Messages

1551

Living Room / Re: PC to MAC? coming soon? will i cry or jump for joy?

« on: December 27, 2006, 05:31 PM »

<< UPDATE: i just came across Parallels (http://www.parallels...en/products/desktop/) so everything seems to be falling into place! >>

-jammo (December 27, 2006, 11:28 AM)

I know someone who uses Parallels, and is quite happy with it.  Also, VMware has gone into some sort of Beta testing for a Mac version of VMware Workstation, so you'll probably have that as an option, too.

If you do go this route, let us know how it works for you (I've been thinking that my next machine might be a Mac, since they seem quite capable of running Windows apps, too).

1552

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Acronis True Image for FREE

« on: December 25, 2006, 08:07 PM »

A long, long time ago Ghost was an independent product by "Binary Research".  Symantec bought it around 2000,then sometime later bought Partition Magic and dropped the Windows version of Ghost and renamed the Partition Magic software to Ghost.

Or something like that.

1553

Living Room / Re: Learn How to create No-CD Cracks.

« on: December 25, 2006, 03:02 PM »

For people who want to work with CD images, Alcohol Software has a free edition of Alcohol 52% which lets you create images and mount them on virtual CD/DVD drives:

http://www.free-down...hol_52__Free_Edition

Note it installs a toolbar, which I believe can be subsequently uninstalled.

1554

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual diskette reader

« on: December 25, 2006, 02:51 PM »

You can try this one:
 
http://chitchat.at.i.../vmware/vfd.html#top

You can also get VMware Player or Virtual PC for free - they both allow you to atach a floppy image to a 'drive' in the virtual machine.

However, if your program is using the floppy for copy protection, I'd be surprised if any virtual floppy drive will work.

Another option is to try a floppy drive that attaches to a USB port.  NewEgg has them starting at $20.  Keep in mind that this might also not work - especially if the program is using copy protection.

1555

Living Room / Re: Real code vs. Code in the movies

« on: December 08, 2006, 10:04 AM »

I can remember watching one movie (can't remember name of it now)...

-app103 (December 08, 2006, 03:10 AM)

Really?  You must try to recall the name of that movie for us.

Oh, and don't forget that the Terminator was apparently powered by a 6502 (the CPU that was in the Apple ][).  With Dual core Pentium 4 class CPUs around now, I'm wondering where our robot servants are?

1556

Living Room / Re: Real code vs. Code in the movies

« on: December 07, 2006, 11:54 PM »

I love how on CSI (I know there's lots of stuff to rant about on this show) every single database on whole entire the planet is connected into one easly queried app!

-thefritz_j (December 07, 2006, 05:49 PM)

My favorite fictional computer power is the ability they have in movies & TV to take the fuzziest, ultra telephoto image that looks like a blob and have the computer transform the image into something clear as day.  Usually just by uttering the word 'enhance'.

1557

General Software Discussion / Re: 2006 Great Software List Awards

« on: December 06, 2006, 05:52 PM »

Nice list.  I love the "XYplorer's combination of raw power and creative efficiency screams German" bit.

One thing you may want to correct is that Screenshot Captor,  while free and an excellent program, is not "open source".

1558

Official Announcements / Re: --> Winner of Veign's Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Announced

« on: November 29, 2006, 12:03 AM »

Congratulations, Tinjaw!

I can now say that given the pressure of the expectations, I'm quite glad that I didn't win (not that I really had a chance, since I didn't give any bio or indication of what my plans for the software would be...).

Being a non-winner, I can remain secure in my happy, little life of sitting back and doing nothing.  Whew!

So, Tinjaw, time to get to work!

1559

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: completely self-contained VM OS on stick/CD

« on: November 16, 2006, 12:21 PM »

Some links for you to look at (I have not tried these);

     QEMU-Puppy:  http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/qemupuppy/index.html
     Free Portable Virtual Privacy machine: http://www.metropipe.net/ppm.php

Non-free:
     MojoPAC: http://mojopac.com
     Black Dog Project (this is a full-blown hardware product): http://www.projectblackdog.com/

1560

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« on: November 09, 2006, 04:55 PM »

Once you've got malware on your system, it's too late anyway.

-f0dder (November 09, 2006, 04:25 AM)

This is not entirely true *if* you run as a non-admin user.  In that case you can unknowingly and inadvertantly download malware, and it will usually be unable to get itself installed or reconfigure your system (such as punching through firewalls).

Not that running non-admin is easy - an awful lot of legitmate software does not run well in non-admin mode.

In fact, if you're running non-admin without AV or Anti-Spyware you're probably safer than running in Admin mode with that type of protection software:

     http://www.eweek.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=165846,00.asp

We found a vast degree of difference among the three user memberships. On our Windows 2000 Professional client with User permissions only, none of the malware installed completely and two threats actually warned that the user had insufficient privileges.

A third loaded a malicious process into memory, but the threat did not reappear after reboot. The Sunbelt scan performed after the reboot could find only a single threat, which consisted of one file in the browser cache.

1561

Post New Requests Here / Re: SysTray "lost icons" recovery app ..

« on: November 06, 2006, 12:45 PM »

These programs may or may not be of help to you:

Free:

     TraySaver by Mike Lin:  http://www.mlin.net/other.shtml
     Win-Res-Q by Ates Goral:  http://magnetiq.com/...win-res-q-10/#more-7


Non-free:

      Trayer ($12): http://www.kfsoft.co.../trayer/features.htm


Note: I'm a happy user of PS Tray Factory. 

DC has a 20% members-only  discount link for PS Tray Factory, so the price is $20  (though when I click the link the price given is $16, so it's more like a 36% discount.  Not sure what's going on there).  If that's under your level of price pain, check out the "Shareware Discount Codes: Members Only" forum.

Edit: I got the incorrect $16 price by clicking on the "PS Hot Folders" link by mistake.

1562

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« on: November 05, 2006, 04:37 PM »

and then the "well, we'll install apache and keep it running for the config" - are some of the nvidia programmers on crack?

-f0dder (November 05, 2006, 03:17 PM)

It's not just them.  HP has been known to do the same thing for printer drivers. 

Very annoying.

1563

General Software Discussion / Re: Your Computer Tip of the Day: Use "Save As" and Version your Documents

« on: November 03, 2006, 10:10 PM »

Another option which can work extremely well (but has a rather large initial learning curve) is to use a source code control system.

Usually used for software development, they can be used to keep versions of any files, not just software source code.

There are several free options (some are free only for 1 or 2 users, but in this context that's generally not a problem):

    CVS: used by much of the open source software world http://ximbiot.com/cvs/
    TortoiseCVS:  a better interface for CVS (integrates into Windows Explorer) http://www.tortoisecvs.org/

    Subversion: an up-and-coming alternate to CVS  http://subversion.tigris.org/
    TortoiseSVN: a better interface for Subversion (integrates into Windows Explorer) http://tortoisesvn.net/

    Perforce:  http://www.perforce.com  (free for up to 2 users)
    Vault:  http://www.sourcegear.com/vault/  (free for a single user)

This is just a small sample of some of the bigger players; there are many others.

I'd suggest one of the TortoiseXxx versions - they're pretty easy to use once you get things set up and you've used it on a couple files, they're free, and they're widely used with a ton of info and help out in the Google-Sphere.

Once you're using one of these systems, you can always just work on the most recent file and save that file to the version control system periodically, but at anytime you can get any previous version.

One nice thing that Perforce has is an MS Office plug-in - I'm surprised this hasn't happened for CVS or Subversion, yet.

1564

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: View full file system at once (all folders)

« on: October 30, 2006, 02:21 PM »

Are 'treemaps' what you're looking for?

Do a Google search on that term, or look at these (free) examples:

http://windirstat.info/

or

http://www.jgoodies....reeware/jdiskreport/  (which is not really a Treemap, but a similar idea that shows only one directory level at a time instead of the whole set of files).

1565

General Software Discussion / Re: New Winzip will open rar archives

« on: October 27, 2006, 06:28 PM »

[(but I think Corel bought it from the company that previous acquired it from WinZip not as a first purchase - whcih suggests the current financial model isn't working)

-Carol Haynes (October 20, 2006, 03:29 AM)

More along the other way around (sort of) - in 2003 Vector Capital bought Corel, then in 2005 Vector Capital bought WinZip and put it under the Corel umbrella:

http://news.com.com/WinZip+purchased+by+turnaround+specialist/2100-1046_3-5790830.html

1566

General Software Discussion / Re: The Vista "kernel access" controversy - what does DC think?

« on: October 21, 2006, 02:10 PM »

Yeah, I should have put some links... This is a topic that has been confusing even to seasoned driver writers.  For the most-part, I think it's a good idea, as it will reduce the possibility of rootkits in the long run (64-bit OS's only for now), but I think that it does not adequately address the needs of non-commercial driver authors.

One of the few docs from Microsoft that makes it clear that Windows Certification is not necessary to sign a driver for Vista 64:

Digital Signatures for Kernel Mode...:  http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/64bit/kmsigning.mspx

It has a table that indicates the requirements for havng a driver loaded on Vista 64 ("Options for signing kernel modules").  Following that table is this paragraph:

Kernel Mode Code Signing using a SPC provides identifiability of the publisher of a kernel module loading into Windows Vista. It does not provide any level of certification of functionality or reliability of the kernel module. For drivers that do not qualify for the Windows logo, or the Windows Logo is not one of the product requirements, the publisher can create a .cat file for the driver package and sign it with the publisher’s SPC

Kernel Mode Signing Walkthrough:  http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/drvsign/kmcs_walkthrough.mspx

Cross Certs for Vista Driver Signing:  http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/drvsign/crosscert.mspx

(note that while MS lists 6 different CA certs they approve for signing drivers, those are all now owned by either Equifax or Verisign)

1567

General Software Discussion / Re: The Vista "kernel access" controversy - what does DC think?

« on: October 20, 2006, 06:43 PM »

And as for driver signing, money is one issue, the time it takes to verify is another... and the third: Microsoft will decide which drivers they like and which they don't. I wonder if they like daemon-tools and similar...

-f0dder (October 19, 2006, 05:35 PM)

There are different levels of driver signing, and different platforms have different requirements.  On x86 platforms, driver signing is not required.  On Vista x64 platforms, drivers must be signed, but they do not have to be fully 'Windows Certified". Any developer can sign a driver with an Authenticode certificate from one of 3 vendors- Equifax, Verisgn, or Geotrust (soon to be 2 vendors, since Verisign is buying GeoTrust).  The driver does not have to be submitted to anyone for testing or validation.

The signing is simply a method of verifying non-tampering and providing a traceable path to the creator of the driver.

However, the Authenticode certs do cost $200-$400, so while this scheme is not a big financial burden even for small commercial developers, it does pose a huge problem for open source, educational, and hobbyist driver development.

Oh, and it does create some pain in the actual process of developing and testing the software.

1568

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Vista EULA to users: Go to hell!

« on: October 20, 2006, 10:33 AM »

Does Vista have anything I really want?  I'm not even sure if my hardware will run it effectively, so the only time I'm going to get it is when I buy a new machine. 

I think that'll be when I move to Mac instead...

Vista's going to be the best thing to happen to Apple since the iPod, and now that iPod is levelling off the timing couldn't be better for Apple.

1569

General Software Discussion / Re: Are software reviews important and effective? If not, why not?

« on: October 13, 2006, 03:12 PM »

Well, everybody has their own likes and needs, and I think it's always clear that a 'best' award is only the opinion of the reviewer.  The value in the reviews is that they add information and may narrow the field of what you decide to look at.

I think this applies to any review, not just DC's and not just software reviews.

1570

Site/Forum Features / Re: what's with the scroll-bars?

« on: October 11, 2006, 01:19 AM »

I've never seen either problem.  Currently running Firefox 1.5.0.2 on WinXP SP2.

1571

General Software Discussion / Re: Cygwin

« on: October 08, 2006, 08:52 PM »

You might also check out UnxUtils (http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/).  The UnxUtils package gas many of the same GNU command line utilties compiled directly to the Win32 API instead of to the cygwin posix API DLL.

The advantages are:

1) you don't need to have the cygwin.dll somewhere on the path (admittedly, this is a pretty minor item)
2) the cygwin API has differences in how drives & paths are specfied on the command line (at least it did years ago when I last tried the Cygwin tools), so you have to learn to use /c/somedir/myfile.txt (or something similar) instead of c:\somedir\myfile.txt.  The cygwin method is much more natural for Unix die-hards, while the UnxUtils syntax is more natural for someone like me who's more used to Windows.

The disadvantages are:

1) the UnxUtils package is not as continuously maintained as cygwin and the utilities provided are somewhat older than you'll find in a current cygwin package.  The UnxUtils package has not been updated in a long while (since 2003), but then again, how often does 'grep' need updating?

1572

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: McAfee for free

« on: September 30, 2006, 06:14 PM »

I personally prefer Panda myself.

-Tekzel (September 29, 2006, 09:42 PM)

You can get one year of Panda's full Platinum Internet Security for free at:

http://www.pandasecurity.com/promotions/itathome/register.aspx

It's intended for IT people, but if you count your kids, dogs, and cats as employees (it certainly costs enough to feed them), I imagine qualifying isn't too hard.

1573

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Alcohol 52% has gone freeware

« on: September 20, 2006, 05:35 PM »

Alcohol 52% will also create images of discs.  The only feature in 120% that's not in 52% is the ability to burn images to disc.

1574

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Alcohol 52% has gone freeware

« on: September 20, 2006, 04:59 PM »

Is this a surprise being that there are many FREEWARE tools which offer more features and functionality? They couldnt have been getting many sales from this.

-Josh (September 20, 2006, 04:42 PM)

I'm not aware of any freeware utilities that create images of most games.  It has worked well enough for my uses that I was convinced to pay for it a while back, but then again maybe I missed something that would have cost me nothing back then - I dunno.

1575

Found Deals and Discounts / Alcohol 52% has gone freeware

« on: September 20, 2006, 04:25 PM »

Alcohol 52% - Virtual CD/DVD drive emulation software with the capability to create images of discs, including copy-protected discs (ie., games).

Free for non-commercial use.

http://www.free-downloads.net/programs/Alcohol_52__Free_Edition

This version does not include capability to burn discs (that's in the Alcohol 120% program).