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9951

Living Room / Re: The Best Games You've Never Played

« Last post by wraith808 on February 29, 2008, 03:24 PM »

All this talk about Descent makes me want to play it again. Especially if it's been upgraded for Windows XP.

-Deozaan (February 29, 2008, 11:19 AM)

Just picked it up on GoGamer for $5!  And I don't really consider it a shooter b/c of the freedom of motion and the fact that you *can* play it very effectively with a joystick or joypad- something you can't do with a shooter IMO.  There are new and different things you can do without gravity, but some of my favorite maneuvers in flight sims are still possible and do work!  Especially in those big chambered rooms...

Ref: http://www.gogamer.c...444710VVviewprod.htm

9952

Living Room / Re: The Best Games You've Never Played

« Last post by wraith808 on February 28, 2008, 04:18 PM »

I finished HL1 but never HL2 - I gave up in one of the driving episodes. HL2 is one of the games I had to give up because they made me seasick, the other one was Descent 3 

-iphigenie (February 28, 2008, 07:22 AM)

OMG!  I want more Descent!  I loved that game!  I don't really like flight sims... but that's pretty much what descent is when you think about it...  Now I have to go find a copy of D3 again...

9953

Developer's Corner / Re: The DC Coders' Breakfast Club

« Last post by wraith808 on February 26, 2008, 02:26 PM »

Well, I finished the experiment with Adobe- it wasn't worth it for native rendering, so I ended up using the reader engine to render the PDFs from within my application.

This week, I'm learning about the Vista Games Explorer, and trying to make a utility to allow you to manage the games there.

9954

Living Room / Re: The Best Games You've Never Played

« Last post by wraith808 on February 26, 2008, 02:24 PM »

I now have the 8600GT in my new lappie... it seems to perform better than my 7800GT in my desktop, but I don't have enough data yet.  Everything I saw pointed to the fact that it should be about the same performance, but in 19x12 the 8600 seems to perform better.

9955

DC Gamer Club / Windows Live Downloads

« Last post by wraith808 on February 26, 2008, 02:18 PM »

I just installed Universe at War and Shadowrun, and Windows Live needed to update itself and the applications.  I gave permissions to my firewall for the games themselves, but apparently there is some other piece I'm missing, because until  I turned off the firewall, it didn't work.  Unfortunately it didn't pop up the authorization dialog either.  I'm using AVG firewall... anyone have any ideas?

TIA

9956

Developer's Corner / oDesk

« Last post by wraith808 on February 25, 2008, 01:27 PM »

I don't know how many of you are freelancers, but there are many ups and downs about it- employers not trusting your hours spent, the possibility of working and not getting paid, employers that don't understand the value of the work they're asking for... etc, etc.

I just stumbled across a site that seems to eliminate a lot of the downsides in expense of your privacy...

http://webworkerdail...eal-for-freelancers/

I don't know.  On the surface it sounds like a good idea, but having something screenshot my desktop?  And who is to guarantee that they don't capture info when you're "off the clock"?

Thoughts?

9957

Living Room / Re: Windows Live Skydrive: Tried Anyone?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 25, 2008, 10:50 AM »

oked up why I had those files and

-cmpm (February 24, 2008, 03:55 AM)

if you choose to participate in the customer improvment program then you get those files which are hidden in the root, then sent to ms and removed. if you answer not to participate then no files are ever created. if you don't answer then the files are created but nothing done with them.

-justice (February 24, 2008, 06:40 PM)

That totally explains it, because I never participate in those programs.  I'll take a survey, but I won't agree to have someone looking in on my computing.  A bit paranoid... but hey...

9958

General Software Discussion / Re: Are Windows Dynamic Disks Reliable?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 25, 2008, 10:48 AM »

Windows 2000.  I'm not sure of the exact details of what happened, but during a routine scandisk, one of the drives had a bad sector, and I tried to mark it as such.  The next few days, my drive was acting wonky, so I got a Jaz drive and started to offload the most critical data.  During the second disk the copy functions started failing, so I tried to back the data up to another drive on my network, but couldn't copy anything.  I rebooted, and windows would recognize the drives, but the partition was gone.  At first I thought the drive had gone bad, but after I did a low level format and ran Norton on the disks, they were fine- In fact, I still use them (just not for critical data).

9959

General Software Discussion / Re: Are Windows Dynamic Disks Reliable?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 24, 2008, 02:36 PM »

The only experience I had was bad... but that was when it first came on the market.  I lost a *lot* of data because of them, and became scarred against using RAID.  I don't know about currently- I haven't touched them since.

9960

Living Room / Re: Windows Live Skydrive: Tried Anyone?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 24, 2008, 09:00 AM »

2. Too many Ads

-mahesh2k (February 24, 2008, 03:11 AM)

Are we looking at different products?  On my skydrive page, I don't have *any* ads...

IS sharing or direct URL allowed?

-mahesh2k (February 24, 2008, 03:11 AM)

Both are allowed.

9961

General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« Last post by wraith808 on February 24, 2008, 08:43 AM »

Well, the reason I didn't compare PC to TC is because on PC's page it makes no claim to making the copy faster- it just adds some niceties to the copying process like not failing out if one file fails, etc.

As far as the second part- it makes more sense when you explain it than when they do.

9962

General Software Discussion / Re: Plain text editor for writers

« Last post by wraith808 on February 24, 2008, 08:19 AM »

There's also an Open Source alternative - KeyNote.

A very good review of it is here:
http://becoming-a-wr...note-remains-strong/

And you can get it here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/keynote/

9963

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking to find or build a simple specific app.

« Last post by wraith808 on February 24, 2008, 08:04 AM »

for the response on other open / save utilities...yes, i know of them but they create dialog boxes as drop downs and have to be predetermined. the beauty of click there it is and default folder is ANY open folder can be clicked on (alt+click...whatever) and the open/save would jump to that open folder.

hopefully that makes sense...its a hard concept to explain but once you get it...and use it...you think "wow. simple and cool"

anyone know how to program it?

-precogmark (February 23, 2008, 07:30 PM)

Actually, direct folders does exactly what you want, though in a different way.  When you are in a file dialog box, you bring up the menu by double-clicking in an empty area of the dialog box.  All of the open windows appear at the top of the menu that appear, and you can click any of them to go there.

http://www.codesecto...om/directfolders.php

Take a look at the screencasts.

If you go to https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1642.0 there is a discount- it's expired for 50%, but if you click it, you still get it for $5 off...

9964

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Anyone familiar with RAID?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 09:43 PM »

Yeah... it was the Sony VAIO AR-770 laptop.  I suppose I should have realized they were going to RAID the drives, but I didn't.  For now, I'm sticking with the RAID 0 and just doing regular backups... when I replace the HDs with 7200 RPM drives, I'll fix it then.

9965

Living Room / Re: Windows Live Skydrive: Tried Anyone?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 09:32 PM »

In the C drive-no folders, it's in with the boot files-or was.

-cmpm (February 23, 2008, 10:26 AM)

Nothing there now... I'm not really sure how it would even do this, since it's all web interface driven.  Are you sure they were from skydrive and not something else?

9966

General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 09:29 PM »

I've compared it to plain vanilla copying, and it is indeed faster.

As far as the how, this is what it says on the site: TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.

I understand the words, but it's still black box to me.

Other features:
# Pause and resume file transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.
# Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.
# Interactive file list. TeraCopy shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.
# Shell integration. TeraCopy can completely replace Explorer copy and move functions, allowing you work with files as usual.
# Full Unicode support.

The pause and resume, error recovery, and interactive file list are very useful too...

9967

Living Room / Re: Windows Live Skydrive: Tried Anyone?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 08:37 AM »

Find sql files on your local drive?  Where?

9968

General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 08:28 AM »

Open Source isn't the holy grail to me.  It's useful for some things, and not so much for others.  Teracopy already has a lot going for it and it's free... so I'm not going to start with something that doesn't do what I need, just because it's OS.  And teracopy itself is actually only a little bigger... so I can allow it a few bytes since after you added all the additional features to PC, it would probably be just as big. 

9969

General Software Discussion / Re: Best program to manage information collections?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 08:23 AM »

@tsdragon

Before I download PersonalBrain, a couple of questions:
1. What are the annoying limitations that it has?
2. Is it normally just a minimized window?  Or does it minimize to the tray?
3. When minimized, how do you use it?

TIA for the info!

9970

General Software Discussion / Re: Best program to manage information collections?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 08:11 AM »

UltraRecall seems better for non-related (or semi-related) bits of information, and it seems to have most if not all of what you're looking for.  Google notebook might also be an option, though I've not delved deep enough into it to know.

And mouser, maybe it would be a good policy to have to edit posts to remove affiliate links?

So you (or some admin) would edit his post to have http://www.bitsmithsoft.com/ in it instead of the affiliate link?

9971

DC Gamer Club / Re: Lets get organized so we can get gaming!

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 08:04 AM »

Well, that makes sense... but *hate* usually implies something inherently wrong with the software which is why I was wondering...

9972

General Software Discussion / Re: Do You Purchase Software on Impulse?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 07:20 AM »

^ OMG!  It must be a general condition.  Whenever I start eBaying again, I overdo it and have to lay off visiting the site... and I have to go to the grocery store with a list and stick to it, or I buy *way* too much!

9973

DC Gamer Club / Re: Lets get organized so we can get gaming!

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2008, 07:07 AM »

I find that it does offer advantages over steam, in that it keeps track of what I'm playing.  It also supports more games, especially non Steam-Powered ones.  There's relatively few games on Steam, which is the reason that I prefer a solution that isn't tied to a distribution network.

Why such hate for xfire... it does one thing, and it seems to do it well?

9974

General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« Last post by wraith808 on February 22, 2008, 11:27 PM »

But... it doesn't do the primary thing teracopy does... copy things faster!

9975

Living Room / Re: Windows Live Skydrive: Tried Anyone?

« Last post by wraith808 on February 22, 2008, 11:24 PM »

I set up an account, and uploaded some information that I needed to get home.  It's functional enough- pretty standard fare with the creation of folders and uploading information.  Downloads work just like downloads from any site.  I haven't tried any of the sharing features yet.

One nice feature is the fact that you have a direct url for access to the file.

But for the most part, it does what's advertised- no more, no less.