Recent Posts

1126

Living Room / Re: Windows 8: Yes, it's that bad

« Last post by f0dder on August 22, 2012, 10:19 AM »

Does anyone know if windows 8 banned the alt-tab or if we can't have two windows side-by-side? Or does the "desktop app" work pretty much as in previous versions and this reviewer just doesn't know how to use it?

-jgpaiva (August 22, 2012, 10:13 AM)

I think this reviewer is focusing mostly on FORMEtRo. It's a better piece of text than the crap this thread started with , but IMHO it still doesn't paint the fully picture of Win8... like, nobodys says you have to use the built-in mail, media player, calendar and other crap - you can still use your tried-and-trusted desktop apps.

It sucks that some tasks require going to FORMEtRo, though - it would be nice if one could just ignore that part (and perhaps not even install it) if not wanted.

1127

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me understand Virtual Machine [VMWare]

« Last post by f0dder on August 22, 2012, 04:58 AM »

I'm wondering, can I restore my backup to a different location and use it as a new virtual OS, or would it confuse VMWare because it's exactly the same as the other? I see I can open a virtual machine "which will then be added to your library"

-tomos (August 22, 2012, 04:56 AM)

If you make a copy of the VM files and open them, VMWare should ask you something to the effect of "is this a copy, or did you move the VM files?". It also does this after a reinstall (at least a full Windows reinstall, haven't reinstalled vmware on it's own).

1128

General Software Discussion / Re: Ritlabs "support" gem

« Last post by f0dder on August 22, 2012, 04:26 AM »

When one of the major new features in a new version of The Bat! was skinning and movable toolbars, I moved to Thunderbird... and haven't looked back since.

1129

Living Room / Re: Please (oh please!) let this be a joke...

« Last post by f0dder on August 21, 2012, 04:23 PM »

Take that, you evil womankind!

1130

Living Room / Re: Wikileaks - Julian Assange Granted Asylum by Ecuador

« Last post by f0dder on August 21, 2012, 09:22 AM »

I'm no expert here, but everything I've heard/read seems to indicate that the first goal is to get him to Sweeden - the US & Sweden have a sweet (from USA's point of view) extradition arrangement which would then kick in. I'd say at this stage that it's fantasy to believe that he will simply face a trial in Sweeden with no US interference.

-tomos (August 21, 2012, 08:56 AM)

Also, keep in mind that Sweden's government is heavily in bed with USA. People who don't believe so might want to do a bit of digging into leaked diplomatic cables wrt. the whole The Pirate Bay thing. One place to start is Cable Reveals Extent Of Lapdoggery From Swedish Govt.

There's also some other interesting things to look at, like Diplomatic Cables Reveal Australia Expects U.S. To Charge Julian Assange.

But what fair trial are you referring to? The ONLY trial we can say with certainty that he's facing is the Swedish one. So projecting to a USA trial at this stage is fantasy.

-tsaint (August 21, 2012, 08:39 AM)

I'm afraid it's fantasy that Assange is not going to be extradited to the USA, should he reach Sweden. Everything points in that direction. Just look at what they're willing to do to their own citizens who have been far less a thorn in the eye of the military and big corporations...

1131

Living Room / Re: What Happened to Genie Backup Manager?

« Last post by f0dder on August 21, 2012, 07:23 AM »

And I haven't found another piece of backup software that runs unobtrusively in the background and does local, versioned, on-modified backups.

-f0dder (August 20, 2012, 01:58 PM)

what have you tried?

-tomos (August 20, 2012, 03:11 PM)

I've been looking at a fair number of programs during the years, haven't really kept names of most of them. Traditional period-scheduled backup programs (like Genie's backup manager) don't really do it for me. I've been using SpiderOak for several years, but since it only does cloud, it's only usable for backing up the most important core files (bandwidth as well as storage capacity). Also, it's user interface is horrible.

I would have thought SFFS would be your type of backup programme - have you tried it? Seems to me it does all you want, backups are very accessible.

-tomos (August 20, 2012, 03:11 PM)

I checked it out a while ago, and it wasn't really my cup of tea. It does seem pretty fine for synchronizing, but I'm not sure it fits my backup needs. I've skimmed the bullet points for Syncovery, and it does mention Real-time sync and versioning now, but I still get the feeling that it's not exactly what I want. Guess I should take it for a test drive. Somewhat expensive, but OTOH it can also do a bunch of things Timeline can't... ho humm. It's pretty appealing that you can set up multiple backup jobs and there's S3 integration - I could backup the entire dataset to my fileserver, and then the critical stuff (i.e., the "SpiderOak set") to S3... would have to look closely at their versioning and security, because while SpiderOak has a lot of flaws, that's two things they got right, and the reason I use it at all.

I guess listing what I find Timeline does right would be helpful.

1) real-time monitoring of file changes, instead of scheduled backups. However, it doesn't backup files just as they're changed - it queues up changes and backs up periodically. IMHO this is the best of both worlds - it doesn't need to re-scan the backup set, it knows what to backup because of the monitoring, but you don't waste CPU time, disk I/O, network bandwidth and backup storage by constantly backing up files that are modified often.
2) the background backups run at a priority level where it doesn't put much strain on my computer, but I can hit "backup now" and enable "turbo mode" to get the job done ASAP.
3) it has VSS/Shadow Copy support, so in-use files can be backed up.
4) the versioning system - both that you can set it to auto-purge, but also the scheme (which is similar to rsnapshot and Apple's time machine): keep X copies for the last four hours, a daily set for the past week, and a weekly set for stuff older than that.

I also quite like it's UI, it's simple and uncluttered, and has relevant information readily available (when was the last backup run, when will the next backup run, how many files have been modified since last run).

For "regular people", it's backup source selections ("documents", "pictures", etc.) is cute, but I only really need to specify file paths (which it fortuntaley supports) - the easy source selection isn't something I need in another backup program. And one of the big limitations of Timeline is you can only do one backup set. While I can live with that, it would definitely be nifty to have local as well as cloud backup, as I mentioned above - wouldn't mind running a single backup program.

I've also looked (very little!) at some of the open source offerings, and some of the client/server offerings seemed interesting - but often too much hassle setting up, lacking a bit in the client end, or only offering web-based GUIs. Ho humm.

1132

General Software Discussion / Re: VLC - Is it worth it still?

« Last post by f0dder on August 21, 2012, 05:58 AM »

I tend to use Media Player Classic - Home Cinema. It's UI in unobtrusive, it handles the file formats I need, it has some GPU acceleration support, and I don't need to install any of those nasty destabilizing codec packs.

Once in a blue moon I come upon something that's been encoded queerly or has some weird subtitle sync problems, which VLC might handle better... but that's not very often.

Oh, and most of the time I use my HD TV Live box instead - that's such a sweet little piece of hardware

1133

Living Room / Re: What Happened to Genie Backup Manager?

« Last post by f0dder on August 20, 2012, 01:58 PM »

Hm, can't make up my mind with regards to purchasing Genie Timeline or not.

I'm near the end of my trial period, and so far it has been pretty satisfactory. It doesn't bog down my machine (admittedly, that would be a pretty awesome feat after my latest upgrade ), and I really like the no-nonsense simple GUI and the multiple backups. I've pointed it a my fileserver and let it use 50 gigabytes storage, which is enough for quite a few versions of my most important data.

So, what's holding me back?

First, two relatively minor points, that still nag me somewhat.
1) the structure of the backups. Poking around there just looks... weird. OTOH, rather than 100% opaque binary blobs, there's a bunch of individually zipped up versions - plus special storage for files with very long path/filenames, and some bookkeeping database stuff. Would be a pain to extract stuff by hand, but seems doable. The structure also does seem to be relatively wasteful... then again, it makes for fast restore of individual versions.
2) the use of an explorer shell extension for the timeline explorer. I really, really, don't think that's the best way to implement this... also, the UI for this is a bit too simplistic, offering only home/end, prev/next and some 'dots' you can click - there's no decent overview of or way to select based on dates.
3) restore seems relatively slow - seems like traversing their version-database/whatever might not be designed the best way in the world (actual file restoration after the "preparing data" step seemed to run at fine speed). And this is after the 30-day trial period - I have no idea whether the "preparing data" step will take even longer as more versions are accumulated?
4) trying to con you into "extended download support" and adding whatever unrelated crap. I know there's a fair amount of online stores doing this, but it's still damn cheesy. (That's the shop on Curt's link, btw, not the official(?) genie9 store).

I can live with the above flaws, but they do nag me a bit. And I haven't found another piece of backup software that runs unobtrusively in the background and does local, versioned, on-modified backups.

Now, there's a few other things that, when added to the above points, makes me queasy.
1) the "tweet about this" and "like us on facebook" buttons in the main UI. Like, WTF? Sure, have those on your webpage if you must - but in the program UI? Tacky.
2) "but where did the forums go?"
3) genie-software/genie9's history of not updating their software for ages.
4) the genie9 blog... like, W-T-MEGA-F? Why the heck is a backup software company blogging about smartphone apps, Nikon kameras, tablets and stuff? The blog seems like a mix of somehow-revenue-generating links and stuff that really doesn't have anything to do with backup (olympics 2012, for instance).

So I don't really know. I haven't found any other backup software that I really like, but the company seems dodgy. What to do?

They currently have a 35% off summer sale, but Curt's link also seems to work (at least up until you enter your CC information, haven't gone through with it) - dunno if there's any differences between the Pro version there and the Pro version on their site?

*sigh*. Why can't these things ever be easy?

1134

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: CD jewel case insert file list

« Last post by f0dder on August 20, 2012, 12:03 PM »

Yes I agree that the investment in a HD instead of DVD "could" be better, my luck with HD is flaky at best. I have cashed in on my HD warranties.

-wetsmellydog (August 19, 2012, 11:45 PM)

Everything dies eventually, hence the suggestion to keep two copies of the collection

Now the type of encoding is also an interesting factor...but my reason for DVD and MP3 is.....all current and most past DVD/BlueRay players will play MP3 format music.

-wetsmellydog (August 19, 2012, 11:45 PM)

Kinda-sorta makes sense, I guess, but I personally wouldn't sacrifice quality for that. Also, having to locate CDs/DVDs when you want to hear music? I ain't ever going back to that, proper media players ftw. I still buy CDs, but that's because I like artwork - if there were some decent DRM-free FLAC shops that also offered nice artwork, I'd consider scrapping the discs entirely.

So if I archive on something that can be played on something a few years from now it is better than trying to match an eide, sata, or ? (future HD format) down the road.

-wetsmellydog (August 19, 2012, 11:45 PM)

USB is going to be with us for quite a while. Yeah, probably not forever, but optical discs definitely don't last forever, either. I bet that, in order to be able to read them, you'd need to re-copy DVDs more than once before USB mass storage devices and the NTFS filesystem is no longer readable.

Also, even if you can't tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and no-quality-lost FLACs today (I'll be honest and admit that I definitely can't on just about anything), who knows what quality audio gear you might purchase in the future? Better not throwing quality away

1135

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: CD jewel case insert file list

« Last post by f0dder on August 19, 2012, 05:34 PM »

yes, it takes up more space, but considering how much work it is ripping 400+ CDs, it's stupid not doing it right from the get-go

-f0dder (August 19, 2012, 03:33 PM)

+1!  Also, isn't the €/GB relation much better in hard drives than DVDs? With the money you spare in using hard drives, you can buy more space to use a better encoding for the CDs

-jgpaiva (August 19, 2012, 03:42 PM)

Not sure about that - last time I looked, el-cheapo DVD-Rs were a bit cheaper than harddrives (at least when looking at drives with USB connectivity). But you really do want +R instead of -R (which tend to be a bit more expensive? Again, it's been a while since I looked), and if you want the stuff to last, you don't want el-cheapo.

FLAC size depends on album length and the kind of music, some encode better than others. I think average size for me is ~400meg per album. That'd be less than 160 gigs for a 400-album collection. Buy two 500-gig external drives, and you can mirror the collection (store one with a friend in case your house/apartment burns down) AND you have plenty of room to grow.

1136

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: CD jewel case insert file list

« Last post by f0dder on August 19, 2012, 03:33 PM »

The 400+ number is the amount of CD's but they will be converted to mp3 format and archived onto DVD's. ( hopefully reduced to a manageable amount of Discs and physical space. )

-wetsmellydog (August 18, 2012, 10:02 PM)

If you're going to digitize your music collection, you really ought to use a lossless format - yes, it takes up more space, but considering how much work it is ripping 400+ CDs, it's stupid not doing it right from the get-go... Also, consider using external harddrives instead of DVDs, it's a lot easier to manage, and faster - and probably better chance of surviving several years. Optical media has a tendency to go fubar after not so many years, whereas a not-often-powered-up harddrive should last a long time.

For the jewelcase thing, I think old versions of Word Perfect had a template for it - but it's been like 10+ years since I printed one of those . If you do choose to go down the optical media road, get yourself an A4 paper guillotine, it'll be well worth the cash.

1137

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me understand Virtual Machine [VMWare]

« Last post by f0dder on August 19, 2012, 02:26 PM »

Lastly, there is always the possibility that a malware will be specifically coded to exploit bugs in a virtual machine software and "break out" of the virtual machine.  This is not a purely theoretical concern -- I have read about virtual machine exploits -- though I don't have any idea how rare they are.  But you should always be cautious about assuming that a virtual machine provides 100% secure testing environment for truly malicious malware.

-mouser (August 19, 2012, 08:30 AM)

I doubt you'd find that in a regular piece of malware.

First, the purpose of generic malware is to infect as many machines as possible, for botnet zombies or for harvesting passwords or CC data. There's not enough people running VMs that it makes sense putting VM-breakout exploits in a generic piece of malware. It's muuuuuuch more interesting to keep those exploits private, either to sell it to the highest bidder, or for doing your own very-targetted attacks.

As for snapshots vs. file-copying, snapshots are definitely prefarable, unless you're dealing with very small virtual drives, since snapshots don't copy the entire virtual disk image - instead, unless I've misunderstood things and the file sizes in my VM dirs , it "freezes" the previous image and stores modified blocks in a new file.

1138

Living Room / Re: Go dark for IE - October 26, 2012

« Last post by f0dder on August 19, 2012, 02:01 PM »

People who are still on XP could slap on Chrome or FireFox?

People still using IE6 are probably
a) ignorant that there's better browsers around
or
b) working for some fat, lethargic corporation that could use a little lesson

(OK, both the fox and chrome are fatter and slower than IE6, but if you're on a system that's so hardware-limited that it can't drive one of those browsers, it probably wouldn't be very fun to visit websites that are advanced enough to actually require a newer browser...)

1139

Living Room / Re: What's the best registry cleaner? Ask Leo says: none

« Last post by f0dder on August 17, 2012, 06:44 AM »

Getting rid of even one tedious housekeeping exercise (i.e., registry "cleaning") would be beneficial, and I certainly would not want to continue doing it if it actually increased risks, as you seem to be suggesting.

-IainB (August 17, 2012, 05:57 AM)

It might not be a very large risk, when you use a cleaner that isn't overly aggressive - in that case, it's just a case of not really gaining anything, plus the (slightly theoretical) argument that it's more risk doing changes than not doing them.

As for why registry cleaning doesn't gain you much (apart from some situations where software has actually broken stuff), there's two points:
1) you won't gain a lot of disk space. On my work laptop, my current user hive is 7 megabytes... that's a drop in the ocean on today's harddrives. Besides, if you compact the hive, adding new nodes will cause file fragmentation, whereas while not shrinking internal slack space can possibly be re-used.
2) node lookups are pretty darn efficient. Iirc, it uses a binary tree structure, so node lookups are fast, even if there's a huge amount of them. (OK, you can gain some speed on during full-registry searches, but that's not a very typical usecase ).

1140

General Software Discussion / Re: BitTorrent Inc. earns $15-20 mn; makes uTorrent Ad-supported to "keep lights on"

« Last post by f0dder on August 17, 2012, 02:21 AM »

Regarding usenet, you don't need to get a warez server to get max speed.  You get whatever your connection can handle.  If you can't that means it is being limited or blocked.  That's not a problem with usenet, that's an isp issue or whoever the server is issue.

-superboyac (August 16, 2012, 07:41 PM)

My experience with Danish ISPs is that they either don't offer usenet access, or have stable & fast text-only servers, and not-so-polished binary servers. Which is just fine, because usenet binaries really is mostly used for warez these days.

If this wasn't the general picture, there wouldn't be a market for the paid usenet services. And, let's face it, those are heavily targeted at warez users.

And on top of that, there's the protocol issue - so even if you pay for usenet access and are able to max out your linespeed, it'll take longer time than grabbing a file via torrents with same line usage. Plus, you don't get the reliability of the torrent protocol (the usenet workaround is to re-download broken files, or download even more data for .par2 files).

I don't particularly mind warez, there's both good and bad parts to it - but let's not kid ourselves with what the various protocols are used for.

Take a look at Java and what has become of it.  There are a myriad of other examples.  As people start to repurpose something, it inevitably becomes instead of the sum of its parts, the difference of its parts.  For better or worse, its better if there is a driving force, vision, and purpose.  Software designed by committee without these things inevitably becomes crap.

-wraith808 (August 16, 2012, 09:42 PM)

Amen!

1141

Living Room / Re: Wikileaks - Julian Assange Granted Asylum by Ecuador

« Last post by f0dder on August 17, 2012, 02:10 AM »

Assange is not, in fact, accused of political crimes. He is being sought for questioning in Sweden on rape and coercion allegations stemming from separate sexual relations he had with two women in that country in August 2010. One woman told police that Assange pinned her down to have sex with her and that she suspected he intentionally tore a condom he wore. The second woman reported that he had sex with her while she was initially asleep, failing to wear a condom despite repeated requests for him to do so. Assange has denied any wrongdoing, asserting that the sex in both cases was consensual.

Kind of an important point in this story...

-Stephen66515 (August 16, 2012, 05:32 PM)

You might want to read up on the rest of that story, though.

Then you might wonder a bit why the questioning has to be done in Sweden, especially considering there isn't a case against him yet (well, at least there wasn't back when this all started - they just wanted to "question him"). And then you might want to ponder a bit why Sweden in particular is involved in this (hint: the words "extradition" and "USA" comes to mind).

-f0dder (August 16, 2012, 06:07 PM)

I don't dispute this, I just hate the fact that news outlets choose not to highlight this lol

-Stephen66515 (August 16, 2012, 06:40 PM)

Funny, most of the mainstream news outlets I've seen focus on exactly this, without questioning any of the nasty, underhanded things that have been happening.

1142

Living Room / Re: Wikileaks - Julian Assange Granted Asylum by Ecuador

« Last post by f0dder on August 16, 2012, 06:07 PM »

Assange is not, in fact, accused of political crimes. He is being sought for questioning in Sweden on rape and coercion allegations stemming from separate sexual relations he had with two women in that country in August 2010. One woman told police that Assange pinned her down to have sex with her and that she suspected he intentionally tore a condom he wore. The second woman reported that he had sex with her while she was initially asleep, failing to wear a condom despite repeated requests for him to do so. Assange has denied any wrongdoing, asserting that the sex in both cases was consensual.

Kind of an important point in this story...

-Stephen66515 (August 16, 2012, 05:32 PM)

You might want to read up on the rest of that story, though.

Then you might wonder a bit why the questioning has to be done in Sweden, especially considering there isn't a case against him yet (well, at least there wasn't back when this all started - they just wanted to "question him"). And then you might want to ponder a bit why Sweden in particular is involved in this (hint: the words "extradition" and "USA" comes to mind).

1143

Living Room / Re: What's the best registry cleaner? Ask Leo says: none

« Last post by f0dder on August 16, 2012, 05:31 PM »

IainB, it seems a lot of people are still stuck in the Win9x era regarding some things. "I've always done this, it mattered back then, so I'm just going to continue mindlessly doing it without researching if it's any use" kinda of mindset. I'm not familiar with Koroush Gazi (nor tweakguides), so he might very well have reasonable things to say - but recommending to run registry cleaners would not be one of them.

It's really all about risk avoidance. For this reason, I would recommend using CCleaner or another reputable registry cleaner.

-IainB (August 16, 2012, 05:21 PM)

You're more likely to run into trouble if you use a registry cleaner than if you don't. CCleaner might opt on the safe side, but still you're hardly going to prevent problems by running a registry cleaner (CCleaner can do other stuff as well, which might be more useful).

1144

Living Room / Re: Wikileaks - Julian Assange Granted Asylum by Ecuador

« Last post by f0dder on August 16, 2012, 04:34 PM »

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

1145

Living Room / Re: Windows 8: Yes, it's that bad

« Last post by f0dder on August 16, 2012, 04:31 PM »

2. If so, where can I download a legitimate ISO to try it out on a VM?

-Deozaan (August 16, 2012, 04:05 PM)

Thought you needed a MSDN subscription, but "windows 8 download site:microsoft.com" provided this link

1146

Living Room / Re: What's the best registry cleaner? Ask Leo says: none

« Last post by f0dder on August 16, 2012, 04:25 PM »

NTFS streams and ACLs

-f0dder (August 16, 2012, 03:21 PM)

Do you really use them? I know no one who does.

-Tuxman (August 16, 2012, 03:38 PM)

For most of my files? No. But it's definitely nice being able to, say, archive up a htdocs/wwwroot folder with custom ACLs and indexing metadata.

and pretty darn comprehensive command line features

-f0dder (August 16, 2012, 03:21 PM)

What exactly is it lacking for you?

-Tuxman (August 16, 2012, 03:38 PM)

Things like date/time specifiers in the output filename, and "clear Archive attribute" combined with "only add files with Archive attribute set". (Those are features I've used a fair amount - but it supports a lot more stuff from the command line, including features that can be useful for scripting).

Also, format wise, RARs Recovery Records have saved my ass, and native multi-volume support (rather than 7z's split/reassemble) is nice when dealing with unreliable protocols like FTP or HTTP.

IMHO it sucks. The zip format, even with the various extensions that aren't universally supported, just isn't very good...

-f0dder (August 16, 2012, 03:21 PM)

You missed the .zipx format, obviously. Also, if you prefer WinRAR, remember that .rar is a proprietary format too.

-Tuxman (August 16, 2012, 03:38 PM)

No, I didn't miss the ".zipx" format, it's those "not universally supported extensions". On a lot of platforms, zip support means info-zip zip/unzip, which doesn't handle those. And while RAR isn't open source, it does at least have source code for the decompression, with a liberal-enough license that it's a usable format. (Is there any source around for the zipx extensions yet, or just the half-assed "technote"?)

1147

Living Room / Re: What's the best registry cleaner? Ask Leo says: none

« Last post by f0dder on August 16, 2012, 03:21 PM »

Why should anyone still use WinRAR?

-Tuxman (August 16, 2012, 02:23 PM)

Because it's a decent piece of software that's decently priced. If you only need basic archive operation, you should probably go for 7-zip (it's file manager misses a few convenience things here and there which would annoy me in the long run, but it's good enough that I don't have WinRAR on my work laptop) - but WinRAR does have a bunch of additional features (NTFS streams and ACLs and pretty darn comprehensive command line features).

That said, WinZip is still pretty good, it is only a bit too pricey.

-Tuxman (August 16, 2012, 02:23 PM)

IMHO it sucks. The zip format, even with the various extensions that aren't universally supported, just isn't very good... and WinZip has become bloatware and it's GUI was never particularly good.

1148

Living Room / Re: Windows 8: Yes, it's that bad

« Last post by f0dder on August 16, 2012, 03:07 PM »

Disclaimer: I only played around with the Developer Preview, haven't tried the RC or the final. But switching between FORMEtRo and classic does indeed feel schizoprhenic, and the touch gestures just don't work very well with a mouse. And you do need to go to FORMEtRo for stuff like the control panel (how often do you need to go there after initial system setup, though?). I like the FORMEtRo visual style, but it doesn't work well for all PC applications, and having to switch between two different operating modes... well, it's schizo. And then there's the issue of Secure Boot - which IMHO has it's positive sides, but I just don't trust Microsoft enough to think it's unambiguously a good thing.

A shame, since there's been a whole lot of nice improvements to the Windows kernel and whatnot. I wish MS would make the whole thing a lot more modular, and let power users do a lot more pick-and-choosing without having to revert to 3rd party tools like nLite/vLite/RT se7en Lite. Especially considering how hard their engineers have been working at making the various Kernel and API layers modular from Vista and onwards.

Why does it seem like every other OS version that Microsoft comes out with seem to be a bust??

-techidave (August 15, 2012, 10:05 PM)

NT4 rocked, Win2k rocked, WinXP rocked, and Vista wasn't all too bad when SP1 arrived. Your urban myth just doesn't hold water

My thoughts exactly.  And seeing the rumors of Surface at $199 makes me hope that it's good...

-wraith808 (August 15, 2012, 10:39 PM)

I'd suppose the FORMEtRo UI works pretty well on a tablet when you don't have to deal with both classic and FORMEtRo - so a WinRT tablet at $200 would be loooovely. I personally find that it "only" runs 1080p resolution a benefit compared to the iPad3, which wastes a lot of battery on running a ridiculously high resolution for it's physical size.

Anyway, the article seems pretty much a non-review to me - enough flame to generate pageviews, hidden under a thin veil of trying to appear as a review. Is Woody one of Randall C. Kennedy's aliases?

Might want to browse through Building Windows 8 while waiting for a proper review... and if you like the really technical stuff, browse Channel9 for Mark Russinovich stuff (been a while since I went there, so dunno if there's win8-specific vidoes... but the work they did on the Win7 kernel was already pretty impressive).

1149

General Software Discussion / Re: BitTorrent Inc. earns $15-20 mn; makes uTorrent Ad-supported to "keep lights on"

« Last post by f0dder on August 16, 2012, 02:49 PM »

Your points about newsgroups isn't really true. There's a fair amount of overhead because of the protocol and encoding (though it helps a lot if yEnc is used), there's a lot less overhead in torrents. You only get "maximum download speed" if you pay for access to one of the (let's be realistic here) warez-oriented news servers, and retention is usually pretty bad.

DC++ is pretty much just a sucky-in-different-ways FTP, and did anybody use it for anything but warez?

FTP (and FTPS) do suck, being an old and broken protocol, but slow? Connections breaking? Not really, no. Perhaps if you're talking about public-access hacked warez dumps, but not a properly set up server. SFTP is actually SSH and pretty different to FTP/FTPS - please don't confuse the two.

BitTorrent works very well for what it is designed for, and I'd hate seeing somebody trying to frankenstein it into something it isn't suited for. Also, I don't really see the point for your two desired features - sounds like what you probably want is a multi-sourced ftp client combined with warez ftp dumps that are synchronized "however".

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Developer's Corner / Re: Visual Studio 11 Express to only build Metro apps

« Last post by f0dder on August 16, 2012, 02:31 PM »

Isn't Windows XP the IE6 of operating systems at this point?

-daddydave (August 16, 2012, 05:26 AM)

Not really, imho.

While XP is definitely a bit long in the tooth, it's still a well functioning operating system - not nearly the holding-back-progress showstopper deadbeat massively-exploited and standards-violating P.O.S that IE6 is