Recent Posts

2276

Living Room / Re: A Silly Wish: EULA Summaries...

« Last post by f0dder on August 12, 2010, 10:21 AM »

EULAs sucks, but summaries probably won't really work. When iD software released the source for the Quake 1 tools (the bsp/light/vis/quakecc, not the game engine!) I emailed them some questions, including some along the lines of "why do you need such a long eula, and couldn't you include a short summary of it?" - the reply I got back was along the lines of them not really liking the legalese, but that it was necessary - and that a summary might risk invalidating the EULA.

2277

General Software Discussion / Re: Which archive software are we using in 2010 (and why)?

« Last post by f0dder on August 12, 2010, 10:17 AM »

After unpacking it and re-archiving it with 7-zip (in extreme mode) by using a self-made script, I only have to download 7+ GByte. That difference is a huge one for me and unless winRAR can do the same trick I will take a look at it again.

-Shades (August 11, 2010, 08:23 PM)

Sounds like the compression settings haven't been cranked to the max? Remember that there's both the "Compression method" as well as "Dictionary size" (under the advanced options).

Sure, there's going to be size differences between RAR and 7z, both are improved every now and then... but 16 vs 7 gigs sounds like too much

2278

Circle Dock / Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately

« Last post by f0dder on August 11, 2010, 12:57 PM »

One lesson I've (hopefully) learned: when in an upset state, don't make big decisions, and don't post stuff publicly. Take a few big steps bag and breathe deeply.

2279

General Software Discussion / Re: Which archive software are we using in 2010 (and why)?

« Last post by f0dder on August 11, 2010, 10:00 AM »

There's one thing I miss in WinRAR, though - the ability to NOT have icons on the toolbar buttons, but keep them as plain text. The included icons are plain old butt-ugly, and I prefer text anyway. (I've just removed the toolbar + "up one level" because I never really use them anyway, which makes it more aesthetically pleasing to me - at the expense of looking a bit too much like my explorer² setup ).

Considering this is the only thing that bothers me about WinRAR, I'd call it quite a fine piece of software

2280

Circle Dock / Re: Change of Licensing from Version 2 (Cancelled)

« Last post by f0dder on August 11, 2010, 12:38 AM »

40hz: keep the following in mind:

If I distribute GPL'd software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge?
    No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee. For example, someone could pay your fee, and then put her copy on a web site for the general public.

-http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic

2281

General Software Discussion / Re: Which archive software are we using in 2010 (and why)?

« Last post by f0dder on August 10, 2010, 04:41 PM »

does anyone know if the winrar license is still a lifetime one ? (couldnt see there on their site)

-tomos (August 10, 2010, 04:40 PM)

Dunno about new licenses (though I would think so), but my license back from eons ago is still valid for the most recent version

2282

General Software Discussion / Re: Which archive software are we using in 2010 (and why)?

« Last post by f0dder on August 10, 2010, 04:32 PM »

superboyac: dunno, are both official? I've always only used the rarlabs one.

2283

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Tab Candy will change the way I use a browser for good

« Last post by f0dder on August 10, 2010, 01:26 PM »

Dunno if Tab Candy necessarily keeps tabs *open* when not using them, but it wouldn't need to do that in order to do some of it's nice features... having the overview and grouping is imho super useful.

2284

General Software Discussion / Re: Which archive software are we using in 2010 (and why)?

« Last post by f0dder on August 10, 2010, 12:59 AM »

WinRAR - I've been using RAR since the early DOS days, and always found the software to be excellent. WinRAR handles the files I need while on Windows, and supports a plethora of command-line arguments that makes it pretty useful. I also find the interface to be no-nonsense, and the program is pretty configurable. And the license was pretty cheap & lifetime - it was the first shareware program I registered after finally getting a Visa card.


I like how I have it configured


Other than that, I find 7-zip likable, and it's the archiver I install for people who don't feel like cashing out. Works pretty OK, even if settings/cmdline is a bit basic.

2285

Circle Dock / Re: Can I speed up CD's Folder switching/Redraw (CD Quick Tip)

« Last post by f0dder on August 09, 2010, 01:54 PM »

@f0dder; Ultimately I understand the point that you are making, but even in a round about way, you have just suggest image reduction prior to use.

-sgtevmckay (August 09, 2010, 01:23 PM)

Partially true - keeping the images cached after resize also means you don't have to read disk on subsequent uses, nor process the files. Granted, it doesn't take that much CPU power to decode small PNGs, and even less for ICOs (unless they're large vista-style icons, which iirc uses PNG compression). Still, a BitBlit from memory is a lot faster than reading, decoding and BitBlitting

And then there's the point of saving the user from doing the size reduction. If you've got some nice large icons which you might be using for other purposes as well, it's a bit annoying having to keep both the large icons + downscaled versions around. Even if you only need the downsized ones, not everybody knows how to do batch resizing of images. Just sayin'

I have found in several products that graphics are rendered much faster, regardless of size, if the graphics is placed in the Locaized Path.
ie. Icons store in the Circle Dock Icon Folder are accessed faster than in my Graphics folder that is not in a localized path to the Circle Dock folder.

-sgtevmckay (August 09, 2010, 01:23 PM)

That sounds pretty darn weird!

In my test group I have found that Circle Dock 64bit operates faster that Circle Dock 32 bit.
regardless if CD 32Bit is in a native 32bit or 64bit environment. I have no idea why.

-sgtevmckay (August 09, 2010, 01:23 PM)

That does sound weird - I wouldn't be all that puzzled about 32bit performing somewhat slower on a 64bit system, given the GDI+ experiences mentioned above, but since CD isn't an especially CPU-intensive program this does sound queer. When is the speed difference felt? Upon loading images, or at display time when rotating etc?

Is the systems Foot print of the 64bit larger; Yes, but only by a few "K"

-sgtevmckay (August 09, 2010, 01:23 PM)

Yes, it isn't much for most programs - code doesn't bloat by all that much, and for normal programs data won't blow up much either. Was meant a bit tongue-in-cheek since Markham seems a bit obsessed with memory bloat (no offence meant).

2286

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea - Return *new* lines from a text file (w/ example)

« Last post by f0dder on August 09, 2010, 12:25 PM »

Is this supposed to be a general-purpose utility, or "pretty specific"? Do you want the program to output new lines and exit, or would continually running & monitoring work? This all affects strategies

If the program can run continuously, it can monitor changes and only read the file on change - and it can rate-limit this to whatever/second in case of often modified files, plus it can cache the "where'd I toddle off to last" in memory.

If you want run-dump-exit, there "where'd I toddle off to last" will have to be stored somewhere. If the file(s) will always be on NTFS partitions, ADS could be a good idea.

2287

Circle Dock / Re: Can I speed up CD's Folder switching/Redraw (CD Quick Tip)

« Last post by f0dder on August 09, 2010, 11:29 AM »

I am testing a 32bit run on a 64bit system, either way the 64bit far out perform 32bit. Why is also beyond me.
I have a friend that can also verify results in Windows XP Pro SP3

-sgtevmckay (August 09, 2010, 01:12 AM)

So, running 32bit CD on 32bit XP is also slow, or are you talking about 64bit XP? (Slightly confused since there's no SP3 for XP64).

Doesn't CD cache the images it uses?

-f0dder (August 09, 2010, 12:35 AM)

No it doesn't although this is something the original author planned on doing. However caching the images would be quite expensive in terms of memory which goes against what I believe the program is and should do. Circle Dock is a utility and should be lean and mean in terms of memory footprint and resources. I am definitely not in favour of "bloatware"!

-Markham (August 09, 2010, 10:37 AM)

Calling caching "bloat" isn't deserved, imho - bloat is about useless functionality or wasting memory (or other resources), caching is a speed/memory tradeoff. Caching 128 images (more than most people will be using?) of 128x128x32bpp (larger resolution than necessary?) would take ~8meg of memory... hardly a lot, even on low-end machines. OTOH, caching the images could speed up the program noticably on low-end machines (not wasting CPU cycles or HDD access to decode images), and wouldn't require users to re-scale their images manually. It's not terribly hard to make a configurable cache

A 32-bit version running on a 64-bit platform has to run in an emulator and so will be slightly slower than a 64-bit version of the software.

-Markham (August 09, 2010, 10:37 AM)

WoW64 isn't an emulator, the 32bit code runs natively at full CPU speed - some calls need thunking between 32- and 64bit code, but normally this isn't a problem (e.g. 32bit games run perfectly well on 64bit Windows). There's a few pathological cases, though, and if you're using GDI+ that might be it - Foxit Reader (used to?) slows to a crawl when rendering complex PDFs, so much that it's actually faster to render them in a 32bit virtual machine instead of running native. But for most stuff you can barely notice a speed hit.

Given two identical machines, one a 32-bit platform and the other 64-bit each running a platform-specific version, there should be no discernible difference in execution time between them.

-Markham (August 09, 2010, 10:37 AM)

You should see a slightly larger memory footprint from running a 64bit version, though

2288

Living Room / Re: Five Reasons Why People Hate Apple

« Last post by f0dder on August 09, 2010, 12:43 AM »

My 5 reasons:

• Fanboys
• Fanboys
• Fanboys
• Fanboys
• Steve Jobs

 

-40hz (August 08, 2010, 09:33 PM)

2289

Circle Dock / Re: Can I speed up CD's Folder switching/Redraw (CD Quick Tip)

« Last post by f0dder on August 09, 2010, 12:35 AM »

Doesn't CD cache the images it uses?

This test was done in a 32bit environment, so I expect a massive improvement in a 64bit environment

-sgtevmckay (August 08, 2010, 09:20 PM)

How come?

2290

Circle Dock / Re: Change of Licensing from Version 2 (Cancelled)

« Last post by f0dder on August 09, 2010, 12:31 AM »

Wouldn't handing over your copyright to the EFF remove the possibility of doing dual-licensing etc?

2291

Circle Dock / Re: Suggesting names for new derivitative of CircleDock

« Last post by f0dder on August 08, 2010, 10:10 AM »

Orbit Dock

-mitzevo (August 08, 2010, 10:08 AM)

Or CopyDock? :=)

2292

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Tab Candy will change the way I use a browser for good

« Last post by f0dder on July 30, 2010, 01:04 PM »

just looking at this Vista-Aero thing. looks interesting - will install it now.

-nudone (July 30, 2010, 12:58 PM)

Wut? - nvm, found it

2293

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Tab Candy will change the way I use a browser for good

« Last post by f0dder on July 30, 2010, 12:35 PM »

nudone: those extensions combined might give some of the benefits of TabCandy, but it looks clunky in comparison... I generally perform function over form, but in some cases (and I believe TC to be one) form is part of the functionality. Your example screenshot doesn't make it easy to locate your tabs of interest visually, and it lacks the tab grouping, which is one of the primary points of interest for me

2294

Developer's Corner / Re: Git: converting svn repo & stuff

« Last post by f0dder on July 28, 2010, 07:35 AM »

Well, the idea is that development will only continue in the public/new branch, not the private/old one - but I'd still like file history from the public/new branch to track back to the private/old one... if possible, without the public/new repo containing the private data. That, or having the two branches entirely separate, but changes going to both the public and private branches.

2295

General Software Discussion / Re: How to [partially] blur screenshots?

« Last post by f0dder on July 27, 2010, 03:01 PM »

Steganography means hiding data in other data (usually pictures or audio), this doesn't qualify

2296

Living Room / Re: New Government Rules make Jailbreaking Legal

« Last post by f0dder on July 27, 2010, 02:42 PM »

A baby step in the right direction

2297

General Software Discussion / Re: How to [partially] blur screenshots?

« Last post by f0dder on July 27, 2010, 02:30 PM »

Wraith: you'll need knowledge of the blurring algorithm, font and size, and then you have to write some custom bruteforcing code... it's not guaranteed to work, and most people probably won't ever face such an attack. Still, it worth keeping in mind

2298

General Software Discussion / Re: Whoa, this gal hates MS Office 2010 -- 5 Reasons Why You Don't Need It

« Last post by f0dder on July 26, 2010, 06:41 AM »

I was pretty skeptical about the ribbon before I gave it a decent try, and I have to admit I've come to like it. For the way I use Office, I find that the "focused" view it offers is much more convenient than always having a zillion icons on the toolbar, or having to go hunt endless cascaded layers of menus. And when I'm doing bulk writing, I can hide the ribbon to maximize screen real estate.

That said, it's silly when developers adopt the ribbon just for the sake of using the newest MS feature. It simply doesn't make sense in a regular text editor, and I find it to be overkill in MSPaint as well. But for Office, you can't use it as a general argument the suite, since a lot of people like it and it's really a personal preference kinda thing.

As for the rest of the summarized points (can't be bothered to RTFA), well... yeah, there's free alternatives, and they might work just fine if you only have simple needs. But if you have to do document exchange, you're SOL if you need to process anything but the simplest .doc or .docx documents. If you do VBA developing, the OOo offering sucka compared to the debugger and help integrated in MS-Office (which isn't even that hot compared to visual studio).

While I'm not that big a fan of SharePoint (the system implemented for our school was so poor that we had to dismiss it after a semester or two - probably not SP's fault but sucky developers developing a crap system around SP), suggesting that you can just copy/paste instead of doing a proper save is ridiculous... c/p a couple hundred of pages, great idea? I think not. Besides, what would that do to version tracking?

And dismissing simultaneous editing, heh. The author is describing a people management problem, not a problem with the feature. Yeah, great dismissing a program feature because you and your co-workers are disorganized, non-communicating clobbermonkeys

2299

Developer's Corner / Re: Git: converting svn repo & stuff

« Last post by f0dder on July 25, 2010, 08:39 PM »

Hm, *scratches beard*.

I know I can set the locations a specific branch push to... so, the idea would be importing the svn repo, and having that push to my private repo. Then, branch off the latest revision to a "public" branch, which would push both to my private repo and a public one; this should keep version history just fine, and keep everything in my private repository.

However, since the public branch would be based off the private one, would pushing the public branch cause all the prior revisions to end up in the public repo .git data?

2300

Developer's Corner / Re: StCroixSkipper's NTFS USN Journal Explorer

« Last post by f0dder on July 25, 2010, 07:09 PM »

Just wanted to give a nod of approval - USN journal parsing is definitely something a lot of programs could benefit from, especially backup programs that don't run continuously. An app like SpiderOak, for instance, takes ~10 minutes to scan my source/docs partition for changes when I launch it; if it parsed the USN journal, it'd probably be less than a minute.

And the API that deals with USN are, per Microsoft tradition, pretty... raw. Haven't looked at how you've wrapped it, but just the fact that you're doing this work is appreciated.

A thing to keep in mind when working with the USN journal is that it's of limited size - so, theoretically, you risk missing updates if there's "a long timespan" beetween launches of your application. I've got no clue how long this takes for a normal-traffic volume, though, but you'll need to fallback to regular file-traversing code if you want to be entirely safe. Also, while MFT scanning is fast & nice, you should have a graceful fallback to regular traversal (to support non-admin mode, as well as handling possible future NTFS versions).

At any rate, here's a from me