Recent Posts

1076

General Software Discussion / VirtualBox - An Open Source Virtual Machine

« Last post by Eóin on September 07, 2007, 05:26 AM »

Hi, I know it's not usually the done thing the report on every little update to an app but VirtualBox has added so much since it was last mentioned here that I felt it deserved a bump.

Specifically version 1.5 has added support for Vista x64 as a host OS and with new features like clipboard sharing and seamless window it is now really easy to use it as a safe place to test an application while still working primarily from the host OS. Check it out.

1077

General Software Discussion / Re: Stay Away From Microsoft VISTA

« Last post by Eóin on September 06, 2007, 09:51 AM »

What about MSLU/Unicows?

-f0dder (September 06, 2007, 08:05 AM)

I suppose the only real issue is that I don't have access to a win 98 machine to test on. But in these days of running VMs that's not really an excuse, I still have an original Win 98 cd.

1078

General Software Discussion / Re: Stay Away From Microsoft VISTA

« Last post by Eóin on September 06, 2007, 07:59 AM »

I too think that sometimes you have to cut the past loose. I myself always write my programs for unicode which limits me to Win 2k and better. But I think the advantages of unicode and support for multiple languages far out weighs the negatives.

1079

Living Room / Re: Knytt Stories - New Game (plus level editor!) from "Within a Dark Forest" author

« Last post by Eóin on August 29, 2007, 05:57 AM »

Grrrr it wasn't supposed to be out till tomorrow, I wanted to make the announcement here

1080

General Software Discussion / Re: Turning Windows 2003 Server into a workstation?

« Last post by Eóin on August 28, 2007, 09:46 AM »

I tried it once using Windows X's Windows Server 2003 - XP Conversion Pack. I didn't stick with it because I couldn't get the right drivers for some of my hardware, so went back to XP.

1081

General Software Discussion / Re: Why don't all software files go into a single directory?

« Last post by Eóin on August 27, 2007, 06:39 AM »

--why do certain companies insist of branding their name across multiple subfolders
(ie Adobe) c:\program files\adobe\acrobat\acrobat 8.0\acrobat.exe  gimme a break

-superboyac (August 22, 2007, 12:27 PM)

Nothing annoys me more than when I go to the start menu looking to run a game and realise that I need to know who published it just to find the shortcut.

1082

Living Room / Re: Problem Windows Genuine Advantage

« Last post by Eóin on August 25, 2007, 08:02 PM »

This is possibly a more recent update from the source linked above.

Update: Word from Microsoft is that this problem has been fixed, and all users affected should revisit the WGA site and re-validate. There's no explanation as to why Microsoft was originally telling people to wait until Tuesday, but the good news is that the problem has been solved.

-http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070825-windows-genuine-advantage-suffers-worldwide-outage-problems-galore.html

Thanks for the heads up Cpilot.

1083

Living Room / Re: DMZ Linux Cursors For Windows

« Last post by Eóin on August 25, 2007, 09:35 AM »

Hopefully people won't mind me bumping this. It's just I noticed on the related deviantART comments that an issue was mentioned which I believe is very much related to what I said previously and that the pic I posted here makes it clearer.

1084

General Software Discussion / Re: Computer "virus"...

« Last post by Eóin on August 23, 2007, 06:41 PM »

Well in the categories of malware Gothi[c] is correct. Maybe you should be calling what you are toying with as jokeware or something. Tossing out names like virus ain't really going to give you bragging rights and I can't imagine mouser would be too pleased about such a discussion here.

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Living Room / Re: Acceptable expletives

« Last post by Eóin on August 17, 2007, 02:49 PM »

For me it's got to be smeg!

1086

General Software Discussion / Re: how do you write a .chm file?

« Last post by Eóin on August 17, 2007, 02:10 PM »

I've heard of HelpMaker before. I haven't used it myself but it's free and looks very professional.

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General Software Discussion / Re: intellicomplete and vista

« Last post by Eóin on August 16, 2007, 05:40 PM »

Also try running it under XP compatibility mode, I've heard that works for a number of programs.

1088

Living Room / Re: Flash Game: Anti Tower Defense

« Last post by Eóin on August 16, 2007, 04:05 PM »

It's a bit unclear how you actually score highly, I mean I was flying through the levels but I would never have come close to the high scores.

The is a link to an another "anti" game from it- ANTI-PACMAN which is very good.

1089

Living Room / Re: DMZ Linux Cursors For Windows

« Last post by Eóin on August 16, 2007, 12:39 PM »

Hi I'm bring up an old thread I know but it's only after using these cursors for a while that I noticed this small issue. The "Working in the background" cursor seems to be a few pixels too far to the left so that the pointer part of the cursor appears to skip a bit left and right as it switches to "Working in background" and back to "Normal". I've attached an image which explains what I mean better.

BTW Nighted, what program did you use to make this port? I still love them over the XP and even Vista cursors.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Latest MS updates borks WinXP?

« Last post by Eóin on August 16, 2007, 10:31 AM »

Me too, the computer was just resetting every 10 - 15mins, that's a pretty serious issue.

Reading the three updates I'd hazard a guess that Microsoft Security Advisory (932596) is the culprit. It is possibly conflicting with Sandboxie. They've always said the x64 version was living on borrowed time.

Windows Vista 64

Sandboxie cannot be installed on Windows Vista, x64 Editions for the following two reasons.
Driver Signing

With Windows Vista x64, Microsoft has introduced mandatory code signing for drivers. Since Sandboxie relies on a driver component to ensure software isolation, it cannot be loaded into Windows Vista x64 without compromising the integrity of the system.

Acquiring the code signature is not in itself an insurmountable task. However, the next reason will show why this is pointless at this time.

Kernel Patch Protection (PatchGuard)

In 64-bit editions of the Windows platform, Microsoft has extended the core of the operating system, the kernel, in such a way that it routinely performs self-checks to detect any tampering. This miracle of an extension is affectionately nicknamed PatchGuard.

The software isolation provided by Sandboxie is not something that the stock Windows kernel supports, and in order to implement this, Sandboxie must make some changes to the kernel. This is detected by PatchGuard as tampering, and so the system crashes soon after Sandboxie is installed.

Note that the PatchGuard used in earlier versions of Windows x64, specifically Windows XP 64-bit Edition, is less aggressive than the PatchGuard used in Windows Vista x64. For this reason, Sandboxie can and does work in earlier editions of Windows x64. For now.

-http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?WindowsVista64

Maybe it's nothing to do with it, I am only guessing, I'll follow their forums and see if anything turns up.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Latest MS updates borks WinXP?

« Last post by Eóin on August 16, 2007, 08:32 AM »

Ok uninstalled three of the four newest updates (left the Media Player update because I thought it shouldn't have been the issue) and the computer back working perfectly.

I really should play around with the three updates to try and narrow down the offending one (if it is only one) but for the moment I'm feeling lazy

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General Software Discussion / Re: Latest MS updates borks WinXP?

« Last post by Eóin on August 16, 2007, 06:40 AM »

Something seems to have well and truly messed up my XP x64 here at home and the only thing that changed was I installed all the updates

1093

Developer's Corner / Re: Best Language for Employability?

« Last post by Eóin on August 13, 2007, 08:32 AM »

Elitist attitudes about using VS, or eclipse are childish in inefficient.
You use the best tool for the job, doing asp.net web development, the best tool is VS.NET. Doing java development the best tool for the job would be eclipse with 5 or 6 major plugin's installed. Doing things the 'hard way' is a waste of time and resources.

-KyleLanser (August 13, 2007, 07:53 AM)

I really have to agree with Kyle here. Sure knowing how to do things the hard way is an advantage, but persisting with it is childish.

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Developer's Corner / Re: C++ Development: win32 or .NET?

« Last post by Eóin on August 09, 2007, 07:09 PM »

I'd say WTL is the way to go if you want clean C++ coding under windows. It's not perfect, not by a long shot, but it's the best attempt I'd dare say.

1095

Developer's Corner / Re: Is Beautiful Code A Succubus

« Last post by Eóin on August 09, 2007, 07:07 PM »

You gotta be careful though, good code is not necessarily beautiful. Beautiful is only a subset of good code!

1096

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use any Desktop Theme Software on Windows?

« Last post by Eóin on August 08, 2007, 02:28 AM »

Interestingly the very first uxtheme.dll patch came from the styleXP crowd. I recall back then that they marketed their program to beginners but offered a patched dll as a download for 'experienced' users.

In fact their app really just performed the same patching but did so in ram making it a temporary change.

1097

Living Room / Re: KenR's health and situation

« Last post by Eóin on August 07, 2007, 06:18 PM »

Ken I wish you the best of luck I do hope you can indeed return to work in the coming months and start to regain as much of your life from before as is possible.

Take good care of yourself.

1098

Developer's Corner / Re: Is Beautiful Code A Succubus

« Last post by Eóin on August 07, 2007, 06:12 PM »

Ah but doesn't it all depend on your idea of what beautiful code really is

For me beautiful code is the small chunks of self contained code that do something simple, but do it very well. Of course what I consider beautiful today could look very ugly tomorrow, but that's ok, beauty is never stationary- not in life and not code.

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General Software Discussion / Re: WYFCA?

« Last post by Eóin on August 05, 2007, 08:25 PM »

I quite like FUBAR, but it's not necessarily computer limited.

edit- and I'll this this opportunity to once again mention my hatred of all recursive acronyms

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General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use any Desktop Theme Software on Windows?

« Last post by Eóin on August 05, 2007, 01:19 AM »

Same here, I patched UXTheme.dll and am using XPMC style by ~b0se (Ross Harvey). @tomos check out http://www.neowin.ne...php?showtopic=140707 for details (version 4.0 is the latest).

-PhilB66 (August 04, 2007, 07:52 PM)

I think the WindowsX patcher has superseeded the Neowin one. For example it's the only one to support XP x64 SP2.

lanux128- I recommend giving it a second try, it's proven very stable for me recently