CoffeeFiend

It's called SkypeIn like I've said before. But it's only available in a handful of countries (not Canada). And at €30/year it's kinda pricey for what it is: just a number people can call (can't make any calls yet - gotta pay more). SkypeIn (if even available where you live) + SkypeOut is like 70$ USD per year. I'd also buy something like this to make using it bearable (use a real phone). And like they say: "No Emergency Calls; Skype is not a replacement for your ordinary telephone and can’t be used for emergency calling." So it's more like 70$ USD on top of your old phone plan really. And again, expect issues with SkypeOut too. Especially with toll-free numbers (like gov't #s) - at least half of those I've tried didn't work at all. Why do I know it sucks and that I'm bitter? Because when moving here, the local telco wouldn't even hook me up unless I've provided them with a local number they can call, and the only # I had was my old cell phone # (long distance). It's like the chicken and egg thing... Gotta have a local number so they'll get you one. So I was stuck with Skype for a month until I settled with a VoIP provider and got my ATA.

You can also tweak skype so it can do video calls @ 640x480 (obviously one needs a decent USB2/FW webcam). Anyways. With the uber-cheap VoIP plans these days (got a 20$ CDN/month unlimited plan including long distance and all), I don't have much of a need for it anymore. That combined with the other issues like bandwidth hogging, being stuck speaking using the PC unless you buy some sort of phone adapter (vs just using a decent wireless phone), the new artificial/unnecessary intel/dual core checks, and the issues with their paid service (no skypein in Canada yet, issues calling some numbers using their skypeout service - especially toll free numbers, etc) I think trixbox is worth mentioning too (linux distro for Asterisk, an open source VoIP PBX), FreeWorldDialup and all. Or even sites like voip-info.

It's not like WMA isn't changing either (MS has the money to develop it too). In the latest hydrogenaudio tests (@192kbps - just like you said before), WMA comes ahead of mp3. Link Just because one prefers a non-proprietary format doesn't make it sound better... Mind you I still use mp3, just because it sounds good enough at decent bitrates, and plays everywhere, on absolutely anything (be it hardware or software), no plugins or whatever necessary. It would take a HUGE difference in quality for me to even consider AAC or WMA (ogg is just out of the question).

Honestly, I'm not sure it's a "what editor to use" problem. Asking what software to use is a bit like asking what word processor to use to write good books, or what hammer to use to make nice houses. Some are easier to use, but like most easy to use tools they have their drawbacks too. Perhaps you'd be better off using some type of php script or such to hold the photos (like gallery or such). It'll make it easy to add/delete/sort/organize photos and all that. Or even some type of CMS (which may have some photo gallery thing built-in) - some of those are pretty easy to customize and style too. "Updating" could mean a LOT of things, from just changing a couple colors, to changing the whole back end, content and everything else (using different technologies altogether). It's like saying you're doing renovations (which could mean anything really). If you want to design something nice from scratch (new site look/layout/colors/logos/etc) it'll take a fair amount of time and learning (XHTML and CSS mainly). For all we know, it could be some old CGI-based website that uses frames and such (you'd basically want to throw everything away but the content itself). Luckily there are some templates you can use to make a new site from scratch, but that will require a fair amount of work regardless, especially if you don't know basic markup and such. Without knowing what you have and what you want to make, it's hard to make recommendations of any kind.

It's a thread about CPUs. It's not like he went really off topic. I see no reason to complain, he's just making suggestions - and good ones at that IMO. Perhaps he's not aware that Intel has some great stuff nowadays (no more netburst). If they price their products better and make them better than Intel's offerings as they used to be, then I will buy 'em again. That's the whole point of competition: you buy whatever is better or that is priced better, no matter who makes it. That way the other has to adapt. If everyone did like you, AMD wouldn't have to do those price cuts or improve their products at all because you'd still buy 'em. If one TRULY wants to go AMD, AM2 is definitely the way to go. DDR2 is becoming cheaper than DDR (as DDR2 replaces DDR). But it's their current "mainstream" socket. It has the best CPU selection (including upcoming CPUs), and that's what most new (nice) boards use. 939 only has a single X2 CPU available: the 4600+ (and it's more expensive than a C2D E6300 that's much faster). It's the old socket (which did indeed use DDR). Unless you got tons of good DDR laying around that you can use on that and save money that way, there's not much reasons to pick this. 754 is/was the budget socket, which never caught on much, and the offerings for it (bunch of semprons - slow for the most part) suck. I really wouldn't buy an AMD system right now personally...

There's lots of good players out there, but 80GB or more? There aren't too many players with this much space yet. AFAIK the iPod is the only one with so much right now, but that might change soon. I absolutely love my gigabeat (made by toshiba), but the biggest model has "only" 60GB. It had a far nicer/better/bigger/sharper display than the iPod that was out at the time, nicer controls IMO, longer battery life, lots of DSPs (SRS and EQ), and no iJunk software required, more features, etc (all-around better). Paired with some Sennheiser CX300 headphones it's absolutely great. Looks like you're stuck with an iPod.

I have to agree with the others on the C2D. For 80$ more than the X2 3800+ you get a E6300 that can be OC'ed to 3.4GHz (making it faster than the 1000$ Core 2 Extreme X6800, and basically every Athlon64 at any price). Even at stock speed is still beats the 3800+ by a wide margin. 80$ extra over the price of a PC (~1000$ or so) is what, 8% extra, for a PC that'll be MUCH faster. Socket 775 is here for a while too (you'll be able to put quad cores on most socket 775 motherboards)

Just because you say the inverse of everybody else (including those who make the systems, games, and gaming magazines) doesn't make it so. If you're going to say basically everybody's wrong, you're expected to have strong arguments to prove your case (and you don't so far). Those old consoles can't do "wonderful" graphics by any measure. I'm no gamer, and I don't particularly care much for graphics honestly, but you're on the edge of saying a colecovision can do wonderful graphics here... The newer consoles look FAR better, ~99% of folks or so would agree on this. There is definitely a race, to get most people to buy your console so you can make profit on games (corporations are there to make profit for their shareholders). 2 of the 3 decided to go for much nicer/better graphics as one of their selling points. You're entitled to think it's misguided, but the industry analysts, exerts, opinions/feedback from game studios and all likely know better than most of us what the majority of gamers want. Just because you (being part of a minority here) don't see a point to better graphics doesn't mean there's no "war" between them... Hmm, no I haven't. I said the new consoles are there mainly for better graphics. It's not like I said they were there to get better graphics at the expense of gameplay or anything. Once you got good gameplay, people WANT graphics! And yes, most people DO say "shiny graphics!" - they're lusting after the latest expensive video cards and all that for a reason. Some games do innovate a fair bit, but the for most part of them... not so much! People who disagree with you (on anything) or want different things aren't necessarily stupid. They want the same as you, but ALSO with shiny graphics. I don't really see anything wrong with that personally. Eye candy is required for most people to buy a new console. Especially now with so much people who already bought HDTVs (or that will soon buy one). They expect better graphics, as it will make a HUGE difference on a nice HDTV compared to the old consoles. Same goes for HDTV playback (and DVD upscaling). Do you know just how funny it is to read that after seeing you take the time writing 2 lengthy posts about how shiny graphics don't matter (and that people should buy some imagination and such)? Perhaps you're starting to get the idea now... Good games, but ALSO with better graphics - the idea behind those new consoles.

Some DRM is already being declared illegal in some places. For example, FairPlay in Norway -- I wish more countries did that! FairPlay protected stuff doesn't work on anything we use (software or hardware), and will only work on software/hardware from a single vendor -- perhaps the most closed and worst DRM ever. I sure ain't moving to the USA to run for congress though But with the RIAA/MPAA and such powerful rackets conglomerates lobbying politicians and all that (who even manage to get torrent sites raided - against the law - in other countries), it's not going anywhere. If anything I'd only expect more things like it to restrict your rights further (DMCA, Broadcast Flag, futher extensions of copyrights, software patents and all that)... In other news, Macrovision says "DRM increases not decreases consumer value"... They even sound like they believe what they're saying Edit: This just keeps getting better and better. WinDVD 8 Device Key found!

I've had too many problems with autopatcher on real hardware before (and other annoyances I won't bother getting into), I've LONG given up on it. So problems on nearly experimental virtual hardware with a nearly non-existent user base...

I would try some good recovery software before you try anything that can modify a single byte on the hard drive (possibly resulting in data loss). I've managed to get R-Studio working on WinPE (got an error during install, but it worked just fine). There's a trial version that'll let you see what it can recover (buy it and enter serial if you actually want to recover those files). There's lots more data recovery software out there, but none of the others I've tried last time could read a single byte off the partition. They just would crash hard, display countless error messages, or plain treat it as a unformatted/unknown partition (much like in your case). Anyways, that's just in case you have data on there that isn't backed up already (family photos and what not -- something with more value than the asking price of the recovery software). As for a reinstall partition, there's recovery discs, install CDs and all that so no worries (I wouldn't want to reinstall from a disk image that's off a recovered partition either, just might be corrupted and crash).

Well, the encrytion algo itself (AACS) isn't broken, but the current implementation pretty much is. The ONLY thing they can do about this is revoke the keys. But that means that the player won't be able to play anything new, and will force tens of thousands of people to upgrade (at like 100mb or so for PowerDVD, the dialup folks won't like this) -- repeatedly. And it won't accomplish anything besides annoy the hell out of their paying customers: we can easily grab the new keys in the same way off pretty much any player. Not only you can use the same old method, but you could use a disc that's already "opened" on the new player, find where the expected key is in memory, put new disc in, read new key in the same spot... They may revoke the keys (very annoying), but there's nothing they can do against these methods. They're just not going to manage to hide their keys much better (gotta have 'em in memory somewhere to decrypt the disc as you play it). And every single time a new key is leaked, all the content published until that point is totally open (only future releases protected). Pretty hard to secure a system where you're handed the content you're not supposed to be able to read along with the decryption keys. And given enough keys, they might even be able to brute force the root key too (ala distributed.net)... And as more tools (using other methods) are coming out like AnyDVD HD it'll only get harder for them. Just look at how often AnyDVD is updated for so many pointless DVD protections (ARccOS, RipGuard, FluxDVD, Puppetlock, ...) They've cracked 'em all anyways. Once the cat's out the bag... So yeah, pretty much game over for them, even though AACS itself wasn't broken.

It's not HUGE... It's HUGE! ...sorry for the huge caps! But yeah, bigger is one thing, but how much better is it, or even better - how useful is that? Most CPUs work just fine with stock coolers even if OC'ed a fair bit, and are cooled very adequately using existing heat pipe coolers... I can't imagine what I'd need this expensive, heavy, gigantic monster for, if it even fits in the first place...

I don't think it's because of Vista as it's already been happening for quite a while, but Vista might help too. If you look at somewhat better statistics like these (OS share trends), you will see there has been a 50%+ decline in Win98 users over the last year - just like the year before (even the new "MacTels" have surpassed Win98), and a very similar trend for Win2k (close to 50% too). At this rate Win98 will probably be around 0.7% in a year and 0.3% the following (2.8% and 1.6% for Win2k). The thing is, older OSes are not being supported anymore, and in many ways: -the OS itself not being supported by the vendor itself (MS). Even Win2k extended supports ends in June 2010. Businesses won't wait 'till then to switch. -most hardware makers don't particularly care if their newer hardware even works on win9x anymore -most software developers don't particularly care if their software doesn't run on win9x anymore (e.g. firefox and countless others) -most recent development tools don't support the old platforms (e.g. .NET Framework 3.0 which is Win XP and newer only) Without vendor support, the support of the hardware makers (and a increasingly hard time to find replacement parts for older boxes, often at higher prices), less and less software compatibility (won't get better anytime soon), with the many limitations of older OSes becoming more and more of a problem, and without all the (countless) new and useful features of the newer OSes, it's no surprise people are switching, not counting all those who just bought a new PC to replace their old one and came bundled with a newer OS, for any particular reason. That Vista just came out might help a little bit, but people ditching a ~10yo OS/platform (no matter what it is) should be no surprise... WinXP is already starting to lose some to Vista.

Update: both formats (HD DVD and Blu-Ray) are now TOTALLY cracked! Not just volume key extraction and such like before (Muslix64's method), this is the real thing now! They've found the processing keys and all. Game over for AACS. Expect new backup/ripping tools and utilities soon... Article on BoingBoing (originally from Doom9's forums here) Oh, and seemingly AnyDVD HD (for HD DVDs) is already available (beta here)

No problems, and no need to be sorry. My point was, this code still needs a fair amount of work (or to just be rewritten), and will require a lot of manual tedious hand coding of the queries and parameters for every single version (might change several times a day in a database course) of every single table in the whole database, and that's very time consuming for anything non-trivial, and error prone too. Considering there's no reason to even use CSV in the first place, writing a CSV importer is working around the real problem: he should be using a backup (or a script or whatever) instead. Besides, CSV files are rather useless in the first place. It's just the raw data (in a sucky, poorly formatted way), no table schemas, no relationships/constraints or anything like that. Something like a trial version of Red Gate SQL Packager - or any of the similar products - would do wonders if he can't just make/use backups.

Sorry if I haven't replied sooner, was away for most of 2 weeks. First things first: congrats Neo on writing far better stuff than I would have expected to see - specifically using parameterized queries instead of string concatenation (even though no SqlDbType is specified for the parameters), and no ghetto homebrew buggy csv parser. However, it's still a VERY minimalistic (or quick and dirty) approach... Lots of little issues: -no error handling at all anywhere -no comments, documentation or anything like that anywhere (even though it's a short snippet) -the loop REALLY should be between the connection open/close and just calling the query multiple times (no repeating the create conn/open/query/close process altogether all over again for every single row - no point in passing parameters like that or even calling any subs here) -some of it is database specific (like the conn string and provider), and he hasn't specified anything about what database he's using (some things change a lot from a database to another) -again, not only basic error handling, but handling of almost anything that could go wrong - like bad values in a csv file (always happens). Was there a dbnull, or a string (text) inside the csv where an int should be, something will go wrong, and the whole thing will just crash hard, and without any real useful error messages... It should at least handle things like dbnulls... And there ought to be try/catch blocks -- really. Also, you're assuming he has not only basic programming knowledge, but specific knowledge of the .NET framework and VB (enough to recreate the app - which should really have been a console app IMO - tweak the code e.g. new queries, proper parameters, and all - for every single table). Lots of little things (no point to go further)... But anyways: The real question is what database are you using, or even better: why are you even doing this in the first place??? If you're taking word documents home, do you export them to html, take those files home, and try to convert 'em back to word at home? Makes no sense, just like using csv files here either. Instead of carrying csv files over, carry a backup of the database! With many databases, you can carry the files (like .mdf files for SQL Server Express), and most databases have statements like "BACKUP DATABASE ..." which will let you create backups (check the docs e.g. BOL for SQL Server), and just carry those over and restore them at your place using "RESTORE DATABASE ..." or such (lots of the management tools will let you create backups easily too i.e. the "point and click" way). Fail any of this, many GUI management tools will let you export to a format they can also import directly (or even generate the queries to recreate the tables and fill them with the data - there are 3rd party tools for this too). There is no need to program anything here, much less use code without any error handling and such, having to do all the programming work manually for every table to be imported and such. Actually, I hardly ever bother to manually write any of this database stuff anyways (simple CRUD operations) -- too much work/too time consuming (for no reason - such a simple thing), one just uses a decent code generator with a good template (saves a LOT of time). But again, there's no need even for that here: copy the files, do a backup, or generate scripts or something instead.

Perhaps you need to explain better what you want. First you asked for a script, they provided that (assuming a PHP host), and now you're asking for static html pages. They can't pre-generate pages and thumbnails for images they don't have, and PHP doesn't generate pages like that. Besides, the html itself is totally trivial - just a bunch of hyperlinks to the actual full-size images (or pages showing them if you prefer) showing a thumbnail, and 2 plain anchor tags for next / previous. There's gazillions of programs that will generate static html pages for you along with thumbnails and all, like Adobe Photoshop (file -> automate -> web photo gallery). Not that I'd use static html for that mind you...

Best language & DB for wholesale merchants? Again, there's no universal answer. Whatever you know/are comfortable with that is mature and stable enough, has the frameworks/libs/modules/whatever you need and they must be of decent quality, preferably good development tools, has a large enough following (relevant and active newsgroups, community sites, programmers/consultants available, etc), good vendor support, good unicode support (and localization), good documentation, scale well, have some decent and solid app servers for it and all. You had asked about Java, if that's what you're comfortable with, I see no problems here either. What language is the easiest doesn't matter all that much, as most systems will end up being fairly complex in the end, and a language being "easy" is such a subjective thing (you're after a good quality solid tool to create reliable systems that will handle lots of $, not a n00b tool to create something like yet another useless blog after all). Most are easy enough anyways, the hard part is often learning the libs/frameworks/APIs and such things that one uses with 'em (3rd party ones also). Either ways, if you really want an open source programming language too (any language can be used to create open source apps, but most language/compilers/libs/frameworks and whatever used to do so aren't), you only have so many alternatives. Java was recently open sourced by Sun though (see here). About the database, I can't think of a single database that would break a sweat with only 100-200 billing per day. That's an extremely light load (200 billings/8h work day is only like a billing/2 minutes or so, all databases can easy handle many/second - just check TPC-C scores, they are often in the millions!) However, you still ABSOLUTELY need a database that is stable, reliable, won't silently corrupt data (i.e. preferably not MySQL), and all the good stuff. The only difference is that it just doesn't really need to be real fast... yet. Wanting only open source products, you're really limiting your choices though. PostgreSQL is still a very good choice (v8.2 is quite nice), but there are a few others (e.g. Firebird).

I can remember us having this discussion several times already, like here and here The thing is, it REALLY depends on what you need and prefer. You might have preferences about server-side requirements (what database it uses, what language it's written in, etc) - other solutions don't need any server stuff at all (ran from a client PC, and infos are stored there). There are solutions which push executables on every PC, or which are ran by scripts and such, whereas other solutions just use WMI over the network. The solutions vary too much to be able to give "this is the best" award to any of them (without knowing what you really want at least). Some are just too buggy whereas others are quite stable (quality of the code varies a great deal), some are a pain to setup/install/deploy/whatever, some might just be too slow, others might just lack features you definitely need, some that I've seen were an absolute nightmare when it comes to usability (when a team of programmers and IT guys can't figure out the GUI and that there's like a dozen scrollbars, there's something wrong!), some might be easier to customize/extend than others, etc. I'm not going to make any recommendations, as we're using our own solution (not public/for download). C#, .NET 2.0, heavily multithreaded, SQL Server as a backend plus various import/export options (XML mainly) and integration with other apps (and using web services) - running scans from a client PC (scheduled & manually) to update the database, it relies mainly on WMI. Accessible from both a web app and a winform app. Basically, use google, and try the ones that seem to have potential. Otherwise, make your own (it's not hard at all), or look at the commercial or non open source alternatives (some are pretty cheap/are worth their asking price). Even some non-inventory apps have similar reporting features (like Hyena).

Nope. Fairly standard Windows install too. But again, don't worry about it. I wouldn't use it anyways.

I had almost forgotten about this thread... I have tried that (even though it was a clean install). Still the same. Just tried that, no go either. But no big worries. I don't really have a use for it anyways.

The max I've ever been able to overburn CDs is like 3 minutes worth or so (using any writer/any media combo), so more like 30MB extra tops. And sometimes it can be problematic with some drives, or with some not so high quality media. There's some larger CDs too, buy they tend to be hard to find (never found them locally anywhere I've lived), and they tend to be expensive too. Even combined with overburning, you're not going to get up to 1GB. If your original disc has 1GB worth of files, it's because it's been optimized (duplicate files are only there once) - you can do that too, using the right apps. But if you really need more than 700MB worth of space, why not just use DVDs? Burners are around 30$, and the media is as cheap as CDs nowadays.

Pretty hard. After many tries, I can't get past Bobbing bobcat, and I've had PLENTY of coffee already...

You're welcome. No objections about Java. It's a good, solid and mature language, with rich frameworks and all. Database wise, if you're really going to exclude the big 3 (Oracle/DB2/MSSQL), your best bet is definitely PostgreSQL.