GeekScribes

Spice up your live messenger

July 27, 2008 by

Guru

We can’t go around without having a nice chit chat. Online, Instant Messaging has bridged this gap. Google it and these will be endless lists of services providing Instant Messaging services; some for free, others for a low price that we often call premium. Without doubt we must all have heard of MSN or Windows Live Messenger; the most used free service from Microsoft. Today I will try to pave a path from a simple to a more customised Live Messenger.

What you will need?:

If you don’t have a “passport.net” account head over there and signup for one. Remember you can use any email address for this purpose. Preferably, one from Google, Gmail will do.

After having downloaded Windows Live Messenger, which is a freeware, install it into your computer(s). This is quite easy, just follow the steps in the wizard. 🙂 Now, you can sign in and start chatting right away!!! But will you be doing it? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. If you are reading this it must be out of curiosity or for satisfying your needs. 😛

I will be proceeding with patching Windows Live Messenger first. Launch the downloaded patch (A-Patch) and you will be asked to tick what you will want to “power up” your “chat world”. 😛 Please note that we would be using windows live messenger 8.1 for our purpose. Personally I removed the ads as they were intruding. (I am not imposing). You can use your common sense and your requirements to tick they various possibilities available for customisation. You may like to play around with he nudge, remove the limit 😉

I can now say we have a “cleaner” live messenger as you wanted it to be. If you have not yet downloaded Live Messenger Plus do so now. It allows us to extends Live Messenger 2 ways; plugins and skins. Plugins allowing us to add on more options and automating some processes. In addition you can code plugins to suits your specific needs. Quite handy? Skins gives you the opportunity to dress up Windows Live Messenger to your taste.

Here are some of my favourite plugins that you may like to try:

Display Picture Changer – Allows you to have a “dynamic” like display picture. It scrolls through a set of picture and changes your display picture for a set time period.
Linked Chats – Allows you to share what your are chatting with friends. It is a convenient way over the traditional copy and paste.
LinkSaver – You often receive links from your contacts. Configure it to save them into a file directly. Thus, no need to ask again if you missed it or do not have history to revert to.
ReduceMem -You can often witness the memory consumption of WLM, with ReduceMem you can reduce if many folds. I have not tested it well but it seems that it works miracles.

This is a small list but keep tuning I will write more. It is a post after months of no writing. Thanks for your readership. I am back.

RaceDriver GRID: The Review

July 20, 2008 by

Inf

GRID Box

UPDATE: A number of handling issues discussed in this article are solved by making sure the game is not lagging on your machine, and for me, by disabling that %&$# thing called Motion Blur! Oh the bliss! Now I know why GRID earned 80% or more! It’s TOTALLY worth it!

Upon recommendation from Abi, I purchased RaceDriver GRID on PC. The graphics in the previews and demos were simply superb as you will see in the coming pictures. Codemasters really went all-out to give us a great treat for the eyes. I’d go as far as saying that the graphics surpass even that of Need for Speed: Pro Street.

But, as you will also see in this review, GRID as I will call the game which may be just as fun as 벳엔드, as a number of quirks that bring down its value. By quirks, I do not mean bugs, but design flaws. Specially i handling. For now, a video for you to drool on!

Click here to read the rest of the review

Changes on GeekScribes

July 8, 2008 by

Inf

Over the next few days, I’ll be making some changes as to what GeekScribes really is about.

This blog, or I should say co-blog, started as a collaboration between Guru and myself, so that we have a common place to blog all of our articles instead of on our separate blogs. Since we mostly blogged about tech articles, this collaboration works well for us.

Unfortunately, I guess Guru is a bit busy these days and he will probably not be writing very often for now (until I can find him to… persuade him to be less busy! :P).

Anyways, what the hell is this post? It’s just to tell you about the “new” GeekScribes. Of course, you will still find your tech articles here, and probably a good dose of sarcasm from me. So what are these changes about?

Firstly, a new slogan. We found that the old one doesn’t really match us much. You will see the new one up there near the site name.

Second, we’ll be expanding the scope of what GeekScribes covers. Tech and news is fine, but we’d like more. So expect to see more topics on GeekScribes soon. What topics? Articles about anime and manga, movies, music and other similars. The full extent of the scope has not yet been decided, but GeekScribes will no longer be a tech-only blog.

Finally, there will probably be changes in the post categories. Also, though I’m not sure, you might see a change in the tone of my posts.

That should be about it. Before I do changes, I’d like to know what you think. (Thanks for voting! Comment if you want.)


{democracy:5}

Rapidshare loves you: No Captchas now!

July 8, 2008 by

Inf

This is excellent news, coming straight from the link Shah gave me:

No more captchas – higher flexibility for premium-users

July 02, 2008

By eliminating the captchas we simplified the use of RapidShare’s free services significantly. In addition, free-users can now upload and download bigger files (up to 200 megabyte). Anyhow, to protect RapidShare from congestion caused by automated downloading, we limited the maximum download speed for free-users to 500 kilobit per second. To compensate for that, they do not have to wait anymore until starting a succeeding download.

Premium-users now profit from more flexibility regarding the download volume: It used to be limited to 10 gigabyte per day and can be “saved” now to a maximum of 50 Gigabyte. As a consequence, the volume that was not used is transferred to the following day automatically, up to a maximum of 50 gigabyte. If the complete download capacity is used up during one day, the premium-user is able to save another 10 gigabyte the following day.

(Source)

Enjoy yer leeching mateys for now, yer have no lame captchas. (Ok, sorry for my lame attempt at pirate speech).

This really simplifies downloading off Rapidshare, and I wonder how and if download managers can be used now. Previously, there was competition to see who can crack the RS captchas, now that’s a non-issue.

Oh by the way, the download timer is still there, so you will still have to wait. I’m sure somebody, somewhere will figure out a way to beat that.

Regarding the speed limits and the download limit, I doubt it really affects us Mauritians. Firstly, 500Kbps download speed limit doesn’t matter. Most of us have 128Kbps, or 512Kbps. It’s not that bad. 128Kbps folks will probably be enjoying full speed.

The 10GB limit is plain off-limits to us. I doubt anybody can download 10GBs in Mauritius with our available connections (unless you are an godly haxx0r).

Overall, I find that it’s a good move from Rapidshare to promote its services. But with limits like 10GB per day, or cumulative 50GB, isn’t Rapidshare directly condoning piracy? I don’t think your videos, documents and free music that you may share with others will amount to 10GB daily, will it?

Let’s see your views. 🙂

The end of privacy on the Internet?

July 7, 2008 by

Inf

CCTV Cameras

A number of recent events occurring over the Internet prompted me to write this article. What were these events about? Well, if you want to know, they are about privacy decreasing over the Internet. Most users think that while they are online, they are nameless and faceless; One among the millions or billions of users and that they can do pretty much what they want.

Guess again buddy! In fact, I’d go as far as to say you are never anonymous over the Internet. Why? There is always your IP address. Hide it via a proxy you say? Your ISP still has your record, and if ever your proxy is not totally reliable, then you could easily be found.

I’ll be talking about the decreasing levels of privacy. “The Internet is an unregulated network with free-flow of Information”, or so the definition says. Is it really true? Not according to me. Do you consider bandwidth regulation schemes, commonly known as “bandwidth capping” to be unregulated flow of information?

You are not allowed to use some services at some times of the day, by some ISPs. That’s a lot of some’s, but it’s there. P2P throttling is becoming increasingly common among ISPs who are seeing their bandwidth being swamped with P2P traffic. This violates the basic philosophy of a free-flow of information, right?

But let’s see what the Japanese have to say when it comes to how they use the Internet.

We know that the Japanese are very good when it comes to high-speed Internet, with something like 100Mbps available at around $45 per month. We also know that Fair-Usage Policies were introduced by Orange in Mauritius, giving you a download-capping of around 10GB a month, or so we guessed. Guess what the Japan ISP, NTT did. They implemented an upload-capping of (!!) 30GB per day! Downloads, of course, are still unlimited. Ok… *shocked* Read more here.

Now for the decreasing privacy topic. Starting with the most recent now, let’s see flagrant cases of what I’d call “invasion of privacy” but which authorities seem to consider “normal”. You be the judge.

Read the rest of the article

45% increase in students at UoM next year!

June 25, 2008 by

Inf

This is the astounding news that the L’Express Newspaper reports today to us, starting with those lines as the article header.

L’UoM se propose d’accueillir 4 467 nouveaux étudiants, soit 1388 de plus que l’année dernière. Elle offrira par la même occasion davantage de formations : 23 licences supplémentaires et sept maîtrises de plus.

I’ve been at UoM for a year now, and my year 1 class had around 110 students. The labs were nearly packed full. The cafetaria could barely contain the crowd during peak hours. Common room was often so full that there were no chairs or tables, so students had to find somewhere else to hang out. Same goes for Raised Plaza.

Now, I see this article about a 45% increase in the number of students at UoM and I tell this to myself: “Are our decision-makers insane?”

New Rapidshare.com Captcha: No pets in

June 25, 2008 by

Inf

I was downloading a file off Rapidshare.com today, and guess what I see?

They finally acquired some common-sense! The infamous Cat Captcha system is DEAD!

The new captcha looks like this, which is very much easier to read:

Rapidshare Terrain Captcha

The new captchas look like the letters were modelled off a flat surface, like a terrain. The letters look like mountains off the ground.

This is a most welcomed change, since the Cat Captchas were sometimes very tough to decipher, and a general pain in the rear. This will surely make leeching off ~~pirated~~ files off Rapidshare easier for us netizens! The new captchas sometimes are not clear, but still easier than differentiating cats from dogs, specially the tiny things Rapidshare used! (Is that end letter a D or an 0?)

Thank you Rapidshare, after soooo long, you are seeing the light!