Fabian Tischer is obviously gifted to create small videos from visual effects supposed to be simple (but actually quite tough to master) in order to offer us some cool movies:
It’s worth noticing it if you are using Opera. I had a difficult-to-solve issue recently.
While playing with the idea of starting to use IPv6 on my main PC, I tested the waters by validating this option in the network configuration of my Windows XP. Unfortunately, Opera is already fully ready for IPv6 but my router box is not. So, the first effect it had is that Opera decided to enforce the use of IPv6 for all web sites that mentioned IPv6 capacity in their DNS (not many of them, but Google and Free.fr my ISP are already in the list). The immediate effect was that Opera tried to connect to them in IPv6 but failed (because the rest of my home configuration is not 100% IPv6). For 99% of all web sites, there was no difference…
It took me several days (and some Googling – using Safari and Chrome) to understand that this is a known issue and to remove the (still) useless IPv6 Windows configuration.
So, the great FPS game will be back before the end of the year 2009. Either the launch campaign started early in Nepal or the bus drivers are using their vehicles as video game weapons (the latter would explain the extraordinarily high frequency of dramatic road accidents there).
Microsoft Project is expensive, very expensive. But once you started using it, you can’t stand not having a nice clean GANTT project chart. Why not get a free Microsoft Project? Even better than downloading MS-Project for free, I am proposing you to use an on-line GANTT chart/project builder that is completely free and works on-line: Gantter.
Gantter
I have been really impressed by the quality of such a software program. It may need to get some interface polish for Opera users (I had a couple of little display bugs), but the operation is fully adequate for many projects.
The arrival of Windows 7 also annonces the arrival of a new updated DirectX to serve the PC gamers’ community. We already knew that Vista did not have the favour of the gamers (who often stayed with Windows XP) and that had (among other things) some significant impact on DirectX 10 that required Vista. Will gamers now run to Windows 7? It’s possible, but if you want to see the real progress brought to video games (here, to the very popular Crysis FPS) by the various version of DirectX, check the video below:
See what happens to video game players, when a real World Rally Championship (WRC) pilot takes them to the real dirt. “Are you ready for the real thing?” Ken Block is not only a good driver, he’s trying his best to have them p…ing their pants.
With the repeated announcement of (minor) incidents with the security of the original PDF reader from Adobe, I wondered what could be a good replacement. Obviously, it seems important to stay around free or low prices (Adobe Acrobat: Windows/Mac/Linux, Basic: free, Pro: $299), but is it possible to beat the Adobe product to read PDF files?
PDF-XChange (Windows, Basic: free, Pro: $34): loads real fast (much faster than the Adobe viewer), has all the basic options (annotations, graphic annotations, etc.) and the Pro version allows to reorganize the pages of a document or to extract text from it.
Foxit (Windows/Linux, Basic: free, Pro Pack: $39.99): loads even faster, allows annotations (but only the Pro versio does it without watermark).
Sumatra PDF (Windows, free): is even simple; everything is done for sheer speed.
Apple PDF Preview (Mac, free): is very powerful (and it’s free, remember) and included in the MacOS offering; annotations, extraction, reorganization, all is available
If you want to grab the maximum CPU power for your PC video game (or any other PC application, by the way), there is a free utility that will ensure that the PC CPU does not spend to much time on anything else: Game Booster. It may be bad for a correctly balanced performance, but some games may appreciate the help.
OK, you’ve already seen all the icon collections on the Internet. Nothing can surprise you anymore. Stop! Icons Etc is really something else. You will find hundreds of high-resolution quality icons all of them being free and of the highest quality.
I just took one part of the simplest category: Rain drops.
Rain drops (on Icons Etc.)
I’m sure that you will find whatever you need for your web site, for your Windows desktop or any other icon-based application.
Windows 7 is not even here, but there are already people complaining about its download speed when using Torrent P2P software. It has the same limitation on half-open connections as Windows XP. So, there are people who already found the solution: Half-Open Limit Fix is a small, portable utility that is compatible with Win7 and will patch your tcpip.sys in just a few clicks.
A good bookmark: Using OpenLDAP on Debian Woody to serve Linux and Samba Users is a user manual for OpenLDAP; But it does a lot more than merely explaining the installation of this directory on Debian Linux. It can be considered as a proper training to OpenLDAP in more ways than one.
But if you consider that this is not the right thing, you could thing a more organized (but less readable) description of LDAP: “Basics of LDAP” which is also very much Linux-oriented, of course.
I am not sure that this is exact all over the Internet, but I just noticed that this is true for YLovePhoto, one of my web sites: There are more visitors using Firefox than Internet Explorer.
YLovePhoto.com
Then, I checked for Roumazeilles.net itself, and I noticed the same situation:
Roumazeilles.net
It appears that Firefox is moving very fast. Who would have thought -a few years ago- that Microsoft’s world domination would be toppled like that?
A rather interesting article of DownloadSquad tells us about the trial version that Nero offers for its Nero 9. I had already mentioned that there are solutions to pay nothing in order to get Nero 8 in free download (see lower), but it goes quite far.
You must give them your email address to download the trial version for Nero 9 – What do they want it for? Some Spam database address?
The installation brings an Ask.com tool bar – Why do we want this?
At the end of the installation, you are requested to transmit (anonymously) some additional information – What data? Why?
At first launch, you are requested your email address again – Those guys have no memory, I guess…
The free version does only data discs (no audio discs) – This is nothing more than the really free software programs shown below
Knowing that, the splash screen start only use is to show you what you don’t have in the free trial version – Speak about teasing me!
Of course, the uninstall process does not fully clean your machine – They are not even able to do it, or not even polite enough to do it…
With 55MB to download, this is only 20 to 50 times bigger than the real free alternatives!
So, I suggest that you turn to other options that are really free and well-polished:
Just a short notice. I discovered a very simple and relatively powerful Internet privacy solution, Ultrasurf, for those of us who may be interested in browsing the Internet in near complete anonymity: hide IP addresses and locations, clean browsing history, cookies & more …
SSD drives are those disk drives that are not using rotating platters with data stored magnetically, but that are based upon a set Flash memory components (so, without any mobile part, and with a performance that has nothing to do with even the fastest magnetic hard disk drives). SSD drives are expensive but, with costs are plummeting, the most expert and demanding users are starting to look at them dreamingly.
But everything shows that the SSD drives are not all equal (there is still an intense competition at this apex of performance). We see many a product recommended, often without all the technical arguments.
The “A look at SSD performance in Windows Vista – The more things change…” article from Geoff Gasior (The Tech Report) is definitely full of little gems because of that: It comes after a large number of tests (and many articles on the same subject) and compares finely the most representative products of the market.
Intel is presenting new X25-M SSD products that are supposed to bring prices down and performance up (in a nice gray metal case). See more details in Ars Technica early presentation.
Without telling it all (read the article. It’s worth it and you will learn many things), there are a few important conclusions drawn:
Initial performance is usually much reduced after some time and some even light use,
X25-M from Intel is probably the best drive around, the most well-balanced (recommended for a purchase in the short-term),
The OCZ Summit is the faster in write operations (Intel is an ace of reading),
the differences between suppliers come more from the controller used (Intel, Samsung Indilinx) than from the the brand.
The arrival of Windows 7 (with its TRIM feature support) will probably change the situation (all the more because TRIM support is not yet certain from Intel) and, if you can wait, you will be better being patient and hope for Windows 7 and the new products and new firmwares made just for it.
It’s true that if you want to burn a CD-RW or a DVD-R (or any other optical slice of storage in the shape of a CD/DVD), the name of Nero immediately comes to mind. The advertising efforts are paid with this success (well supported by the good quality of this CD-bruning software), but there are very good replacements that you can download for free and use in place of Nero.
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