heard a lot about (mostly from superboyac ), but never tried (partly because it's commercial - same reason I never got into Zoom Player).

One thing I realized is I should really be mentioning the versions I'm testing as this thread will no doubt age and things will get out of date, especially with newer options like Splash evolving potentially more quickly. I've edited my Splash blurb above to include the version number I tested.

For Light Alloy (LA), I am testing the portable version, 4.5.4. The first impression is good. LA is very quick to start up as superboyac has mentioned many times. The UI comes up almost instantly. Actual time to start playing a file is however not noticeably faster than KM in my tests. I'm on an i7 860 with 4GB of RAM and in multiple successive tests they were pretty much equal in load time, probably more coming down to disk speed than anything. Average time to load and begin playing a 4.5GB MKV file was about 2.5 seconds for both. Times were similar for 2+GB AVI files, 4+GB .TS and .M2TS files as well. Even loading a 40GB blu-ray rip worked well and loaded in barely longer than the other files. This is on both players though, so LA is not noticeably faster in my experience.

The UI is overall clear and clean, easy to understand and use. It does lack a bit of polish in some areas, for example the playlist buttons do not match the default skin, and some of the pop-up settings windows (e.g. video controls for brightness, etc.) are not skinned at all. This contrasts with KM where there is a very unified look and feel throughout most skins, including the default(s). LA has a simpler menu system, though with similar general areas. It offers most of the control one would want, but is of course not as comprehensive as KM. It's a good mid-level of complexity for a serious but not really dedicated video tweaker. The important thing is out of the box it "just works".

LA played anything I tested it with fairly well. However I ran into problems with selection and consistent playback of alternate audio tracks in blu-ray rips and AVI files. Alternate audios in MKV and OGG worked better, but still showed occasional problems. These issues consisted either of delays in switching audio tracks (particularly in blu-ray rips), inconsistent selection of audio tracks (again in blu-ray rips), or freezing video (with the audio continuing). The latter occurred particularly with AVI and MKV files with alternate audios. I also found it more cumbersome to switch audios with a right-click or modal pop-up dialog than the simple UI pop-up menu in KM (very fast and easy). On the plus side, I did find a WMV file that LA (and SMP, below) played more smoothly than KM in my current config. I'll be looking into my KM config for WMV settings to see if there's anything I can tweak to improve this.

Unlike Splash, LA provides a full set of customizable hotkeys, and also allows more limited customization of mouse input (adequate for my needs). Also pleasing was that the default controls were more familiar than Splash, e.g. middle click to full screen. Options in general were plentiful but not exhaustive or overwhelming. Option layout was good, better than KM many would probably say, though it's hard to be fair given KM has at least twice as many.

Overall I'm fairly pleased with LA, but I don't find it to be an improvement over KM in any way, at least in my testing. Given KMs greater configurability and power, as well as comparable speed, format support, and superior alternate track selection and syncing, not to mention KM being free, it's clear at this point that I'm not switching to LA for now.

Next up are SMPlayer (an MPlayer front end) and Splayer (an MPC-HC derivative).

- Oshyan

908

Living Room / Re: 8 stupid amazon products with impressively sarcastic reviews

« Last post by JavaJones on January 15, 2011, 12:16 AM »

Haha, great stuff! There are tons of crazy products and reviews on Amazon, but sifting through the reviews for the really funny ones can take time. Thankfully cracked.com editors get paid to waste time.

A word of warning: Cracked.com can be addictive. Whatever you do, don't click the "Recommended for Your Pleasure" or Related links. It will never stop! I speak from experience. 

- Oshyan

909

Living Room / Re: Link: Why Google does not qualify for searching the web anymore

« Last post by JavaJones on January 14, 2011, 08:02 PM »

This is a very cool "search engine anonymizer" which may help determine, at least in part, which search engine really has the best results across a broad spectrum of searches and individual opinions:
http://blindsearch.fejus.com/
Linked from Slashdot comments on that article mouser mentioned.
And a link to the results after 8 weeks of testing:
http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=839
Unfortunately those results are from more than a year and a half ago. I wonder if he would publish updated numbers...
Here's a video from March of last year with perhaps updated numbers:
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=aJgx3LSxWN0 (warning: NSFW!)
Maybe we can all start using this for some real world searches for a bit and see what kind of results we get?

- Oshyan

910

Living Room / Re: Lots of new members

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2011, 08:10 PM »

Why is it that when a new member joins only to berate the sign-up method/license key method, we have people who decide to pick on him? While I can understand the frustration, and I understand the opposing view, do we really need to have the same comments appear time after time, regardless of how the original poster comes across? Wouldn't it be better to just let mouser handle this and move on? Just a thought

-Josh (January 13, 2011, 07:52 PM)

Agreed.

- Oshyan

911

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations for small business antivirus?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2011, 05:52 PM »

Cool, thanks. That's definitely a different direction, worth thinking about.

- Oshyan

912

Living Room / Re: Link: Why Google does not qualify for searching the web anymore

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2011, 05:42 PM »

Interestingly that article is also essentially makes a statement exactly opposite of some made in this thread: "search is less painful than it used to be". Regardless of whether Bing is better than Google (which the article indicates, by a small margin), the author still seems to feel we've come a long way and not necessarily regressed a lot. Others here seem to perhaps feel differently?

Anyway, very glad to see a semi-objective comparison!

- Oshyan

913

General Software Discussion / Recommendations for small business antivirus?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2011, 03:42 PM »

Hi all, I know there are some folks here who have IT consultancies or manage corporate IT infrastructures themselves. I'm hoping for some good advice on antivirus/security software for a small-to-medium sized business.

Currently we use Kaspersky, which we've had for the last 3 years. In that time the client software has been upgraded fairly minimally by Kaspersky while the desktop client has jumped something like 4 versions (somewhat standard for enterprise clients I understand). It has generally been more of a resource hog than we'd like, it's finicky in its settings, and does have a higher-than-desirable false positive rate. We've also had some malware/viruses make it through since using it (admittedly the fault of the user to some degree, but still). The pricing and protection level at the time we purchased seemed like the best, but now we're hoping things may have changed.

We're looking for a product with a high level of security (obviously), but hopefully with a low false positive rate. Additionally and importantly, it should have low resource use; this has been a source of major frustration with Kaspersky over the years. We also really just need it to have antivirus and antispyware and other malware (trojans, etc.) protection. We don't need firewall, antispam, instant messaging protection, p2p, etc, etc. We handle all that through our gateway and/or other systems like Google Apps (spam). We also need central management of the clients. We have approximately 30 desktops as well as up to 4 Windows servers (VMs) that need to be covered. Desktop OS is a mix of Win XP (about 60%) and Windows 7 with a very few Vista clients.

We're an educational and non-profit customer, so we can get some discounts. Pricing is important but far from a key factor.

So far we've had Norman Endpoint Protection recommended by one vendor and Symantec Endpoint Protection by another (CDWG). Benchmarks show mixed results for either of those as well as other options:
http://www.av-compar...ormance_dec_2010.pdf
http://www.passmark....esting%20-%20SMB.pdf
Symantec does seem to do pretty well, but then so does Kaspersky! I'm really hopeful that Kaspersky isn't the best we can get...

Any and all recommendations, advise, and experience appreciated!

- Oshyan

914

Living Room / Re: Aspartame: Sweet Misery - A Poisoned World (Wikipedia Abuse)

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2011, 12:50 PM »

I hear you, yeah. I do think the article could be improved.

- Oshyan

915

General Software Discussion / Re: Mother of all video player discussion threads

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2011, 02:52 AM »

I tend to prefer codec-bundled players, but I don't use portable apps much, if at all. So in general I'm testing whatever version is installable and includes codecs. Most of the time I've found players default to one approach or another, either they include codecs (e.g. KM, GOM, MPC) or they don't (WMP, BSPlayer, older versions of Light Alloy). Light Alloy is one of the few I've seen that gives you an option of different downloads/installs for bundled codecs vs. not.

- Oshyan

916

General Software Discussion / Re: Subsonic: Free,web-based personal media streamer/server

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2011, 02:50 AM »

Wow, that sounds highly promising. I've been tinkering with Gmote and the accompanying Android app recently, but it's rather limited. I'd love something that worked a bit better. I'll definitely check Subsonic out!

- Oshyan

917

Living Room / Re: Aspartame: Sweet Misery - A Poisoned World (Wikipedia Abuse)

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2011, 02:48 AM »

As far as I saw all the criteria are standard Wikipedia requirements for well-written, sourced articles. Just because they didn't trot out a full list of them every time one part was not satisfied, doesn't mean they're just randomly coming up with reasons to deny. Believe me I understand what you're saying and I don't entirely disagree with you, but I'm not as convinced there's wrongdoing here. It's a difficult subject, and the truth is no, a documentary that interviews a bunch of "victims", without in-depth scientific inquiry, is *not* a valid primary source. Most documentaries in fact should probably not be considered *primary* sources. They are inherently and necessarily shallow in their information presentation due to the format. But *their* source materials should be valid. It's all a question of getting back to the root. I don't know if there are any/many legitimate roots for the aspartame information, unfortunately. That's not to say the information is fundamentally invalid, just that it may not yet have been properly, verifiably tested. That is of course a problem with all controversial material...

Let the "fringe" people get to dropping some serious science on the scene and they'll be funky in no time. Or something. Sorry, I'm in a silly mood tonight.

- Oshyan

918

General Software Discussion / Re: Can we talk about mkv files here please?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2011, 02:41 AM »

Well, if you want to do it by mouse, KM can handle the audio stream switching easily. Just click the icon in the lower-left of the player that displays the audio info about the currently playing file, e.g. "OGG | 2CH". That will bring up a menu of audio stream options, usually labelled (if they've been created properly). I'm pretty sure there's a good way to do similar chapter jumping in Potplayer, and maybe even KM, but not sure.

I use the audio switching a lot but almost never use for chapter skipping. Do you actually have a lot of files with chapter markers?

- Oshyan

919

General Software Discussion / Re: Can we talk about mkv files here please?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 12, 2011, 07:53 PM »

Sad to say it, but Daum Potplayer actually handled chapters pretty well, unlike (apparently!?) KMPlayer. I've heard KM supports chapter markers, but I don't know how to enable it or at least make them visible in the time line. It does have skip chapter hot keys I believe. Potplayer actually shows them in the video time line and labels them as well, which is nice. Unfortunately I disliked Potplayer for other reasons, heh.

KM also has a hotkey for audio track switching. It's Ctrl-X on my install here, I think that's default. It doesn't allow you to pick a specific track, but you can cycle through them at least. There are hotkeys for just about anything in KM...

- Oshyan

920

General Software Discussion / Re: Mother of all video player discussion threads

« Last post by JavaJones on January 12, 2011, 07:46 PM »

Ok so I mentioned in the KMPlayer/Daum Potplayer thread that I had decided against Potplayer for now. I just found it a bit too finicky and, unlike The KMPlayer (KM from here on out), it really did require a lot of tuning to work right and play my media as I want it. Which is odd as it's from the same (original) author as KM. The great thing about KM is that it works really well out of the box, and is pretty easy to tweak further for even better quality in video and audio. It has a lot of power, but you don't *need* to use all the settings to get good results. Somehow Potplayer lost this value, which is odd as it retains so much...

Anyway so I'm back to KM and still really love it, but it does miss a few features and some UI polish that I enjoy from other players. Good examples of missing features are automatic/built-in GPU acceleration (Splayer, Splash) and auto-codec download (Splayer). While I like the power and flexibility of KM, I also appreciate the simplicity of some other player's features like Splash's "Video Enhancement" settings (basically sharpness and saturation, but nicely implemented). So, while KM is near ideal for me as a video player, it still could be better. Hence my search continues.

That leads me to my renewed testing of more player options. This time I started with Splash, a relatively new and slick entrant. It supports GPU acceleration natively (nVidia-based I believe), has decent subtitle support, and some nice, easy to use video "enhancement" options, including upconversion (increasing frame rate via interpolation for better smoothness), sharpening ("clarity"), and saturation/"vibrance"

I am testing with Splash Pro v1.4.0.0. Out of the box the results are very nice and enhancement controls can actually make a noticeable difference. A nice split-screen capability is included to show before/after on the left/right half of the screen, respectively, so you can really tell the effect of a video setting. The UI is smooth and polished-looking with a nice auto-hide control bar, among other things. Unfortunately despite the good first impression Splash doesn't hold up to my more demanding video tasks. It does not, for example, support OGG format videos, among others. It also just doesn't have enough control for me, particularly in the area of hotkeys and customization of other controls. It has its own hotkey for full screen (simply Enter), which I could learn to use, but I like also being able to control this with the mouse, especially as I often use these players on an HTPC, where the mouse/pointing device is the primary means of interaction. Being able to middle-click as in KM and other players to go full-screen is something I've really come to love and don't want to let go of. Splash does not in fact seem to have *any* capability to customize its controls, which is a big missing feature in my opinion.

Next on my list to play with is Light Allow, a strong recommendation from suberboyac. I'm also going to revisit Splayer, which I have liked in the past (and have on my media machine as a backup player), as well as SMPlayer, and possibly ALPlayer *and* ALLPlayer (yes, they're different ).

- Oshyan

921

General Software Discussion / Mother of all video player discussion threads

« Last post by JavaJones on January 12, 2011, 07:30 PM »

As I'm getting back into video player testing, I've been looking around DC for discussion on the subject. There is of course tons of good dialog, but it's scattered all over a bunch of different threads. While I realize each thread has its individual purpose and no one player may be best for *everyone*, I thought it might be nice to have a more clearly specified "general best video player discussion" thread, similar to the ever-lasting "brainstorming for note taking software" thread and ones like it. I didn't find another existing thread that seemed quite appropriate for this, e.g. pulling up superboyac's recent rather busy and productive thread "Video player: What's the quickest (fastest/lightest)?" might not be appropriate as the thread did start with a very specific purpose. This is intended to be much broader and more comprehensive.

So here's my bid for a thread that talks in general about pros and cons of various video players, and hopefully will help each person find the "best" player for their needs. It's my intention that this thread be the one people update and pull from the depths of history whenever they have a comment on a video player (unless it's a specific question or a more focused need, like SBAC's "fastest" request).

I'll leave this post to stand alone and do a follow-up reply with the actual video player testing notes that prompted me to start this.

Here's a list of related previous threads:
Lightest/fastest: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=20880.0
Best video player (old thread, poll, outdated options): https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=2143.0
Best portable player: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=24549.0
Request for a "good player" (short thread, answered): https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=18292.0
KMPlayer and GOMplayer: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=8081.0
Zoom Player discussion: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=4400.0
Early KMplayer thread: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=5410.0
Thread about "official" players (e.g. Quicktime, Realplayer): https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=17462.0
Older thread about VLC: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=15067.0
KMPlayer and Daum Potplayer: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=24375.0
Request for a player with certain features: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=20022.0

And of course it wouldn't be complete without a Wikipedia link
http://en.wikipedia....ideo_player_software
Note that the Wikipedia list is out of date as it does not include e.g. Splash, Light Alloy and Splayer among others.

- Oshyan

922

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: JottiQ

« Last post by JavaJones on January 12, 2011, 06:42 PM »

I agree, remove the function. If there is a way to *selectively* upload running processes (and ideally, to automatically disallow upload of Windows system files that won't give relevant results anyway, e.g. rundll32.exe), that would be a better way to handle the feature. But modern Task Manager has the ability to "find source file" for any given running EXE and they can then use JottiQ that way, as it was intended.

- Oshyan

923

General Software Discussion / Re: Best PORTABLE video player?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 12, 2011, 06:40 PM »

Agree now on Daum Potplayer. I tried switching over to it for about a month but ultimately came back to The KMPlayer (see further comments here).

- Oshyan

924

General Software Discussion / Re: Which is the real KMPlayer?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 12, 2011, 06:40 PM »

Stopped using Potplayer and uninstalled. It was stealing file associations from KMPlayer and had visual playback artifacts that other players didn't encounter. Not sure why, I tried playing around with a few settings, post processing and whatnot, but could never fix it. I've always been a huge fan of The KMPlayer and knew my way around the settings pretty well, but even though Potplayer is very similar, somehow I find it a bit less intuitive, or just less familiar, and am unable to tune it as well as I'd like. So I'm back to The KMPlayer and pretty happy still, even with the more recent Pandora.tv builds. I'm also testing Splash Player, SPlayer, SMPlayer, and am about to try Light Alloy for the first time...

- Oshyan

925

General Software Discussion / Re: Let's try to create our own suite for internet security.

« Last post by JavaJones on January 12, 2011, 04:26 PM »

The issue with installing multiple security apps was - and still is - with having multiple *realtime* scanners active at once. This can cause problems to this day. In times past some AV apps would also sometimes detect each other as "unwanted" or quarantine bits of each other. This still happens sometimes today I believe, though I haven't seen it for a long time. Many AV apps will give you a warning if they detect other antivirus apps when they're being installed, others will outright disallow you to install before uninstalling the other. This all applies pretty much to antivirus apps, particularly those with realtime scanners. Antimalware and antispyware apps tend to play better together and are less contentious. Generally speaking, just having multiple *on-demand* AV scanners is fine.

The line between antimalware, antispyware, antitrojan, etc. is not real clear unfortunately. Personally I think it's a stupid distinction and wish we didn't need additional apps like Malwarebytes, but it seems that antivirus apps don't cover everything right now.

My personal choice of antimalware is Emsisoft, formerly A2 (I think). It seems to find things that Malwarebytes doesn't. Neither is particularly obtrusive or heavy on resources.

I also think an app like JottiQ, or use of an internet-based multi-engine on-demand scanner is useful for anyone who likes to download and play with new software.

- Oshyan