Recent Posts

1026

General Software Discussion / Re: "Interrupts" - killing my CPU!

« Last post by Lashiec on February 17, 2008, 01:29 PM »

I hit 7-20% CPU usage idle, and all programs are sitting in my tray except Firefox, Windows Task Manager, Pidgin and Xfire. I don't see how you can get such a low CPU usage, f0dder

-wreckedcarzz (February 16, 2008, 11:26 AM)

Heh, that's the CPU usage I got on my old PIII

BTW, µTorrent does not get along with almost every security app out there, so nosh figures are normal, I suppose.

1027

General Software Discussion / Re: Maxthon (web browser) resource utilization...

« Last post by Lashiec on February 17, 2008, 01:14 PM »

Remember that memory usage also depends of what pages you have opened. If the 15 tabs are pages with 300 photos each, there's no much you can do to lower memory usage using another browser. What it's important is memory usage in the long-term, that is, at the end of the day, that's when a browser shows it's a memory pig.

1028

General Software Discussion / Re: The definition of "bloat" - RE: Software

« Last post by Lashiec on February 17, 2008, 01:08 PM »

iTunes, for example. It started as a (loaded) audio player, now it's used to sync mail with the iPhone and to rent movies.

Windows

-f0dder (February 17, 2008, 01:02 PM)

LOL. I'll try to better that, er, Linux

1029

Living Room / Re: about to switch to a Widescreen LCD.

« Last post by Lashiec on February 17, 2008, 01:00 PM »

CRTs are superior, but unless you really need to work with color (like a designer), I don't see any reason that an LCD won't satisfy you.

-Renegade (February 16, 2008, 05:21 AM)

Even in that case, a graphic designer would use a high-end CRT, and for the money, a high-end LCD offers a wide color gamut, and other advantages over a CRT. In my opinion, using a CRT for the color advantage is quite arguable. Just ask nudone

1030

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Will Google adverts make Google index DC?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 17, 2008, 12:53 PM »

Well, the search function in DC forum is accessible to everyone, whether is registered here or not. And to narrow Google search to DC, you can always use: <insert search string> site:https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php, in Google. Of course, in the case you mention, both options are useless if he could not remember the name of the site, but might be useful in the future.

1031

Living Room / Re: Cooking my PC: what NOT to do

« Last post by Lashiec on February 17, 2008, 12:40 PM »

CS3 for resizing an image?

In Paint: Picture -> "Expand", and enter some sensible percentages

1032

Living Room / Re: Cooking my PC: what NOT to do

« Last post by Lashiec on February 17, 2008, 12:26 PM »

Mmmm, that case could use some cable neating work

1033

General Software Discussion / Re: How to search for folders by size?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 16, 2008, 06:29 AM »

jv16 PowerTools can do this as well

1034

General Software Discussion / Spatial navigation or how to surf the web faster

« Last post by Lashiec on February 15, 2008, 11:48 AM »

Days ago, Jeff Atwood posted an article complaining about the lack of visual indications to find where the focus is when interacting with text forms. Now he published another one, expanding the issue to page navigation without the mouse, which is at the moment unrealistic in stock browsers, except in Opera, which is praised by its implementation of spatial navigation.

But that's no the focus of the post, instead the real meat of the article is in the comments, where the readers discuss highly interesting methods they use to surf the Internet in unconventional ways. That includes Firefox addons, Opera tricks, and other hidden features of less known browsers, like Konqueror.

1035

General Software Discussion / Re: The Apple Headache

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 07:26 PM »

Zaine, you forgot the link!

Well, isn't this a similar situation to what happens in Windows?

1036

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Scanahand RC1 Released

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 07:20 PM »

You finished your PhD, Darwin? </offtopic>

1037

Living Room / Re: Sun Microsystems buys innotek

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 01:18 PM »

Ooops! Forgot about the snap, thanks for adding it, João

1038

General Software Discussion / Re: Extend Firefox 2 Contest Winners Announced by Mozilla

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 01:13 PM »

Yes, I know that, but All in One Sidebar it's not a newcomer (quite the contrary), and it's not a very slick extension IMO (at least when I tried it about two or three months ago)

1039

Living Room / Re: advice needed: weird lockup/freeze (process/dll/disk/cache?? issue in explorer)

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 01:11 PM »

This screams "shell extension". I don't know if Process Monitor also catches the names of the shell extensions, but you can try that. My advice is to disable them one by one, and see if the symptoms are already there. Disable first those that could be suspicious, that is, those ones that do something more than providing the usual menu in the shell (like you did with QT and Stardock). I hope it can be of some help.

To kill the frozen apps, try something "heavy", like antirootkits. Or maybe Unlocker.

1040

Living Room / Sun Microsystems buys innotek

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 01:03 PM »

Whoa, this one caught me off guard. Sun Microsystems made an agreement with innotek to buy all their assets. As you may know, innotek is the company that makes the other virtual machine, VirtualBox, known for being the only one solution that is really open, not only for its open source nature, but also for supporting a great variety of operating systems. This is very cool, as it means now they have a strong backing to properly compete against VMware and Parallels in its own terrain.

Seems the OSS world is in the midst of constant buyouts this year. First, Sun buys MySQL, then Nokia Trolltech, now Sun buys something again... I wonder who will be the next...

edit by jgpaiva: added image
via Infinite Loop

1041

General Software Discussion / Re: Extend Firefox 2 Contest Winners Announced by Mozilla

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 10:50 AM »

Runners Up

• All in One Sidebar - Ingo Wennemaring

-mouser (February 12, 2008, 05:41 PM)

1042

General Software Discussion / Re: Locate32 crashing a lot

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 10:40 AM »

Weird. Maybe some shell extension is going mad? It has been rock stable for me, and I'm using the same setup.

1043

Living Room / Re: Would anyone want a free DonationCoder.com bumper sticker?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 10:35 AM »

Something funny would be a little Cody figurine for those who have babies, attached to the back window, just like those cute ones who say: "Caution! Baby on board". Maybe it would not be economically viable considering what mouser has in mind with the topic at hand, but it could be a good idea for a future contest or something.

Not so sure about bumper stickers, they're not common here.

1044

General Software Discussion / Re: PHP IDE recommendations

« Last post by Lashiec on February 14, 2008, 10:25 AM »

But Wait! Before you answer... look at this:
http://poignantguide.net/ruby/

written by the incredibly prolific hacker "why the lucky stiff".

-urlwolf (February 13, 2008, 12:45 PM)

Heh, the guy from Hackety Hack

1045

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3 beta 3 expected today

« Last post by Lashiec on February 12, 2008, 08:52 AM »

I really like what they are doing with Firefox 3 UI wise. Places is simply one of the best treatments of the horrible legacy UI mess of bookmarks/history of any browser period. This is exactly where I think the browser UI should be heading! I would be very happy for Opera to "borrow" as much of this as possible.

-nontroppo (February 12, 2008, 07:44 AM)

Indeed. Oslo, start your photocopiers!

Precisely, yesterday I finally decided to organize my bookmarks, and after only 20, I realized that organizing them in folders is pretty much impossible, so I started to dream of a new system in a future 9.6 version (after all, the framework is already present in M2), while I wondered how could we keep the same old system during 10 years, when it was clearly out of fashion the same moment it was introduced. Ah, considering how breezy is to organize music files with the right tools, one can only thank the Mozilla team for using similar ideas, and maintaining the old and new systems together.

Well, at least it's still much easier to organize bookmarks in Opera or Firefox than in IE >_<

Lashiec: what performance benchmarks? I've tested the most recent nightly and it is still significantly behind Webkit and Kestrel on most benchmarks. The latest Webkit, at least on some benchmarks is shockingly fast. Its inclusion of the W3C Selectors API makes it 24X faster than Kestrels fastest library performance and 35X faster than Firefox 3's on the Slickspeed benchmark!!!

I don't really know, that's what Chris Blizzard commented to Ars Technica. I guess he was saying that they focused the development into improving performance within certain AJAX sites (*cough*Yahoo! Mail*cough*) instead of having the fastest engine overall.

1046

Living Room / Re: Kung Fu Election sponsored by AtomFilms

« Last post by Lashiec on February 12, 2008, 06:58 AM »

George W. Bush

1047

General Software Discussion / Re: Mini-HowTo: Handling Cookie Privacy the Right Way

« Last post by Lashiec on February 12, 2008, 06:55 AM »

Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about that ability

1048

General Software Discussion / Re: Mini-HowTo: Handling Cookie Privacy the Right Way

« Last post by Lashiec on February 12, 2008, 06:42 AM »

BTW, Firefox users are also getting site preferences in Firefox 3 (though it's not hailed as a major feature), so that's one less extension to install. Only IE remains as usually. Well, you really have site preferences regarding cookies, but it's not very convenient nor accessible.

Mmmm, a tool to sync cookies? Is that even possible?

1049

Living Room / Re: KVM switch w/DVI?

« Last post by Lashiec on February 11, 2008, 07:18 PM »

Well, time ago I read about this Belkin unit, but according to the comments, it seems like a hit or miss device.

No much knowledge about KVM switches, but the DVI-capable ones were always considered as expensive. Heck, considering the price of a TFT these days, even if the Belkin device works as intended, you're not saving much money.

1050

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3 beta 3 expected today

« Last post by Lashiec on February 11, 2008, 07:08 PM »

Christ, they kept the ugly icons. Damn you Mozilla Corporation and your native theme >_<

Well, memory wise, Chris Blizzard, one of Mozilla's evangelists (the one that doesn't act like a fanboy ) commented various things:

Increasing Firefox's performance and reducing overhead are also very high priorities for Mozilla. Blizzard notes that the developers are making a "huge amount of progress" on memory improvements and says that there are over 300 such improvements in Firefox 3. There are now 100,000 fewer memory allocations at startup time, he says, and the use of a new allocator further increases memory savings. Some of the memory improvements are focused on Linux—for instance, Firefox 3 now uses much less X server memory.

Mozilla's focus for performance improvements is on real world scenarios. Blizzard explains that Mozilla's performance testing and optimization primarily focuses on user-relevant contexts like popular web applications rather than raw benchmarks.

Of course, that could be pure PR. I suppose we'll found out when the browser is out AND the extensions people use are updated for the new API.

Mmmm, raw benchmarks, I wonder if that is a nod to Opera and specially Safari, since the new WebKit version brings substantial performance improvements in JavaScript (again!)