Computers: The Technical Thread [!OT]

[Templar Zeratul]

Wow nice link and explanation Wiseman. I was thinking about getting a new monitor soon so that helped. I'm still using a 15" HP Pavilion monitor that I got from my friend after I built this PoS...

[mrwiseman]

I'm glad it was useful ^_^

[Xellos]

Thanks a ton! I'll probably get the Philips 19" 109B55, since it'll be 2" more than what I have now, and I love 1400x1050.

I'd have just run out and bought whatever 19' that supported 1400x1050 I saw cheap, so that was very helpful!

[mrwiseman]

BTW, also check the graphics card/driver supports it; the monitor does (at least at 85 Hz), but not all graphics cards/drivers do. I've heard nVidia's do, and the ATI drivers on Linux should support it at a decent refresh rate as well, but the ones for Windows 2000/XP are rather limited in graphics modes, and I think they only support it at 60 Hz (and 60 Hz in a CRT is suicidal), but they do support (via registry hack) 1280x960 @ 85 Hz (although the monitor should support 90 or 95 Hz too, and it's desirable to use the highest refresh rate supported by the monitor). I haven't found more on ATI, but I can ask if you want. In case of doubt, and if you want more flexible graphics modes, you might want to consider an nVidia card (I've heard they can do any mode with PowerStrip).

[mrwiseman]

UPDATE: I've verified you can get custom refresh rates with PowerStrip, so go ahead and get an ATI if you wanted it.

[Xellos]

Ah, ok. The computer I was looking at is ATI.

[mrwiseman]

[Sigh] Three new critical vulnerabilities of Internet Explorer have been found (so severe Microsoft had to do something one week before scheduled). Remote code execution (= owning your machine). If you still use that crap, go here and follow the instructions to fix it. Or do yourself a favor and use Mozilla.

IE used to be a good browser, but now its construction and design proved to be so insecure (it has been patched HUNDREDS of times and very severe bugs are still found every week), and the new versions bloated it so much, I think Microsoft should throw it to the bin and design and program a new browser from scratch. Not using their super-duper object-oriented XML abusing "business enhancing" "profit maximizing" "production increasing" (insert more stupid marketing tags) .NET and similar technologies will help in creating a decent browser. I think they can if they want to, but I don't think they will. Personally, I hope MSIE is abandoned by users and Mozilla is adopted as the standard, as it's infinitely better and the only way the web can evolve (since MSIE is dead (no new features) and we can't start using the new features of other browsers ignoring the most popular one).

[mrwiseman]

Rant time!

OMG, I couldn't find a fucking decent command line image converter for Win32 (Windows)! WTF.

I've tried:
- TOPNG: No options, PNG compression could be better.
- Advanced Batch Convertor: OMG that was a lame compression.
- Image Converter .EXE: OMG that was a lame command line interface (powerful, yet lame syntax and poorly documented).
- ReaConverter: OMG that was a lame system (writing a fucken INI file for the options)

Plus the last three didn't have a separate command line utility, they used the GUI EXE...

I'm really frustrated, it's that Windows designers/programmers of today don't know how to do a fucking command line utility? Now this is lame. If I had time, I'd do myself one, it's the simplest thing, just something like PROGRAM input.ext1 output.ext2 [-qx] [-whatever], accepting wildcards, for ghod's sake.

Now it's all about nice windows, objects, and bullshit. This is what I like of Linux, the modern command line utilities are written with common sense. (Of course I like Windows for pretty much everything else.)

[mrwiseman]

Update on previous issue: More programs:

Found other tools:

- AutoImager: 18 fucking megs for a picture converter? WTF, that must be using object-oriented pixels defined in XML or something. Or maybe just a bloated "XP" style GUI. No way.

- Stardust or something like that: couldn't evaluate, evaluation version has the command line utility disabled (WTF, they turn off the useful stuff so you can evaluate the stupid GUI, like there weren't enough free GUI programs to do the job)

- ImageConverter Plus: Website down (must have ran out of business trying to sell an image converter for $20..$50)

- Another one: Website down

- Another one: Only to GIFs?

- ABC Amber: Won't even autodetect which image type is the source file, despite the extension, and opens the pic when done!


Bah, shit, I'm tired of this. If anybody knows of a good command line converter, or damn, at least one that doesn't suck, please post.

?????

I had to resort to the simple BMP2PNG/GIF2PNG utils from PNGUTILS.

For now I guess I'm sticking to TOPNG then running an optimizer.

?????

BTW, while searching for this I bumped onto an awesome PNG optimizer, PNGOUT, written by an awesome programmer, Ken Silverman. I must post link to his webpage: http://advsys.net/ken
He has some awesome utilities, and common sense (← a rare find).

PNGOUT can be slow, but it'll be worth the effort, especially for your webpages. The Internet would be a better place if everybody used PNGs instead of GIFs for non-animated lossless pics, and it would be even better if they were optimized by this. Tried others, PNGOUT seems to be the best. Since today everything I publish on the web will be optimized with this.

Heh, the search was worth after all. [img]smile.gif[/img]

????

Doesn't this look like my nerdy weblog?

[mrwiseman]

*BUMP*

From the what are you doing right now thread, IRT Dreamer WRT eMule being slow:

For everything technical, ask here.

However I believe somebody already helped you with the configuration, there's not much more you can do other than waiting, but I'll tell you some real quick tips just in case:

- If you have a firewall (and you should (Windows XP comes with one)), make sure you have the ports open. See the eMule FAQs in http://www.emule-project.net and the eMule-Project boards for more help on this. Make sure you're getting a High ID.
- Do not use the default ports, use different numbers, like 6789 and 6798 (and configure them properly in the firewall).
- Don't quit eMule, try to have it open for as long as possible. It gets real effective after you have been in queue for about 3 hours. (Also depends on files.)
- Upload as much as you can. This will earn you credits which make you advance faster in queues.
- If downloading a series of files, keep all you have of the series shared, to earn more credits to users similar to you by uploading it.
- Download several files at once. Try to have between 100 and 300 useful sources in total. (Also depends on the speed of your line.)
- Don't bother for files with less than 1 source every 18 MB, unless you want them badly.
- Make sure you are using Kademlia (although if you are on 56Kbps, you might want to turn it off because of the overhead).
- Always set "Upload full chunks".

Oh, and BTW, define what's "slow", it really depends on what files you want to download (how many sources do they have), your Internet connection speed and stability, whether you have LowID or HighID, how long do you keep eMule running, and, of course, what do you consider slow or fast.

If downloading a series of fansubbed anime, expect to download one chapter a day in average (sometimes it's faster, sometimes slower, depends on what I've said).