Recent Posts

1851

fSekrit / Re: fSekrit still in development?

« Last post by f0dder on January 22, 2011, 07:59 AM »

How about:
1. Leave the free version close sourced
2. Charge for the code for whoever wants to look at it.

-rxantos (January 21, 2011, 02:12 PM)

That would be pointless for fSekrit - the goal of opensourcing it is the "confidence" it instills in users (ie., no hidden backdoors, flaws, etc) as well as ensuring the program lives on and the documents are accessible even if I get hit by a truck.

Open the source, while retaining all rights. Which means that people can look at it, review it, find flaws, submit patches, etc. But cannot just put it, legally, on another application without your consent.

-rxantos (January 21, 2011, 02:12 PM)

I dunno which license I'm going to use (part from not being GPL), but I'm not sure such a restrictive license makes sense - it's not exactly like fSekrit is a big source of income for me, and it doesn't contain any rocket science.

I'd definitely prefer people not forking it, but rather have them submit patches to me, but oh well.

1852

Developer's Corner / Re: C# GDI+ Problem with byte[] and Bitmap - Memory Issues

« Last post by f0dder on January 21, 2011, 05:32 AM »

I'd be concerned that there would be a performance hit by spinning that off into another thread as I'd be passing a large byte[] array. While it is a reference type, I just don't really like the idea of throwing references around like that. Not sure why. It just strikes me as "out of scopishly odd".

-Renegade (January 20, 2011, 08:12 PM)

There's no performance problems in passing a reference around, no matter how big the object it refers to is. A reference is just a pointer - so 4 bytes on x86, 8 bytes on x64. Spinning off into a thread has some performance overhead, especially if you create new threads manually instead of using a threadpool.

The method that it's in would go out of scope while the thread is running. Dunno... It just seems like I could start getting null references there if the byte[] were collected (GC'd) before the hashing had completed. Am I too worried?

-Renegade (January 20, 2011, 08:12 PM)

Scope, as in methods, curly-blocks etc. have pretty much nothing to do with object lifetime in .NET apps, kick that idea out of your head ASAP . Objects get GC'ed "at some point after there's no longer any references to them", which could mean aeons after they "go out of scope"... but it can even happen within the method where the variable referencing the object was initially allocated.

1) MemoryFailPoint -- Try to determine if there is enough memory available, then handle the situation -- http://www.codeproje...ects____Trouble.aspx

-Renegade (January 20, 2011, 08:12 PM)

That article specifically mentions that the XP memory manager has trouble, while Vista+ doesn't. If you are getting your issues on non-XP, chasing this is probably a waste of time.

2) Single threading -- get rid of the threadpool and do them all sequentially

-Renegade (January 20, 2011, 08:12 PM)

This is what I'd investigate first, given that GDI+ isn't too happy about re-entrancy.

1853

General Software Discussion / Re: Wikidforum - New forum software with wiki and CMS support

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2011, 11:33 AM »

+1 for Wraith, and +1 for most of Renegade.

I don't see why one wouldn't put in buttons to help the mac brigade, but I'd be infuriated if I didn't have my tags - it's much faster for me, since I don't have to take my hands off the keyboard.

1854

Developer's Corner / Re: C# GDI+ Problem with byte[] and Bitmap - Memory Issues

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2011, 09:49 AM »

You definitely don't want to start a process per photo, as process creation (especially for .NET apps) is relatively expensive. If you know you're going to process craploads of images, a process per core is a viable solution; IPC does complicate matters a bit, but it's workable.

I'd suggest you start by testing your current code in a serialized fasion, avoiding the worker pool thread, and see if the memory issue still crops up - if it doesn't, I'd definitely bet my money on a GDI+ reentrancy issue.

1855

Living Room / Re: Sony v. Hotz: Sony Sends a Dangerous Message to Researchers -- and Its Customers

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2011, 08:21 AM »

Like this? http://www.eff.org.n...ds-dangerous-message

-Deozaan (January 20, 2011, 08:17 AM)

Yup

Problem is that https doesn't seem to work with it, but I guess that makes sense...

-Deozaan (January 20, 2011, 08:17 AM)

It's definitely not perfect, but it helps a lot wrt. avoiding DDoS'ing sites

1856

Developer's Corner / Re: C# GDI+ Problem with byte[] and Bitmap - Memory Issues

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2011, 08:18 AM »

"Bitmap bmp = null;"

If what you're saying about GDI+ is right, I may end up doing it all consecutively in a single thread. I hope not...

-Renegade

Well, I've heard of people resorting to running one process per CPU core in order to parallelize GDI/GDI+ operations - it's per-process re-entrant, but not per-thread-in-process.

1857

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Image viewer speed benchmark

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2011, 08:11 AM »

I downloaded the DCDisplay. But when it ask to install .net framework 4.0, I stop. Sorry.

-oversky (January 20, 2011, 08:01 AM)

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

1858

Living Room / Re: Sony v. Hotz: Sony Sends a Dangerous Message to Researchers -- and Its Customers

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2011, 08:11 AM »

Hint: when linking to a to-be-slashdotted URL, use the Coral Cache

1859

Developer's Corner / Re: C# GDI+ Problem with byte[] and Bitmap - Memory Issues

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2011, 08:05 AM »

For why the bitmap is constructed, and not just having memory allocated, I have that 2 posts above. (Catching up here...)

-Renegade

Yes, and I commented that you don't need to construct the object, since you have a null-check before disposing it... so just set it to null instead of wasting time on constructing a never-used object

As for disposing the MemoryStream, I took a look at in in reflector, and it doesn't look like there's apparent memory leaks if you don't dispose it (but there's some async I/O event cancelling in it's base Stream class) - but since it implements IDisposable, not disposing of it is an error, no matter what the current implementation does.

As for the threading: I'm not sure about the re-entrancy of GDI+, but GDI definitely wasn't re-entrant, and I have a recollection of GDI+ not being, either. This means you should never have more than one thread issuing GDI+ code... when you throw background tasks on a Threadpool, multiple tasks may run in parallel.

Wouldn't be surprised if your issues are because of two threads entering GDI+ at the same time and fucking up some internal state.

1860

Developer's Corner / Re: C# GDI+ Problem with byte[] and Bitmap - Memory Issues

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2011, 07:50 AM »

GetBytesFromBitmap() doesn't dispose of the MemoryStream?

I agree with Worstje you shouldn't allocate the 1x1 bitmap, just set it to null - you already have a null-check in your finally-block before disposing, anyway.

Also, iirc GDI+ is not properly re-entrant, so you'll have to be pretty careful there; dunno if it has to run on the UI thread, though.

1861

General Software Discussion / Re: Dual Booting Win XP and Win 7

« Last post by f0dder on January 19, 2011, 07:33 AM »

And keep in mind that Serious Sam, especially the original, has very low hardware requirements, and will do 100+ fps on several years old graphics cards.

1862

General Software Discussion / Re: VideoLAN pulled from Apple app store

« Last post by f0dder on January 18, 2011, 06:17 PM »

Didn't the VLC guys tell apple to "accept GPL or remove VLC from the appstore", rather than Apple pulling it pre-emptively? There's several versions of the story floating around... while Apple are bastards no matter which version is true, there's a bit of difference

1863

General Software Discussion / Re: Dual Booting Win XP and Win 7

« Last post by f0dder on January 18, 2011, 06:15 PM »

Does hardware acceleration even work (properly) if you run Win7 in a VM? I know vmware supports "some" version of Direct3D, but iirc it was a relatively low version - and I bet there's a speed hit as well.

1864

Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?

« Last post by f0dder on January 18, 2011, 04:02 PM »

Based on your feedback I'll might decide against SSD for now and get loads of RAM instead... not sure about this yet though.

-brotherS (January 18, 2011, 01:11 PM)

Well, what are your I/O workloads like?

Apart from specific workloads, I do find that my SSD speeds up stuff program launching considerably... but I'm the kind of person who seems to notice a couple hundred of milliseconds

1865

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 Breaks Week Numbering

« Last post by f0dder on January 18, 2011, 02:31 PM »

@f0dder:
Because these apps do not experience problems on Vista and 2008 R1 operating systems. Which is what makes me say that Windows is (unintentionally?) breaking things.

-Shades (January 18, 2011, 10:30 AM)

...and there's plenty of examples of code that works on Win9x but breaks on WinNT, or works on Win2000 but breaks on WinXP (et cetera), because developers of said software made assumptions that violate the specs...

Not saying it isn't a Windows bug, but I find it more reasonable to start blaming the 3rd party developers first

1866

General Software Discussion / Re: Dual Booting Win XP and Win 7

« Last post by f0dder on January 18, 2011, 02:27 PM »

But suddenly that's a great idea, Installing Xp and then Win7 in Virtual  PC.  Their would be no reason to Dual Boot , instead use it on Virtual PC.

-hulkbuster (January 18, 2011, 11:33 AM)

That's doing it wrong.

1867

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 Breaks Week Numbering

« Last post by f0dder on January 18, 2011, 06:08 AM »

Shades: what makes you say those issues are because of Win7, and not the 3rd party software? I definitely wouldn't put it past SAP and Oracle software to be shoddily coded.

1868

General Software Discussion / Re: Let's try to create our own suite for internet security.

« Last post by f0dder on January 17, 2011, 09:22 PM »

Another one that has fallen off the radar: Ad-Aware. What happened to that?  Does anyone still use it?

-superboyac (January 17, 2011, 08:56 PM)

I stopped using it several years ago, after reading this - the triggering part being

1.5. !!! Multiplying the number of entries in the def file with constant
     1.46 to make it look it has more definitions !!!

1869

Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?

« Last post by f0dder on January 17, 2011, 07:45 PM »

SSD is not that big a benefit IMHO, and not worth the cost.

-JavaJones (January 17, 2011, 07:27 PM)

Have you ever used a decent SSD?

I've found that I don't notice the benefits of my SSD so much anymore... but I definitely notice whenever I'm on a machine with a harddrive. Spoil-factor

1870

General Software Discussion / Re: Dual Booting Win XP and Win 7

« Last post by f0dder on January 17, 2011, 11:56 AM »

Any particular reason you want to dual boot, instead of simply running Win7 and just that?

if it's for compatibility reasons, image up you XP - you can restore the image later on if Win7 doesn't do the trick for you, or run the image in a virtual machine during a transitional period.

1871

Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?

« Last post by f0dder on January 17, 2011, 09:10 AM »

I'm relatively happy with my Inspiron, although my next laptop will be a 17".

-kyrathaba (January 17, 2011, 09:07 AM)

Personally I find 17" to be way too large for a laptop, but that's because I drag mine around a lot, rather than using it as a "mobile workstation" mostly used at home. 17 inchers are too heavy and bulky to carry around comfortably, and a 15" screen is largeenough - it's just that most of them have puny resolution, unless you go to the insane-o price levels

1872

Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?

« Last post by f0dder on January 17, 2011, 08:33 AM »

Does everybody use that damn crappy WXGA (1280x768) resolution for ~15" monitors?

My 15" Dell Inspiron is set to 1366x768. 

-kyrathaba (January 17, 2011, 08:28 AM)

Still has an utterly useless vertical resolution - my current laptop has whatever*800, and even that is too little.

1873

Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?

« Last post by f0dder on January 17, 2011, 08:10 AM »

Should I decide to give up the optical drive to install a SSD there (I don't watch so many DVDs, an external optical drive might be an option), is it still possible to use that as the system drive, and the original HD as backup? Will I still be able to get the full SSD speed this way?

-brotherS (January 17, 2011, 08:00 AM)

Personally, I'd definitely go for an external optical drive if I needed more space than available with a non-insanely priced SSD. Looking back at the last 2½ years, I've probably used my laptop's optical drive 5-10 times, max. OTOH, my laptop not being my primary system, a 120gig SSD would be quite enough

Anyway, you definitely do want the SSD as the main drive, hosting Windows + Apps For Great Justice speed

1874

Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?

« Last post by f0dder on January 17, 2011, 08:06 AM »

- I'm considering one with a ~120 GB SSD drive (because of speed, energy, noise, and heat)

-brotherS (January 17, 2011, 06:26 AM)

Most SSDs end up drawing a bit more power in total than harddrives, as they have continuous power draw, whereas harddrives spin down when not in use. Speed is definitely better, but caveat emptor: you need one of the decent SSDs, some of them are slower than harddrives under real-world scenarios. Not sure about heat, my Intel X25-E seems relatively warm to the touch - but that might be ambient heat buildup from the case.

I looked a bit around for laptops last week, and I'm a bit shocked tbh. Does everybody use that damn crappy WXGA (1280x768) resolution for ~15" monitors?

1875

Living Room / Re: Forum / Thread Etiquette

« Last post by f0dder on January 17, 2011, 07:48 AM »

I saw the 'china shoe person' though.
That was kind of funny...sort of.

-cmpm (January 17, 2011, 07:35 AM)

That's spam, and will be dealt with accordingly - definitely not proper use of a killfile

IMHO killfile functionality doesn't belong on DC. The atmosphere is - most of the time - friendly and respectful, unlike on usenet (RIP?) where it's almost a necessity.