Recent Posts

976

General Software Discussion / Re: fSekrit as open source ?

« Last post by Eóin on April 26, 2008, 09:59 PM »

In fairness, even with an opensource app if you don't study the source code in detail and then personally compile your own versions they are no more trustworthy than distributed closed source binaries.

977

General Software Discussion / Re: Weird software names

« Last post by Eóin on April 20, 2008, 02:03 AM »

If web apps count then I never quite liked suggesting The Rasterbator to people.

978

Developer's Corner / Re: coding x86 assembler on a 64 bit machine??[coding on a x64]

« Last post by Eóin on April 06, 2008, 06:27 PM »

Myself I use XP x64 even though I only have 2GBs of ram and 32bit would have worked fine. It runs absolutely rock solid stable for me, that could well be due to the 2k3 core but I wouldn't dream of switching back to 32bit XP.

If you just can't get the drivers then I appreciate that will force your hand, but if you want to play around with developing 64bit apps I say bite the bullet and waste two or three days more trying to get the drivers working. Assembly is great fun, I don't do enough (any?) of it myself any more but wouldn't dream of toying around in 32bits when there is the whole new 64bit world to explore.

979

Developer's Corner / Re: coding x86 assembler on a 64 bit machine??[coding on a x64]

« Last post by Eóin on April 06, 2008, 06:49 AM »

Technically x64 apps should run faster. I remember early on the x64 versions of 7-zip were slower than the 32bit ones. Now though v4.57 benchmarks itself about 25% when 64bit version on XP x64 against the 32 bit version on regular XP Pro SP2.

That is only one small test but I guess I'm pointing out that the rule of thumb I see thrown around (not necessarily here) suggesting only go for an x64 OS if you need 4+ GBs of ram is not the whole story.

As for drivers, I've never had a problem but I run it on a desktop not a laptop.

980

Living Room / Flash Animation - Walk in the Woods

« Last post by Eóin on April 05, 2008, 07:18 AM »

This is a nice little animation from Weebl. Though something about the description- "A rabbit goes for a nice stroll in the woods." doesn't quite sum up what happens. 

981

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

« Last post by Eóin on March 31, 2008, 09:23 AM »

f0dder, I hadn't come across Koepi's xvid builds before thanks for the link. I must also try out CoreAVC, if it works it very reasonable to buy.

As for codec packs, I'm always a bit wary about such things myself but the CCCP I saw recommended and I've had zero issues with it so far.

982

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

« Last post by Eóin on March 31, 2008, 09:19 AM »

Thanks cmpm, I usually use the Combined Community Codec Pack or CCCP myself. I wonder do they largely bundle the same codecs? Should read to proper release notes myself to find out.

What I'm really curious about though is reencoding into an older format because the machine struggles with x264 vidoes. I have ripped a number of music dvds to high quality x264 files, makes it much easier to throw them on in random orders and such. If I instead encode them into XviD then the small machines can play them pretty well.

I'm wondering if there is a more suitable format. I'm kinda trying to tradeoff between video quality and playback performance over the more usual trade off between quality and filesize.

983

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

« Last post by Eóin on March 31, 2008, 07:53 AM »

Hi folks, I recently treated myself to a neat little 'ultra-portable' PC. I'm very happy with it but it's struggles just a bit with decoding DivX. It especially struggled with (h/x)264 but I expected that.

So I was thinking of re-encoding to a older format, even if there's a bit of loose in quality I don't mind.

Would anyone be able to recommend a good format for playback on yesteryear's PC .

984

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

« Last post by Eóin on March 29, 2008, 01:47 PM »

Well I must say after much searching and trying numerous client, web-based and desktop apps I gave ThatBat! it's thirty day trial from all the positive comment here and then bought it and am a very happy customer. Thank you donationcoder for the reviews

That said going back to the point of the thread; Thunderbird is a excellent client, and if you are on Linux then so is evolution so the desktop client market is a hard one to compete in. The webbased market is even more difficult thanks to Gmail being a genuinely superior product.

985

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

« Last post by Eóin on March 27, 2008, 08:44 AM »

is it just me or have you missed the link?

http://www.newground...m/portal/view/422308

-mediaguycouk (March 27, 2008, 08:09 AM)

Yep I did indeed forget to add it to the url associated with the screenshot. Fixed now thanks

986

Living Room / Flash Game: Spin the Balack Circle.

« Last post by Eóin on March 27, 2008, 08:02 AM »

This is a very neat but difficult Flash game. I can't be held responsible for any tearing out of hair or smashed PCs

987

Developer's Corner / Re: Programming in the Linux operating system: where to start?

« Last post by Eóin on March 26, 2008, 07:48 PM »

The most important first question to ask is which language do you have in mind. Pretty all are viable for creating Linux applications so it's your personal preference which should be the main decider here.

988

Developer's Corner / Re: blog post with a list of reference pages / cheat sheets

« Last post by Eóin on March 26, 2008, 02:07 PM »

Adding to a old post I know but this is useful while not really in need of a whole new thread

Scott Klarr's Blog - Cheat Sheets.

989

General Software Discussion / Re: Does KGB Archiver really achieve high compression rates?

« Last post by Eóin on March 25, 2008, 04:11 AM »

Having said that if 7-zip can do a better job in 45 minutes (not exactly known for its speed either) then what is the point of KGB ?

-Carol Haynes (March 24, 2008, 08:03 PM)

That's really the only comparison I was making. I gave it the random test to see how much it would beat 7-zip by so I could then make a subjective decision as to if the extra time needed could still be justified in certain cases. The compression ratio itself I wasn't worried about because as already pointed out that depends very much on the data.

That it produced bigger archives than 7-zip really surprised me and left me bewildered

990

General Software Discussion / Re: Does KGB Archiver really achieve high compression rates?

« Last post by Eóin on March 24, 2008, 04:29 AM »

I used the word scam because I heard about it on forums with claims of near 1% compression ratios. But in fairness those claims were being made by others, it's own website doesn't make such a claim so I've changed the title of the thread as to not imply deceit on the developers part.

I can imagine an excellent compression ratio even at the expense of seriously heavy cpu costs could be justified if the compression is a one time cost. Say in distributing large downloads, the bandwidth saving could justify the initial compression investment.

But given that in both my tests it underperformed 7 zip even before taking time into account I wondered was it not all it seemed to be

991

General Software Discussion / Does KGB Archiver really achieve high compression rates?

« Last post by Eóin on March 23, 2008, 07:44 PM »

I came across KGB Archiver a while back and really don't know what to make of it.

KGB Archiver is the compression tool with an unbelievably high compression rate. Unfortunately, in spite of its powerful compression rate, it has high hardware requirements (I recommend processor with 1,5GHz clock and 256MB of RAM as an essential minimum). One of the advantages of KGB Archiver is also AES-256 encryption which is used to encrypt the archives. This is one of the strongest encryptions known for human.

-http://kgbarchiver.net/

Initially I ran a simple test against 7 zip on a small source bundle, it failed miserably but I hadn't used to highest compression so didn't want to discount it nor can I remember to exact figures to post here. Now I have run a second test and it once again it seriously disappoints.

I compressed a VirtualBox VDI (virtual disk image) file of a Server 2008 install. That's 5.8 GB uncompressed. I think these figures speak for themselves.

7 zip (ultra compression)	984 MB	~45mins
KGB Archiver (highest settings)	1.19GB	~16hrs 30mins

Is it all a scam or have I just happened to pick two very difficult test cases?

992

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Portable vs Regular Firefox

« Last post by Eóin on March 23, 2008, 07:30 PM »

Personally I use a set number of pcs so I prefer to install FireFox but copy over my profile as found at C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles That way I don't have to install and configure every single plugin on each PC. Foxmarks then keeps the bookmarks in sync while FireFox keeps itself up to date.

This works for me because I have complete access to the pcs I have to use. If I didn't I would probably opt for the portable option.

993

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

« Last post by Eóin on March 23, 2008, 10:11 AM »

For the interested, PowerShell runs fine inside Console as best I can tell

994

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Eóin on March 23, 2008, 10:02 AM »

I suppose it's really only security through obscurity. Making minor tweaks to the login page just to force spammers to custom their bots for your site could be easily as affective for small sites.

995

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Eóin on March 22, 2008, 08:46 AM »

It's only catch-22 if you're looking for a 100% solution. If you are looking just to reduce to torrent of spam then they most definitely DO work, I've seen so on my own site.

Also as a user I much prefer to see sites allow posting by answering a CAPTCHA over requiring you to register with a valid email just to add a comment.

996

Living Room / Re: Top 50 Dystopian movies

« Last post by Eóin on March 14, 2008, 08:58 PM »

Can't help but think they really stretched the meaning of dystopia for some of the films, say District 13.

I know the definition of dystopia is broad but I don't think it is meant to describe everything that's not a utopia. I've always seen them as two extremes with a lot of the films mentioned actually falling into the murky gray area between the two.

Just my

997

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Easy-Hide-IP today on Bits Du Jour

« Last post by Eóin on March 12, 2008, 10:02 AM »

I find it a bit suspicious that I don't recognize any of the sites which awarded it 5 stars or a spyware free badge

998

Living Room / Re: Music industry sue broadband provider.

« Last post by Eóin on March 12, 2008, 09:16 AM »

The band Black Lab have sold the last 3 of their four albums themselves online starting in 2003. I think that the band has survived 5 years shown the business model could be very viable.

999

Living Room / Music industry sue broadband provider.

« Last post by Eóin on March 11, 2008, 06:27 AM »

This is funny really, the outcome will be interesting either way.

Big four record labels sue Eircom

11.03.2008 -   In a court case that will be watched with interest by telecom firms and internet service providers all over the world, Ireland’s largest broadband provider Eircom is being sued by the big four labels, EMI, Universal, Warner Music and Sony BMG, for failing to prevent illegal music downloads on its network.

-http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single10490

Unfortunately the Irish legal system is a mess so this could succeed.

1000

General Software Discussion / Re: check server to see if its up

« Last post by Eóin on March 10, 2008, 07:06 AM »

A windows service would run in the background as long as the machine is turned on even if no one is logged on. Google mentions some ways of running a normal program as a service, not having tried any of them I couldn't recommend a particular one.