Archive for the 'Software' category

photo credit: Ivan Zuber

If you have Windows installed on your PC, you may have noticed one surprising thing: File copying is amazingly slower than what it was in previous editions of Windows or on other kinds of computers. The exact reason is a bit unclear (some say that it is linked to some Digital Rights Management features kicking in any time you copy a file, but this is still unproven to my knowledge) but this became a very annoying issue for people who have to copy either lots of files (backing up your daily work is a good example – by the way, did you make your daily backup yet?) or some very big files (moving video files around your computer is the archetypal example).

This situation led to the appearance of a few optimize file copy utilities (a software category that did not exist a few years ago, but a useful one). Let’s look at 4 of them which have the enormous advantage of being completely free:

• SuperCopier: Its strong advantage is that -after installation- it replaces completely the default Windows copy for drag-and-drop (it works nearly without thinking about it)
• FastCopy is fast but forgets mostly about being beautiful. However, it has a few interesting (and unique) options to configure the way the right-click menu appears.
• RichCopy is the internal Microsoft solution to their own bug/issue. Amazingly configurable, you can setup profiles for different uses (probably too much for most users, though) but I couldn’t find how to insert it in the right-click menu.
• CopyHandler: You can’t get more technical than this one! Options include things as obscure as buffer size depending on the type of file copy you do (disk-to-disk, directory-to-directory, disk-to-CD/DVD, etc.) The best little gems here include the possibility to pause/restart file copying, shutting down the computer at the end of a copy session, or scheduling a copy session for the next login.

All of them get rid of the usual flying folder kind of window and replace it with a more technical-looking window with progress bars and more optional lists of details.

Anyway, even if I can recommend all of them (a little preference for SuperCopier), remember that they are not even useful (in terms of copying speed) in Windows XP or Windows 2000. But, if you are using Windows Vista (mostly) or Windows 7, you should seriously consider them.

I consider that the most useful and often the most interesting wallpapers for your computer desktop are images that are relatively feature-less. A picture full of little details continuously grabbing your attention is a major nuisance. It’s much better to have either a very smooth image or a photo containing a lot of continuous tones.

Windows 7 official wallpapers

Look at the full set of the Windows 7 wallpapers. This is the upcoming version of Windows (after Windows Vista, it seems that Microsoft intends to switch back to a numbering scheme). Most of them may be colourful, but with very smooth surfaces where your icons will be appearing quite neatly and they offer a nice contrast.

Fresh Impact Crater Formed between February 2005 and July 2005
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

So, I was quite interested when I stumbled upon the collection of pictures taken by the HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera installed on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter). Shooting photos of Mars surface, this photo camera brings extraordinary color images that provide nice patterns to be used as background for your Windows desktop (or even Linux or Mac desktop) and can be renewed quite regularly: Their catalog is available on the University of Arizona web site.

Furthermore, they provide an enormous resolution for their images which is a very good way to extract any size you may need for your extra-high-resolution background or to cover your 2- or 3-LCD display. Or even more. If you feel that there own selection of wallpapers is not enough:

• 800×600
• 1024×768
• 1152×864
• 1280×960
• 1440×1080
• 1600×1200
• 1920×1440
• 2048×1536
• 2560×1600

You can still stick to the original size (JPEG-2000 format images range between 0.5GB and 3GB).

And the good news is that there is no copyright restrictions, so you could do pretty much what you want with them: Really free desktop wallpapers.

Simply the best video player for Windows, VLC, just quit its long beta phase. This is official now, VLC v1.0.0 is available with a list of small improvements brought to an already impressive product that I can only recommend if you are using video (to read DVD, BluRay, HD-DVD discs; to stream videos from your computer; to convert your videos; and I sure forget some).

It had been quite some time that I did not comment price variations of electronic components. It was easy and acceptable: Everybody could observe the slow price fall under the pressure of recession. But there is a change worth mentioning (and not only the stabilization of LCD prices): DDR3-type of DRAM memory should see a significant price rise during July 2009. According to DRamExchange, we could also expect a 30% hike by the year’s end.

Those elements resulting from the observation of long-term markets and futures, they have quite good reliability. But if the recession does not seem ready to end, why this move up? As a matter of fact, memory buyers are probably preparing themselves for the arrival of the new Windows 7 and its unavoidable additional resource demands. Furthermore, while many processors (specially from AMD, but not only) may be using DDR3 memory but also older DDR2 with no perceivable performance loss, the transition from DDR2 to DDR3 is slowly happening. And this is pushing DDR3 quantities up.

So, if you have a clear need today, I would recommend you to buy your DDR3 memory now. But if you think that you can use DDR2 memory (if you have to ask, that’s your situation), you’d better wait for the relative price slowdown that will be happening on DDR2.

They were the FPS games of your youth (if you are as old as I am): Doom, Heretic and Hexen are three games where you killed, maimed, crushed, punched and powdered thousands of monsters and all kinds of adversaries. Did you know that you could play all three of them on line?

Point your browser to the Doom Triple Pack.

On-line Doom + Hexen + Heretic

How many PC gamers started their career with video games as raw (according to today’s criteria) as Doom or even Quake. We may find their quality too low for our eyes, but they already demonstrated their main strength: the gamer found interesting adversaries and environments where you could not know what would happen behind the corner of a corridor (that generation of video games did not yet open the doors to a wide environment like in FarCry or Crysis).

Doom 1

Already, before the year 2000, PC games were expensive. But here comes the Internet and bands of Internet users now expect to find free things all around. Authors of such games (like Id Software) decided to follow this trend and offer some of these older games as ways to attract more customers for other games. These ones start by being free, and stay as being very pleasant to play.

Doom was put in the public domain a few years ago. Consequence: Here is somebody deciding to re-write it in Flash and you will be able to play Doom (more precisely, Doom 1). You will need Flash 10 and I’m told that PowerPC Macs are not compatible, but you’re going to tote a shotgun and the BFG mini-gun at outer-space monsters and without paying (free).

Doom is not enough? You want more, more quality, more guns, more speed? Why not Quake? Id Software just opened access to QuakeLive.com. For free, you’ll get to play Quake, right now, freely, for no money. It will be fun…

More precisely, here is Quake III Arena with free access to all. It will go fast. This is violent gaming. It will only stop when you’re dead.

This is not enough? Again? So, let me offer some video games with calmer settings, but still free. Even better, Linux games.

live.linuX-gamers.net succeeded at preparing Live-DVDs (DVD that are completely autonomous, you can boot on them without installing Linux).

live.linuX-gamers.net (DVD)

Apple is not only delivering sleek computer designs and nice little mobile phones. They are also producing a good web browser: Safari.

It’s new version, Safari 4, is just out. Faster, still as good and powerful, but Apple is now claiming the crown for the “fastest” web browser. It could well be possible when Snow Leopard OS-X becomes available later this year. Running natively as a 64-bit Mac application, it could gain 50% from today’s already powerful base of Safari 4.

Safari version 4

Safari 4 is available for Windows XP, Vista, or mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer.

you merely change the size of the Windows desktop and all your desktop icons are forcefully moved around against your will. After one or two of these, you’d be ready to cry, while backing up the position of the icons would be enough, before connecting a new screen, or attaching your laptop to a video-projector, etc.

Up to now, you could only cry and reposition the icons. But here comes DesktopOK. What can I say? It does exactly what you want and what you need: a mere backup, a simple restore and your icons come back where you wanted them.

Simple et necessary.

I’ve been using and recommending the Opera web browser for many years. It’s a kind of a Firefox where everything you need would be directly included rather than having to download extensions. And it’s fast too. For mobile applications (PDAs, mobile phones, etc.) Opera Mini is probably the best possible option and it is in a tight competition for the market leader position.

Now, Opera is launching a beta test version 10 of the browser. And it has amazingly interesting new features.

• Fast browsing on slow connections
• Tab browsing enhanced and flexible
• Speed dial from the empty new page
• Web mail integration
• Re-sizable search field
• Much faster web engine and impressively standards-compliant
• In-line spell checker (I use it a lot to support my blogging habits)
• Auto-update (better than merely asking you to check for updates)
• Mouse control

Even better, after testing it in alpha, I can tell you that it is quite stable. The beta version should stay that way and that is a good thing too.

You can download it here.

You can browse, but you can’t hide… from your browser.

Actually, your browser knows a lot about you. Some scientists believe that from your browsing habits they can recognize fairly precisely if you’re a man or a woman.

Using your browser URL history to estimate gender

Be patient, it may be long.

According to it, I am a man…

Say you are parent to a kid who is more than willing to play those games that he/she discovered with his/her friends and you don’t know much about them. It’s time to learn some before you make a decision about letting fun happen or not.

From IGN vault.

You choose your passwords as the most sophisticated and the strongest as you understand the importance to protect your computer. But did you know that this is nearly useless? A few commands and here is your safe password replaced or removed by a mere user, by your youngest nephew.

• On Windows, it’s enough to use the bootable CD-ROM of Ophcrack which is available as Open Source. Reboot and watch the software program find the Windows Administrator password…
• Ophcrack also works on Mac (and Linux) but with OSX10.4, it’s enough to use the Apple installation CD and to choose “Utilities” to run “Reset the password”. On OSX10.5, you’ll have to reboot, press Command+S, then type the following at the prompt:

fsck -fy
mount -uw /
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist
dscl . -passwd /Users/UserName newpassword

• If on Linux, if boot is controled by GRUB, it’s enough to press ESC during the boot sequence to choose ‘Recovery Mode’ which will will start you as root without even knowing the password. Just change it now…
• But even better (or worse), on Linux again, here is a list of 10 ways of resetting a lost linux root password

Plus ou moins inspiré de JoeTech.

You could fully appreciate this video only if you have some experience of Role Playing, but I couldn’t help posting it here.

Stan, this video is partly dedicated to you, the Dungeon Master.

Duke Nukem

You have certinaly heard about Duke Nukem Forever, if only because you are interested in PC video games. As a matter of fact, this is (was) a game frist-announced in 1997 as the sequel to Duke Nukem, Duke Nukem II and Duke Nukem 3D (the Duke Nukem trilogy), the last of them being a First Person Shooter (FPS like Doom, FarCry or Crysis) whose success was partly based on its very high level of violence (blood, dismembered corpses, etc.) Whatever! Many old/mature video gamers were awaiting the real availability o this game which well earned its title of best vaporware for many years.

Rumor was running for weeks that, 3DRealms, the developer, had finally closed doors. Take-Two still has the exploitation license, but the horizon is really dark. Some hope to see Duke Nukem ressurect, but… Apogee software, LLC confirmed its willingness to keep developping the trilogy (for the Playstation Portable & Nintendo DS), but… Take-Two attacks 3DRealms and Apogee dragging them to the Judge, but…

Finally, the end is so true that developpers started to leave 3DRealms and are actively looking for new jobs. Even worse, the game assets are dispersed widely: The Web sees the distribution of many good pieces of work, 3D models, script/plot contents (only 60% finshed), many objects and backgrounds, etc.

You can also find

• 28 screen copies for Duke Nukem Forever
• monsters
• videos like the following to see were it really went

At last, you can read the Wired eulogy.

The most fanatical readers/gamers will want to check the only real review of this (unfinshed) video game.

From GraphJam.

You wanted to get the contents of this PDF file in a usable form. say! a Word document.

Here comes PDF-to-Word, touted as “The Most Accurate PDF-to-Word Converter”, which may be quite right.

It’s online, it’s free, it’s only 3 steps away:

PDF-to-Word (free online converter)

The converted document will arrive directly in your email box.

Keen eyes like yours will have noticed the opportunity to produce not only Word documents but also RTF documents which can be read as easily in Word as in any other word processor on any kind of machine.

You know it: JPEG image format allows to compress a photo picture without too much loss. But there is some loss. For real.

You want an evidence? Open an image, save it in JPEG; Start over 600 times. The image deterioration will cumulate: