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fyhuang

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Posts posted by fyhuang

  1. Wouldn't it be nice if we had autoloading DVD burners? Then one could actually remotely burn DVDs and have them dropped in the inbox on your desk or something. And labeled. By your personal robot assistant.

    Yeah, right. Otherwise an excellent build for your price, methinks :).

    Cheers!

  2. I tried Eclipse once, and although it seemed like a fairly good IDE at the time, it's still a bit bloated & is kind of slow too (which is partly Java's fault, although there might be some small flag I can set for Java optimization that's simply eluding my primitive knowledge). I also code mainly in C++, and the CDT thing for Eclipse isn't as mature as I could wish.

  3. I use TextPad under Windows and vim under Linux. Vim is just a personal preference, I won't ever bother trying to justify it :blush:.

    I wish there were some sort of serious IDE under Linux (Kdevelop and Anjuta are, IMHO and with all due respect, just autotools wrappers, and bloated (well KDevelop at least) and not well-thought-out, at that). Terminal-based editing & compiling serves me fine for now though.

  4. I used to use the classic theme a lot. I dunno, right now I prefer WinXP, and and neutral to Vista (Vista looks too much like a bad WindowBlinds theme with gaussian blur). Also used the Tablet PC style for a while (forget the name...). In the WinXP style, I only use blue (people tell me "boring", blah blah, but the other colours feature light colours for the foreground window titlebars, which really irks me because I think they're not active...).

    Except for the pinstripes and round buttons (just a personal preference), I rather like the OS X look too. I don't like Apple's handling of philosophical issues, but that's not to say that we can't learn anything from Apple's interface design...

  5. Hmm. My only concern is that, without some kind of moderation over the projects that get submitted, there might be a lot of "project spam" just like there's currently a lot of blog spam. I suppose it's a unlikely proposition that in the future, having a open-source project will become "trendy", but you never know :blush:. At the least, Google will be hosting more low-quality projects than it wants.

    Feel free to disagree!

  6. Yes, Audacity is a good choice. As with a lot of open-source software, approach with an open mind as the interface may take some getting used to :blush:. When pasting, remember that you should first make a selection and then perform the "paste".

    Cheers!

  7. Most of those letters were sent to gross abusers of bandwidth... like people being nodes for DVD/Divx swapping, sending large video mails 3 times a day, that kind of stuff. Basically the letters insisted the user upgrade to a "Commercial" Package for using so much bandwidth.

    There was one prominent case I heard about a while ago that involved a fairly normal user of broadband: i.e. downloaded a lot of songs, movies, but nothing extreme like what you suggest...

    I don't remember the details very well though, so it's quite possible that those people *were* actually an extreme outlier in terms of bandwidth usage... either way, bandwidth limits are Bad (;)) and I like being told what I'm agreeing to.

    Cheers!

  8. I've heard stories of US ISPs monitoring, at least, bandwidth in the background and then sending threatening letters to clients who use significantly more bandwidth than others (i.e. maybe sharing photos, downloading music, or if you're like me, torrenting a new Linux CD every day ;)). If an ISP does have some kind of concrete bandwidth limit, I would prefer that they openly make that known to me instead of sending me a threatening letter when they feel like I've used too much.

    Cheers!

  9. Hmm. I just read a review of the Core 2 Duo, and it seems that, while being rather expensive, the Core 2 Duo is quite fast and efficient at the same time (much, much more so than Intel's previous processors). From my limited perspective (not having owned an AMD processor), it seems to me that AMD processors are better priced and power-efficient (or at least were...) for "regular" applications, including productivity and most games, while Intel processors were more "heavy-duty": more power hungry, provided more "raw" power but less "intelligence", so were more suited for tasks like 3D rendering and/or number crunching.

    I suppose with the Core 2 Duo, this may change.... one thing I noticed, browsing NewEgg, is that AMD seems to allow more flexibility: Intel seems closer to Apple's business model, in that Intel motherboards often contain all Intel-manufactured parts (like Intel graphics, audio, etc.).

    But whatever. Technology changes way too fast these days, so as my newest computer is now approaching 2 or 3 (can't remember exactly how much... ;)) years of use, and even keeping up with the latest developments, I'm probably still behind the times...

    Cheers!

  10. Vista is coming? What's that? ;)

    More seriously, Vista, once it does come out, will be compatible with current x86 hardware, PCI-e will still be around, and if you do research and find that Conroe uses the same socket that Core CPUs do (I don't know if it does), then there should be relatively little risk in buying a Core Single/Duo motherboard with PCI-e right now, as the various interfaces will still be compatible next year.

    On the AMD side, buy a motherboard with the AM2 socket for forward-compatibility.

    I hear also that integrated motherboard network cards (i.e. that use a direct interface with the chipset, like the nVidia nForce interfaces; NOT a chip that uses a PCI interface, like Broadcom chips) work a little faster than PCI network cards... although the tiny speed difference probably doesn't matter much. If you can find a PCI-e network card (and your motherboard has slots), those are faster too.

    For low power consumption, ATM I think the leader is still AMD, but Intel is starting to see the light and in a year or so that might not be true anymore.

    Good luck & have fun!

  11. Mm. Personally, I think Macs are overrated (don't shoot me!!!).

    But I digress. I have a tablet and I don't find much use for the tablet feature either... it is supposedly excellent for taking notes, but there is a particular lack of IMHO good software for Windows that actually takes advantage of the tablet.

    There are two things I find it very cool for though: if you download the Tablet Education Pack and Tablet Experience Pack (from Microsoft's website), there are two programs called "Formula Writer" (or something like that) and InkArt. Formula Writer is for all of you who don't understand LaTeX and just want to write out your formulas on the computer screen. It works fairly well for most neatly-written formulas ;).

    InkArt is, according to one of my friends, a toned-down Corel Painter (having never used Corel Painter, I wouldn't know...). It mimics real-life art tools (like a paintbrush, crayons, pencils, etc.) and lets you draw with the tablet pen. I'm not that great of an artist either, so my computer drawings have been relatively bad, but it's quite a fun novelty :).

    There is a specific tablet PC that I really like: the Toshiba Portege M400. The thing I love about it is that it blows out cold air. Even with an Intel Centrino Duo. This makes it possible, for once, to hold it like it was intended (i.e. a notebook) without burning any limbs. CNet calls it a "value tablet" but I don't think so: it's not a gaming laptop, obviously, but the processing power won't fail you anytime soon.

    So that's my little blurb on the small amount of experience I have with tablets so far (about one year). Hope it informs or helps or entertains!

    [edit] By the way, MS's handwriting recognition isn't really that good... it helps to write in script (cursive). You'd think it the other way around, but for me, cursive makes it much easier for Windows to interpret my words. Also, if you're trying to write something uncommon (like "C++"), use the on-screen keyboard or the character blocks things instead (where you write in individual characters: see the left-hand buttons on the tablet input panel).

  12. PHP's OO (at least in PHP 4.x) isn't all that great, and IMHO doesn't apply very well to web programming anyways. Of course, I'm not that great of a

    web programmer, so perhaps there are simply uses I haven't discovered yet...

    Anyways, I learned OOP on C++, which is IMHO just as effective as Java... except that you have to learn pointers, which can be very confusing unless you're used to thinking in a very, very low-level way.

    I think that Klaas is right: start with Java, it'll make it easier to learn OOP because of its more varied uses in general programming (i.e. data structures and all sorts of other cool things). Moving to OOP in PHP will be much easier after that.

    Cheers!

  13. I tend to use Gaim for Jabber communications (incl. my GTalk account), simply because Gaim's sound notifications work for me and Gmail's don't... ;)

    (Gaim plug) Gaim is also available for Windows for those who like it, and my high school recommends it over AIM because it's much less susceptible to spyware and viruses.

    Cheers!

  14. Excellent: I'm always glad when my work is useful for someone besides myself :). It seems to usually end up that way (I'm the only person using my code), unfortunately ;).

    Anyways, I'm hoping to add more stuff onto the library later on, and possibly also start a separate library for more "mainstream" game-oriented tasks, like graphics and multimedia.

    Cheers!

  15. Hello all,

    It's been a while since I've posted here, I think. School and everything takes away a lot of my free time, unfortunately.

    Anyways, now that I'm on vacation, I took the time to finish off a small project I've been working on. It's called gDev, and it's a small set of C++ classes designed to speed up independent and amateur game development. It is by no means a complete game engine, as it doesn't handle any of the standard multimedia operations that a game engine would handle (graphics, sound, etc.).

    Instead, it's a collection of mostly utility classes: stuff that makes programming go much faster, but that there really isn't a central repository for (I guess because programmers assume that the code is included in most game engines). It's more game-development oriented that libraries like Boost, but because of it's "utility" nature, it's likely useful in non-game applications as well. Think of it as a "toolbox", if you will, of little things that might make your game development a little brighter and more fun :P.

    Included in the library are a number of utility classes (Singletons, logging, etc.), a simple memory manager & garbage collector, a system for loading C++ classes from plugins (Unix-only at the moment, but I do plan on extending this to support Windows DLLs as well), and a finite state machine class. The finite state machine is "imported" from a "legacy" project of mine, so its namespace is called gFSM, different from the rest of the library (contained inside "gDev").

    gDev is also free, open-source software, and is licensed under what is commonly known as the "zlib/libpng" license. A copy is included in the source distribution, and also online in the subversion repository.

    Anyways, enough of that. I am pleased to announce gDev 0.9, the first official release of the gDev library. This is a beta release: bugs are yet to be fixed, gFSM is yet to be fully assimilated. Please test, report bugs, and give feedback :)!

  16. LCD refresh rate is different from CRT refresh rate: the higher the CRT refresh rate, the less each pixel dims before it is drawn again, making a perceptibly brighter and less flickery image, but in LCDs a higher refresh rate simply makes everything smoother, not less flickery.

    As for your problem, I really can't offer any suggestions past what I have already... I've never had trouble with VSync, so... maybe updating drivers?

    Cheers!

  17. Possibly FRAPS is simply telling you it's at 30 because FRAPS is 30-FPS limited, for the trial version? Also, please check to make sure that you actually are setting the refresh rate to 60 Hz: most games will simply change the resolution, and Windows will switch the refresh rate to the lowest possible refresh-rate for that resolution (to prevent monitor damage, apparently). You game needs to set the refresh rate *itself*, I believe, in order to not get the lowest refresh rate.

    Actually, I'm not quite sure that Windows will let you set the refresh rate below 60 Hz, but that's just idle speculation: it is possible (i.e. with X windows) to double-scan and achieve low refresh rates.

    Cheers!

  18. Whoa, I'm too late.

    I was about to suggest an XFX 7600GS, cause it's not that bad for a "value" card ($180-ish, not sure what that translates to in other currencies), but probably doesn't have quite the power of a 6800 XT. That being said, the 7-series GPUs are much more heat and energy efficient for (with higher models) better performance, so it might be better in the long run.

    Whatever, you've already made the purchase, so I can't help you now :shrug:.

    On a completely unrelated note, this card also has passive cooling! I live in a dorm room right now so that's about the most important thing to me at the moment ;). I would build a quieter PC than I have now, except I can't figure out for the life of me how to fit two Zalman CPU coolers in one case.

    Cheers!

  19. I don't think mplayer has the capability to strip DRM even with the license, because WMV's encryption scheme is proprietary after all. Now, I know that you can take screenshots of a playing WMV video... maybe something like FRAPS could help you here? A screen capture utility is my only suggestion :shrug:.

    Cheers!

  20. You can record frames (with no framerate limit! ... well, as long as your computer is powerful enough to handle it) with Xvidcap, and for an FPS counter, Cedega has a builtin one (the Cedega "HUD") for Windows games, but for Linux games, I can't think of one off the top of my head.

  21. I don't know of any services, except for SourceForge.net and the like. I could offer up my subversion repository for a bit, but I have no clue how to access it at the moment (haven't needed to yet: it's on TextDrive hosting) and I can't make any guarantees about it being online the day before you hand your project in ;).

  22. So I've been thinking about GUI design and usability lately, and of course the first thing that comes to mind that I have to consider is Apple's Mac OS X. I've been wondering, what makes OS X users love OS X so much?

    Is it the graphical prettiness (which, even though there are some over-used elements (brushed metal IMHO...), still manages to avoid eyestrain and the feeling you get with gradient/lens flare abuse)? Is it because Apple computers "just work" (this is actually a great thing about Macs, because Apple sells all Mac hardware, so Apple always knows how to make their computers work 'just right')?

    OS X is also rumoured to be easier to use than Windows... last time I tried it, I found things in different places (naturally...) but generally, it was fairly easy to figure out how to do something if I didn't already know. What makes this so? Keep in mind that I haven't read Apple's UI guidelines yet, and my experience doesn't count for much because I can find my way around just about anything... do other people say that OS X is easy to use just because Mac has a reputation for being easy to use? Is it because Apple actually put a LOT of thought into designing their user interface? Maybe both? (this goes along with "Macs are good for graphics", because if you ask me, there isn't really that much that separates a Mac from a Windows system in terms of graphics - all major graphics apps have versions for both platforms, work equally well on both, etc.)

    I'm simply curious about this because I'm trying to figure out what Apple did right, why Microsoft can't get it right, and what GNOME is doing wrong. Firsthand experience from OS X users (or even users of old Macs) would most definitely be appreciated, and opinions of non-Mac users can be helpful too.

    Thanks!

  23. I will continue using them until I receive absolute proof that they are illegal, upon which I will switch services. Why? It's not the price ($0.99 a song I can deal with), it's not the servers (they're SLOW like molasses running uphill in a hurricane), it's not their selection of music (which is rather small), but rather, because they provide me songs in Ogg Vorbis format with no DRM. That's all. I'm rather not waste a bunch of CDs to de-DRM-ify my music, so I go with AllOfMp3.com.

    Cheers!

  24. You need to make sure that the width of your div is the same or larger than the width of your image: I'm not sure that width: auto will do what you think it will (i.e. make it the width of your background image).

    HTH!

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