Recent Posts

1676

Living Room / Re: Password Cracking Made Easy Thanks to the GPU

« Last post by Lashiec on October 25, 2007, 07:27 PM »

Actually, commercial applications to crack ZIP passwords do exist. And they work pretty fast...

More or less, Jeff Atwood's post is pretty good, except for this line:

Who has passwords without at least one number? Even MySpace users are smarter than that

LOL. He's thinking too high of users. A ongoing discussion we're having in another forum about the recent imposition of better passwords is showing that most people there is dumb and don't care about their security. In fact, they're complaining about his freedom to use a simple password (and the same one from every site they visit) if they want. Sheesh.

Good point about passphrases, though. That blog post by Mr. Hensing is brilliant, what a way to preserve your passwords from prying eyes without needing a password manager everywhere you go.

1677

General Software Discussion / Re: Freedom from Microsoft Day!

« Last post by Lashiec on October 25, 2007, 06:58 PM »

Well, congratulations! I wouldn't go as far as to put into practice the fourth point, but it's good to know that if you did the change, everyone can do it.

My real worry now is what will happen to The Great Software List . Any plans to focus it in Linux, or will it be platform agnostic as well?

1678

Living Room / Re: Leech Attacks

« Last post by Lashiec on October 25, 2007, 03:05 PM »

That's spam, I've come across that kind of messages hundreds of times on the Internet, in unprotected wikis and blog comments, often accompanied by their pals, spam links (yuck!).

It could be what mouser says, but 99% of the time it will be spam. It could be that moderators or site owners found about the spam, and simply removed the links. On really big forums, administrators can't be everywhere, and the only thing moderators can do is close the thread or clean up the posts.

1679

Official Announcements / Re: Mouser Sabbatical from DC Coding for 3 of months - Your Help Requested Please

« Last post by Lashiec on October 24, 2007, 05:22 PM »

I'll do my best providing new content for the blog. I still have some things I found time ago screaming for a opportunity, so sooner or later, I'll give them a topic of their own

I'll probably write some reviews as well, but considering the scope, maybe they'll turn into full fledged reviews...

1680

General Software Discussion / Re: Adblock Plus: the nuclear plug-in (nice blog post)

« Last post by Lashiec on October 24, 2007, 02:26 PM »

Let's do some thread necromancy, as I found two articles on the same site about the morals of ad usage and ad blocking, from both sides of the fence, content providers and readers. Most of the points mentioned had already been discussed here, but maybe you will find them in a new light or show something you missed. As for me, I'll continue using ad blocking, but Opera 9.5 can't get released soon enough

1681

Living Room / Re: "HDD Not Included"

« Last post by Lashiec on October 23, 2007, 03:39 PM »

You really want your hard drive sticking out in the middle of the air? Have some decency and at least cover that thing!

Okay, so first sentence was serious. Second was a joke. I wouldn't like my HDD in open air. Something about it doesn't seem right.

-Deozaan (October 23, 2007, 12:24 PM)

Like, instead of spilling your drink over the keyboard, you choose your newly acquired HDD. And you've just finished making a backup. And the HDD in your computer fails...

Hey, maybe someone will use it as decoration

1682

General Software Discussion / Re: Can Open Source apps compete with commercial ones?

« Last post by Lashiec on October 23, 2007, 03:26 PM »

Objectively speaking, I'd say no. Maybe if you included freeware in the mix, this could be the case, but OSS alone sometimes fall short in front of shareware or commercial apps. Wether people screams that this or that app is far better than the evil closed source counterpart, if you compare both with a cold mind, almost all times the payware software advantages pay by themselves.

Of course, there are exceptions. Firefox is the best example. Of course, it benefits from the fact that most other browsers are free to use, and the only payware worth mentioning, OmniWeb and NetCaptor, have it share of problems.

OmniWeb is limited to Mac OS X, and was essentially pushed back to obscurity by the Gecko-based browsers (Camino and Firefox) and Safari, both options doing more than what people needs, even if OmniWeb packs in more features (for the record, Safari at first was going to be based in the OmniWeb engine, as Steve Jobs made a buyout offer to the company developing it, but the guys said 'no', and Apple turned to KHTML).

NetCaptor, in the other hand, apart from being limited to Windows, it's an IE shell, and a payware one, so despite making inroads years ago, I'd say it's no longer in the playfield.

So, apart from the points mentioned by mouser, Firefox benefits from a propitious software ecosystem. And you don't have too many other open source apps so capable of beating commercial ones. Of course, AutoHotkey and AutoIt are the best in their field, but AFAIK there are no other options (open source, shareware, donationware, or whatever other license you can come up with). Old systems emulators (VMs aside) is ruled by open source apps, and the scene mostly stays away and heavily criticize commercial ones (for obvious reasons). Amarok, although it has been accused of bloatware, it's quite more lean than those heavy commercial jukeboxes (J River and the like) and packs a good deal of features to compete with them. Another field with quite good OSS is development, with the likes of Eclipse, CodeBlocks and all other IDEs and compilers like GCC. Then multiprotocol IM apps, with Miranda, Kopete and Pidgin (maybe...).

The rest can give a good fight to commercial software, but I wouldn't say they're "better" by definition, and they fall in the personal choice camp.

So there you have it, short and to the point

1683

Official Announcements / Re: Draw Cody competition - win incredible prizes!

« Last post by Lashiec on October 23, 2007, 02:19 PM »

The Cody invasion from outer space! Very cool

1684

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.107.04 beta - Sep 23, 2012

« Last post by Lashiec on October 23, 2007, 04:46 AM »

I see. Thanks! I'll try both when I get home, they look very classy

1685

General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu 7.10 Released today

« Last post by Lashiec on October 23, 2007, 04:37 AM »

Fortunately, the distro is not for me, but the bandwidth hit related to the download of a whole new version it is . And probably the task of updating it, too, depending of the host willingness to do things by himself (he was messing with Linux quite a bit before it was ready for desktop... and almost before it had a GUI )

That reminds me... the Linux Distribution Contest was a total failure (lack of time, and lots of Windows XP love )

Careful with Xubuntu (read up to the end of that page)

1686

General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu 7.10 Released today

« Last post by Lashiec on October 22, 2007, 05:22 PM »

And I spent three days downloading the Kubuntu 7.04 DVD...

Well, thanks for the upgrading option, I won't have to download the new version

1687

General Software Discussion / Re: fast and reliable unzip, unrar, etc tol

« Last post by Lashiec on October 22, 2007, 05:09 PM »

Maybe Squeez or PowerArchiver would fit the bill. In my opinion, they're the best alternatives to WinRAR, but even then, WinRAR is too much WinRAR. Did you give a look to Zaine's review in the site? Although it's a bit outdated, most of the points mentioned there are still valid today.

I don't think anything could go faster anyway. By some strange phenomena, ZIP decompression in other apps tend to be quite slower (and compresion... ufff, it's even worse). And RAR, well, you said it yourself, it's programmed by the RAR algorithm creator, so it can't get much better (not without compression support, of course).

If you only want decompression support, check up Universal Extractor or ExtractNow. Universal Extractor is a monster, it can decompress everything, but ExtractNow is prettier and it's quite more elegant (Universal Extractor cheats a bit regarding its algorithms decompression implementation)

1688

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.107.04 beta - Sep 23, 2012

« Last post by Lashiec on October 22, 2007, 04:48 PM »

Mousey, after 1 year of alpha status, I don't see how making it public beta ISN'T a huge move. Come on now, it's had one year of HEAVY rock, now the public gets to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

-Josh (October 22, 2007, 10:44 AM)

Fixed

*Lashiec checks up the browser two times, makes sure the interface chair-computer is working at full power, reconnects the eyes-brain bus...*

So it's actually true! Well done! Now FARR can regain the lost time, but let's wait a bit more before we spread the word

Armando, which is the font you're using in your shots?

EDIT: Now complies with mouser's requisites

1689

General Software Discussion / Re: screen capture software that uploads to free image host

« Last post by Lashiec on October 22, 2007, 03:35 PM »

No love for PhotoBucket?

1690

General Software Discussion / Re: Attacks exploiting RealPlayer zero-day security risk

« Last post by Lashiec on October 20, 2007, 02:54 PM »

Yes, it does. But you can deactivate ActiveX in IE7 as well, under Tools -> Addons Management (made up translation).

This is the price to pay for using RealPlayer

1691

Living Room / Re: The worst thing about Macs

« Last post by Lashiec on October 20, 2007, 12:00 PM »

Well, that's truly the first time I hear someone doing a critical defense of the Mac platform, without falling back to the usual Windows bashing, and pinpointing the real advantage of the system, instead of saying "it wins by default". Excellent read, and I'm glad that you can use a Mac and criticize Apple at the same time (what they did with the iPhone and the iPod as lately is simply unbearable).

I wish lots of people at certain forum would learn something about how to voice your opinions...

For the record, I always said, that, although I prefer Windows on a desktop, if I had to buy a laptop, it would be a MacBook (or an Asus EEE). If you're going to use a totally proprietary system, at least let's introduce some variety in the computer ecosystem at home

Now, let's go reading Renegade rants at those links

EDIT1: Wait, wait, I forgot the obligatory funny shot. Now they're on their way to assimilate YOU!. Of course, I'm talking about shorts and flip-flops (not the electronic ones)

EDIT2: Less smileys and one unneeded line removed (kudos to the one who founds which one)

1692

General Software Discussion / Re: What's the point of FlashGot (Firfox extension)?

« Last post by Lashiec on October 19, 2007, 02:42 PM »

Maybe this would help you? (I admit I don't have a clue about what download managers can do out of the box in Firefox)

1693

General Software Discussion / Re: CD Earth picks up where ThinkAll left off

« Last post by Lashiec on October 19, 2007, 02:11 PM »

It's right there. "Bury it", with a red cross, and the word "Bury" at the right side of the cross

1694

General Software Discussion / Re: CD Earth picks up where ThinkAll left off

« Last post by Lashiec on October 19, 2007, 02:06 PM »

We need to bury it at digg! >>> CDEarth has a new 3101 Computer Screensavers, Backgrounds & Wallpaper CDRom

-hamradio (October 18, 2007, 03:54 PM)

The guy is not exactly bright, isn't he? He uses the same name as the collection he is digging, if it made it to the front page, people would bury it for blatant self promotion. That won't happen, Digg users are interested in more constructive themes...

1695

Living Room / Re: Windows performance tips in one spot

« Last post by Lashiec on October 19, 2007, 01:48 PM »

For games like Supreme Commander, which sometimes surpass the maximum virtual address space allocated to each app, a big page file is worth it (at least to hold other applications )

Also, do not be so surprised about the little speed differences between the Raptors and the new HDDs, companies really improved performance with 7200 rpm disks along these years (if not, they would have move to 10K rpm disks long ago), it's not only rotation speed you know. But I wonder if they could beat a pair of 15K rpm Maxtor Atlas... of course, those would cost as much as a new powerful computer

1696

General Software Discussion / Re: What are your Top Tech/Software Newsletters?

« Last post by Lashiec on October 18, 2007, 01:52 PM »

And Scot's Newsletter, which is going to be a blog in a while, adopting a similar system to DC's own newsletter. Hmmm, considering that Gizmo's newsletter is being blocked by Yahoo! spam filter, maybe it's a good option.

Ehm, no, Windows Secrets continues to have a paid version, but it's not as featured in the normal newsletter as before.

1697

Living Room / Re: YouTube Audio Problems

« Last post by Lashiec on October 18, 2007, 01:07 PM »

Yes, YouTube is testing a new page, and they gave a little redesign to the player. And the embedded player in other sites is even more different. If that's what are you asking... as for the sound problem, everything is fine here. Maybe you deactivated sound and that got carried over to other sites? It happened to me a few times before, and some sites were ignoring it. I think it's a cookie problem...

1698

Older Newsletters / Re: Newletter for October 15 - Codename "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK"

« Last post by Lashiec on October 18, 2007, 01:02 PM »

I see where you're headed... and I completely agree! Let's build a Cody botnet, yay! The trojan is in the works

Seriously, yes, do a search of "spam trojan" in Google and you'll get tons of hits, just an example

1699

Living Room / Re: Windows performance tips in one spot

« Last post by Lashiec on October 17, 2007, 07:58 PM »

Ugh... some of them actually do something, some others... well... I know certain someone who is going to get crazy about those, and one in particular

1700

Post New Requests Here / Re: REQUEST: Picture Codyfier

« Last post by Lashiec on October 17, 2007, 03:33 PM »

And I see he's burning your LCD screen with his incredible powers