Recent Posts

2251

Living Room / Re: be my valentine!

« Last post by Lashiec on February 02, 2007, 05:20 AM »

Fortunately, my girlfriend thinks it's a bucket of crock as well, so at least I'm not in trouble :]

-f0dder (February 02, 2007, 04:11 AM)

Lucky guy...

2252

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review: Altiris SVS

« Last post by Lashiec on January 30, 2007, 06:28 AM »

Symantec... not again

2253

General Software Discussion / Re: WIndows Vista Ultimate ... worth upgrading ... CNET say no!

« Last post by Lashiec on January 30, 2007, 06:11 AM »

Yeah, Vista is WAAAYYY faster than XP... What a bunch on nonsense. The only thing I need now is Paul Thurrott telling me that Vista "feels" faster than XP, even on old machines...

The truth is that Vista is, at least for now, slower than XP. I tried Vista Ultimate yesterday in a friend's computer for a while, and I was amazed by its slowness. It literally takes minutes to shut down the SO, and despite the hardware acceleration, the shell is not faster than the one from XP. Of course, I'm talking about a first installation and a cold start. Once people start discovering tweaks and disabling services, things could go for the better, but for now, even on brand new computers, Vista is NOT an option. Not to mention its hugely insane usage of RAM. How many RAM could need a SO for basic operations??

2254

Developer's Corner / Inside Vista Kernel by Mark Russinovich

« Last post by Lashiec on January 26, 2007, 06:27 AM »

Mark Russinovich started some days ago a series of articles explaining the new features included in the Windows Vista Kernel on Microsoft's TechNet. The first one looks at changes in the CPU cycle counting, a new scheduler for multimedia applications (which, hopefully, will solve the current problems affecting music players and resource-demanding applications) and file-based symbolic links (a welcome addition), among other things.

The articles, as it's often happens with Mark Russinovich, are interesting, educational and entertaining, and everyone won't have no trouble understanding them. If Mark was not working for Microsoft, the most renowned colleges in the world would be fighting to dead for his services as a teacher

Link to the article

via Sysinternals

2255

Official Announcements / Re: Google Ads are gone from the site once more..

« Last post by Lashiec on January 22, 2007, 12:14 PM »

I suppose there should be an obstacle...

2256

Official Announcements / Re: Google Ads are gone from the site once more..

« Last post by Lashiec on January 22, 2007, 12:02 PM »

Err, crazy idea...

How about making a separate page inside DonationCoder, composed of Google Ads offers?

(I told you, it's just crazy)

2257

General Software Discussion / Re: From the makers of CCleaner... Recuva Beta 1

« Last post by Lashiec on January 22, 2007, 11:53 AM »

Thanks for the screenshot, mouser.

52 seconds??!! That's AMAZING! I mean, the program I'm using right now (TuneUp Utilities bundled undelete utility) takes at least 3 times that time, but the level of accuracy (both in number of results, and the integrity of these results) is very low. I want a new computer NOW, to test the program. It seems more impressive than PhotoRec, a command line program which I tested a few months ago and amazed me with its thoroughness. It recovered files deleted ages ago, some embarrassing ones as well

2258

Find And Run Robot / Re: New FARR v2 Icon Design Needed

« Last post by Lashiec on January 22, 2007, 11:45 AM »

Excellent icon!

2259

Developer's Corner / Re: How long should a software time trial be?

« Last post by Lashiec on January 22, 2007, 11:43 AM »

Thanks for the link, mouser!

A quick look at all your opinions give me lots of ideas that I don't have time to summarize here right now. I'll post an elaborated post tomorrow, including a new look on the refund question (providing the rampant piracy we have here in Spain...)

Now, the question is: why I'm saying all of this?

2260

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« Last post by Lashiec on January 22, 2007, 11:38 AM »

GOD! That's the famous Atari 2600's ET! The game that caused the video game crash in 1983 and almost killed Atari altogether in the process. You know about the millions of carts buried in New Mexico, don't you?

2261

General Software Discussion / From the makers of CCleaner... Recuva

« Last post by Lashiec on January 19, 2007, 04:22 AM »

Since the inception and great success of CCleaner, the developers of this piece of software founded a small company, Piriform, to take advantage of the success of its first application, and the development of new tools. Well, here's the first one. Recuva in words of its developers:

Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Windows Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

Lazy guy as I am (and curiously "PrintScreen" is not working...) I can't link any image, but in its web page you can find some shots. It's very much like CCleaner visual style, which, in my opinion, is a good thing.

[ed. by mouser to attach screenshot]

2262

General Software Discussion / Re: Mozilla Firefox 3 (codename Gran Paradiso) alpha 1

« Last post by Lashiec on January 19, 2007, 04:07 AM »

Uh, I think this Alpha has been released for a while now...

Dropping Win9x support? - nice. Perhaps the rest of us can get away with it too, then

-f0dder (January 19, 2007, 03:41 AM)

Yeah, blame Cairo usage for that

2263

Find And Run Robot / Re: New FARR v2 Icon Design Needed

« Last post by Lashiec on January 18, 2007, 05:49 AM »

Nice icons, everyone. If mouser has implemented the ability to choose from a group of icons, it could also add some other option for choosing an external icon. Then, all we need is a icon pack, and everything will be fine, and look better than ever.

By the way, those skins look really good.

2264

Developer's Corner / Re: How long should a software time trial be?

« Last post by Lashiec on January 18, 2007, 05:41 AM »

I just want to point out an important flaw in this reasoning that i think too many people make.
It is not necesary to ensure that no user could somehow do such a thing.  It is only important that most/all don't.

Who cares if 0.01% of your customers request a refund in 20 years?  As long as it's such a small percent it's not something worth worrying about.

-mouser (January 17, 2007, 04:53 AM)

Agreed. But how do you find what percentage of your customers are not going to ask a refund in a couple of months? Personally, I think that way more than 0.01% of your customers are going to ask for that refund if they can find a better software, or if they simply don't need it. After all, unlimited time of refund is very close to cracking the software to obtain a 'free' license.

2265

Developer's Corner / Re: How long should a software time trial be?

« Last post by Lashiec on January 17, 2007, 04:43 AM »

So, we are talking about 'lite' software (that's what the author of the blog post wanted to say), combined with refunds? It seems like a perfect treat to me, but you have to give people a limited time of refunding, say, 6 months? If you give them unlimited time, you could, for example, buy Total Uninstall now, and in a year, ask for a refund, and use the money to buy PowerTools 2008 (that's why I considering if I should buy TU3 or stick to version 2 waiting for PowerTools...)

Anyway, that's not the point. A good (and different) approach could be something like this: lite versions of the software, with noncritical features disabled (to prevent Zaine getting bold due to crippled software usage ) with a money back guarantee for a couple months. Someone wants to try this approach in his/her own software?

2266

General Software Discussion / Re: is there a slim text editor with a nice zoom feature?

« Last post by Lashiec on January 17, 2007, 04:28 AM »

GridinSoft Notepad Pro... It's not exactly top quality software if you compare it to UltraEdit, not even against PSPad... Doesn't this one have this kind of feature? Or TEDNotepad maybe. I don't have these around to tell (the closest thing to a text editor I have right now is either plain Notepad or BlueJ...)

2267

General Software Discussion / Re: Areca Backup - Now there's no excuse!

« Last post by Lashiec on January 16, 2007, 09:57 AM »

Yes, that's because OpenOffice is programmed as a single application, instead of following Office method of replicating different applications in separate programs. Things got better with OpenOffice 2.0 (1.1 was a nightmare, and it wasn't very stable), but it's still not enough. In the latest OpenOffice conference, one of the things planned for 3.0 is a further disassemble of the whole program (there's an exact word to define this, but I can't find it), to reduce the impact on the system.

It'll be welcome, considering that further integration with Java is also planned

2268

General Software Discussion / Re: Areca Backup - Now there's no excuse!

« Last post by Lashiec on January 16, 2007, 08:40 AM »

OpenOffice is NOT programmed in Java, but uses Java in some parts (for example, for the new extensions, and I think that it's also used in Base). Thank God is not programmed in Java, it could be worse than Visual Paradigm if it was the other way...

So, how does it fare against Backup4All?

2269

Living Room / Re: Now Our Newspapers are Writing Stories to Pander to Search Engine Algorithms

« Last post by Lashiec on January 16, 2007, 08:32 AM »

Not to mention they're crowding the pages to add links to the social bookmarking sites, which I found a bit stupid

2270

Developer's Corner / Re: Joel Spolsky's Recent Essays Opposing Simplicity

« Last post by Lashiec on January 16, 2007, 08:26 AM »

Somebody who's not buying into the "Spolsky is a guru" crap: Joel On Software: Please Get Off of Software - good read, imho.

-f0dder (January 10, 2007, 04:55 PM)

My God... It's been a while since I laughed so hard... And on top of the that, most of the points made by author are really good points, especially the ones concerning the $800 chair. What the hell, $800 for a chair? Does it have a fridge at one side or something?

2271

Living Room / Re: a 3D game that is only 97kb!

« Last post by Lashiec on January 16, 2007, 08:15 AM »

i played it to the end - amazing that they put that into 100k.

-mouser (January 15, 2007, 09:16 PM)

Considering what type of programming they're using, the amazing thing is that they didn't go mad during the process. And that the process resulted in something so incredible.

It runs on a GeForce7600 GT, huh? So it should run also on a Radeon X1600 Pro

2272

Living Room / Re: a 3D game that is only 97kb!

« Last post by Lashiec on January 15, 2007, 12:32 PM »

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this was mentioned before, but it's still a good thing to remember the talent of some people. The demo scene was always impressive since the days of the Amiga, and games like this only strength this fact.

2273

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« Last post by Lashiec on January 12, 2007, 03:57 AM »

I forgot to mention this one...

Crystal Castles

-app103 (January 12, 2007, 12:19 AM)

For heaven's sake, what a port of such nice arcade game!

2274

N.A.N.Y. Challenge 2007 / Re: FreePcSecurity - v1.00.01 - December 14, 2006

« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2007, 01:11 PM »

Did you research Wilders Security forums for example? Seems Spyware Terminator is high on any "recommended" list - regardless of dark past (Crawler). If I remember correctly they dont try to hide past but claim to have seen the light, check their forum.

Last I tried it program was being updated over and over, people like that - especially when free. Biggest danger is probably it turns payware as their Corporate Edition, or becomes crippled freeware. Lots of features to remove http://www.spywarete...om/app/features.aspx

Lots of other programs encourage users to advertise wherever they are, like http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ Company cant be responsible for users action/spam. 

-dk70 (January 09, 2007, 04:07 AM)

I agree. I use Spyware Terminator from time to time, but I'm still suspicious of its nature due to this unfortunate past. Although the guys are now on the right path, some things on the program don't make feel exactly right...

Anyway, good idea you had there, dementedmuppet. It's perfect for this really lazy people that can't go to a few websites to have an improved security (I'm describing almost all my friends... )

2275

General Software Discussion / Re: WARNING - Fake Ashampoo Winoptimiser has been posted ...

« Last post by Lashiec on January 11, 2007, 01:06 PM »

The same happened with jv16 PowerTools, which was distributed as four different programs which were the same cracked PowerTools. I think the same people that did this was responsible of the cracked WinOptimizer. And then again, they were posted at Cnet, like this one. One begins to wonder about what measures do Cnet take when testing software for inclusion on its repository...

That's why it's always better to download software from the author's homepage of from tiny pages like File Hippo, to avoid this kind of crap