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Recent Posts

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2526
T-Clock / Re: T-Clock 2010 (Maybe...)
« Last post by f0dder on March 03, 2010, 06:35 AM »
Hm, just did a silly little test - obviously won't work runtime, but compiles clean with the following two compilers (VS2008 + SP1):
Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 15.00.30729.01 for x64
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 15.00.30729.01 for 80x86

...should work fine for older compilers as well, although there is a PlatformSDK dependency to have GWLP_* work (dunno when that was introduced, but iirc it works fine on VS2005).

Note that I prefer the C++ style cast operators, but C style (cast) just as well (they're less explicit and harder to grep for, though, and the C++ operators allow you to be more precise wrt. what/why you're casting).

Code: C++ [Select]
  1. #include <windows.h>
  2.  
  3. extern HWND hwndClock;
  4. extern LRESULT CALLBACK newWindowProc(HWND hwnd, UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam);
  5.  
  6. int main()
  7. {
  8.         WNDPROC oldWndProc = reinterpret_cast<WNDPROC>(GetWindowLongPtr(hwndClock, GWLP_WNDPROC));
  9.         SetWindowLongPtr(hwndClock, GWLP_WNDPROC, reinterpret_cast<LONG_PTR>(newWindowProc));
  10. }

2527
T-Clock / Re: T-Clock 2010 (Maybe...)
« Last post by f0dder on March 03, 2010, 01:53 AM »
What's up with having two casts (ie., (LONG)(LONG_PTR))? A single (LONG_PTR) ought to suffice, and work on both x86 and x64... reason for your old code crashing is probably that LONG is 32bit in both x86 and x64, so you get pointer truncation... whereas LONG_PTR is defined thus:

#if defined(_WIN64)
 typedef __int64 LONG_PTR;
#else
 typedef long LONG_PTR;
#endif

Yay for the moronic (or should we just say old-school-C-not-C++?) way the PlatformSDK is structured... *me barfs*. "Yeah, this is a pointer, except, like... it's an integer".
2528
Living Room / Re: Strange question about salsa
« Last post by f0dder on March 03, 2010, 01:47 AM »
So why would you want to microwave salsa? Isn't it supposed to be served chilled, or at least only room temperature?
Depends on what it's being used for - for nachos, I like personally like the salsa heated along with the chips & cheese :)
2529
Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?
« Last post by f0dder on March 03, 2010, 01:40 AM »
iPhones!  >:(
:up:

Especially now that I own one!
:down:

...:)
2530
Living Room / Re: Strange question about salsa
« Last post by f0dder on March 02, 2010, 01:56 PM »
Noticed & wondered about that myself - I've experienced it with a few other food items as well, but can't remember which ones, d'oh :)
2531
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Serial Dealers - a new discount software site
« Last post by f0dder on March 02, 2010, 10:51 AM »
I wonder why they closed.  It seemed like a good deal- sort of like tanga, woot, etc- in that they purchase in bulk and sell for less.
Probably because there's not enough money to be made that way. And even with bulk discounts, their prices seemed suspiciously low.

And the name probably wasn't the smartest, either - I certainly don't think about software when I hear the word "dealer" :)
2532
General Software Discussion / Re: Versioning Systems, for Small Enterprise ...
« Last post by f0dder on March 01, 2010, 01:01 AM »
I wouldn't feel comfortable using a hosted solution for subversion - if something goes wrong, *b00m*, there goes your entire version history. With a DVCS where you've got a full local copy of the repository, matters are different :)
2533
General Software Discussion / Re: Versioning Systems, for Small Enterprise ...
« Last post by f0dder on February 28, 2010, 07:30 PM »
Resource intensive?

Both subversion and git (and, I wager, mercurial and bazaar) only take processing power and memory when you're doing versioning operations (the Tortoise* shell integration family does keep a caching process running, but it's overhead is negligible, and it helps speed stuff up). The disk overhead isn't really bad either, as all versioning systems try to minimize the redundancy - some systems store changesets (with the occasional full-file snapshot to speed things up), whereas git stores all files in their entirety, but only has one copy of each unique file content (based on SHA-1 hash of files). Disk space is cheap anyway :) (and you probably aren't going to have databases or .psd graphics under version control? :)).

Be careful with thumb drives, and definitely do not use one as the main source of your repository. There's no telling which quality flash memory they contain, they get lost easily, the electronics might fry, et cetera. Having a thumbdrive as an additional (backup) location isn't a bad idea, though - and this is probably easier to achieve with a DVCS then a traditional CVCS.

In that light, a DVCS would make even more sense, but methinks I need to walk before I start any marathons <chortle />
Probably easier to start with a DVCS than learning and then unlearning a CVCS... for single-developer usecases, the differences aren't that big, really - basically, commits go to local storage, and if you want serverside you "push" :)
2534
General Software Discussion / Re: Versioning Systems, for Small Enterprise ...
« Last post by f0dder on February 28, 2010, 04:07 PM »
barney, it might take a bit getting used to using a VCS, but even for a single-person "team" it's not overkill. Yes, it's going to be slightly cumbersome remembering to do commits, doing them often enough, writing commit messages etc... but after a month it'll be pretty automatic for you, and you'll thank yourself plenty when you screw up, or need to backport fixes for a released  branch :)

I've been using subversion for quite a while myself, and it's a pretty decent system - but I'd suggest you pick up a DVCS instead, probably opting for Mercurial (git really works best if you're willing to mock around in a command prompt, and I sense that's probably not what you're after :)).

A Distributed VCS might sound even more overkill than a normal VCS, considering you're a single guy, but there's a couple of advantages. One is that local commits are very fast, whereas subversion takes a few seconds even on a gigabit lan. Branching and merging are faster and work better. And (at least for git, but I think mercurial as well) you have a single repository folder, whereas subversion sticks a .svn folder in every subfolder of your tracked project.
2535
Developer's Corner / Re: Resources for learning Mercurial?
« Last post by f0dder on February 28, 2010, 09:43 AM »
Thanks for sharing this :)

Hmm, nice images -- Balsamiq may be?
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Dunno what to think of the guide, though... I think I'm growing too old for the kind of forced and completely irrelevant attempt at humor that Spolsky is using. It's not that I want tech stuff to be entirely dry and to-the-fact, but I'd like some relevance in the humor... and there was none of that in Hg Init, just silliness.
2536
Developer's Corner / Re: What do YOU do to keep your head cold when coding?
« Last post by f0dder on February 26, 2010, 05:54 PM »
What I do depends on a bit on why I get "frustrated" with the code. Sometimes I need to step back and sit with my drawing board and/or pen&paper for a while to scratch down ideas and diagrams. Other times, I just need a short break and wander around in my flat scratching my beard...

And sometimes I need a longer break, I'll usually go outside for a walk. Or realize that it's close to midnight and that I better fix dinner ;P
2537
General Software Discussion / Re: Free Pascal - Lazarus?
« Last post by f0dder on February 26, 2010, 05:49 PM »
VS always installs butt load of stuff on my computer, I can almost call it bloatware.
It's a pretty big and fully-featured IDE - wouldn't call it bloatware, though. Don't install functionality you don't need :)
2538
Circle Dock / Re: UAC Issues - Vista/Windows 7, 32 & 64-bit
« Last post by f0dder on February 26, 2010, 11:22 AM »
Hm, improved GDI support? Wonder if that'll help much, GDI in and by itself isn't the best API for realtime graphics.

WPF is built around DirectX (specifically I think it's D3D9), so it should give better graphics performance - haven't used it myself, though.

I am, in fact, planning to switch to dotNet 3.5 for the next major release, something which may not be popular with some of our XP users.
3.5 not available for XP?
2539
General Software Discussion / Re: Simple Machines Forum Organization in Chaos
« Last post by f0dder on February 26, 2010, 11:14 AM »
Migrating to another forum software poses another problem: broken external links from other sites to DC threads. Unless all the threads have the same URL or there is some database of where all the old URL's should be redirected to, there would be some big problems for DC, offsite.
Pretty good point, app!

Would probably be a good idea to have the new forum locate at, say, "/Forums/v2/". The old "/forum/" would then be a redirect to v2. If same thread + post ids could be used, the redirect would be pretty simple, otherwise you'd need a database mapping old thread+post ids to new ones.
2540
Living Room / Re: Pirate vs. Paying Customer illustrated
« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2010, 05:29 PM »
I don't know what the proper solution is for single player games, for games that have mostly online appeal... drop DRM and simply rely on the server-side verified serial. If people choose to haxor the exe and use private servers, let them do it... but don't fsck your legitimate customers.
2541
Living Room / Re: Pirate vs. Paying Customer illustrated
« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2010, 01:34 PM »
Illustration isn't entirely correct - pirated DVDs usually include menus, and sometimes the FBI warnings are kept as well - probably for the laughs.

It is pretty damn sad that legitimate users get the shaft... for audio CDs, you often can't (reliably) rip to a digital computer format. For applications and games you're often treated as a thief if you go legitimate, with ridiculous lock-downs and restrictions (can't have process explorer running? limited number of activations? have to be connected to the internet, even if playing a single-player game, and you get booted out without save if you lose your internet connection? et cetera).

If you pirate stuff, it's download-install-run... and in the case of games, sometimes at better performance, because you don't have a crap layer of obfuscated DRM code running in a VM.
2542
Circle Dock / Re: UAC Issues - Vista/Windows 7, 32 & 64-bit
« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2010, 01:26 PM »
Interestingly the core executable is about 50KB smaller when compiled as 64-bit that it is compiled as 32-bit. However, after binding-in the support DLLs, the 32-bit version is about 3KB smaller.
The dotNET bytecode for 32- and 64-bit versions are probably going to be very similar - the runtime JIT'ed code is a different amtter, though :). If using the same assemblies, I would actually have thought the only difference was the manifest stating that machine type was x64 rather than x86 (or neutral).

I must confirm that Circle Dock (64bit) renders faster and is more responsive in the Windows 7 64bit enviro.
I have been deeply considering the "why" of this, and I am starting to think of an old post that was created here:
https://www.donation....msg161278#msg161278
The bottom line would be: 64bit handles graphics better (period)
Personal experience.
What graphics technology does CircleDock use, though?

As I've mentioned previously, the one slowdown I've seen was an app using GDI+... for DirectX, OpenGL and regular GDI I haven't been able to see a difference between 32- and 64-bit OSes (well, I don't have any intensive regular GDI apps, so perhaps regular GDI could be affected as well)

I could be way off, But I figure this is something that may need to be explored, then confirmed or ruled out.
Indeed - and perhaps an alternate graphics library should be tested? Might be considerable work, but if CD currently uses GDI/GDI+, it could probably get a nice speed boost from moving to something that leverages hardware acceleration properly?

What's the status of the StandaloneStack thing, btw? From my (very quick and superficial) look, it seems that there's no official site for it, only attachments in forum posts? Active development, closed source, ...?
2543
Circle Dock / Re: UAC Issues - Vista/Windows 7, 32 & 64-bit
« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2010, 07:51 AM »
I keep reading this (assuming I'm missing something) wondering how you're getting CD64 to run on a 32-bit platform - That's not supposed to be possible.
I'm reading that as "the 64-bit version works better [on 64-bit OS] than the 32-bit version [whether it's run on 32- or 64-bit OS]" - anything else wouldn't make sense :)
2544
Developer's Corner / Re: C++ - Saving / Loading data
« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2010, 05:31 AM »
Forget about that color-stuff you posted, it's 16-bit junk and doesn't apply to modern times - I assume you want to do win32 console apps. Forget about writing to DLLs, it's dirty & error-prone.
2545
Circle Dock / Re: UAC Issues - Vista/Windows 7, 32 & 64-bit
« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2010, 03:29 AM »
What seems a bit strange to me is that ini files are normally created through OS calls (eg: WritePrivateProfileString()) and yet the OS doesn't automatically set the correct ACL flags on ini files it creates!
Technically, it does set the right ACLs - from the design philosophy that %ProgramFiles% and %ProgramFiles(x86)% are protected paths. I know a lot of developers don't agree with this, but it's been kinda official since the NT4 days (and probably earlier) - damn Microsoft for delaying "default user is non-admin" until Vista, and for continuing the Win9x series for so long :)

Fortunately the installer can set the correct permissions when it installs this file and this is the route I will take. And that, incidentally, is another good reason not to distribute CD in Zip files as some proponents of Portable Applications would have me do!
Perhaps do it like mouser? EXEs that are basically self-extracting (and thus can be extracted manually without running) archives, with an embedded setup/fixup executable? That should cater to both camps.

As for 64-bit OS's my experience is somewhat limited - to less than one week. What I can say is that I'm unable to use Visual Studio 2008 on that platform to actively develop CD as should I try to load the Main Settings dialog, Visual Studio crashes with an "out of memory" fault (and that's on a 4GiB machine).
That sounds pretty strange - I've used it on XP-64/2gig, XP-64/8gig, Win7-64/8gig without problems. I know there's some problems with VS2008 if you install IE7 or later, but afaik it doesn't lead to memory errors, and I've only heard it in relation to MFC (since the MFC designers use html+js :-s).

As for 64-bit applications requiring more memory, you're probably correct however the extra amount of memory CD-64 requires (over CD-32) is negligible
It definitely depends on the type of application; x86-64 instruction has relatively efficient encodings so code doesn't necessarily bloat super much - and MS was smart enough to have .NET datatypes be size-specified, so your integers etc don't double in size, only pointers (there might be some data alignment size-bloat as well, too, though - haven't checked what happens with .NET in this respect).

but CD-64 does seem considerably more responsive than CD-32 on either a 32-bit or 64-bit platform (assuming the CPUs are of equivalent speed).
Interesting, I wonder what causes that - CircleDock doesn't strike me as an application that would benefit from it. Perhaps it's not because of compiling for x64, but because x64 doesn't include SS2 and SS2 causing the slowdowns?

Then again, the one 32bit application I've seen perform abysmally on x64, Foxit Reader, did so apparently because of drawing operations - iirc it uses GDI+. So there might be certain graphics components that suffer from WoW64 translation overhead (regular GDI, DirectX and OpenGL don't seem to be affected, though).

Ah well, this is drifting slightly off-topic from the original post, even if it's related to CircleDoc and IMHO is stuff of interest :)
2546
Developer's Corner / Re: C++ - Saving / Loading data
« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2010, 02:19 AM »
Demand demand demand! :)

What kind of "ask user number" functionality do you want? Since you only say "C++" I'd guess a console mode app, but it doesn't hurt specifying more explicitly.

A little note: saving to .exe won't work - there's been various tricks proposed during the years, but most of them have relied on undocumented stuff and don't work today. If you really want to save to exe, you have to take the route I've done with fSekrit: basically, copy current .exe to a temporary location, append data there, launch temporary .exe with special flag to make it overwrite original exe, launch now-overwritten-with-new-data original exe with flag to make it delete the temporary copy.
2547
General Software Discussion / Re: Paragon Virtualization Manager 2010
« Last post by f0dder on February 24, 2010, 09:45 PM »
Carol, any progress with the networking? I might try playing around over the weekend if I get some time.

Anyway, I got around to doing a pretty full VMWare setup for the stuff I need on my laptop (which is somewhat less than my workstation, but still quite a lot - visual studio, sql server express, you name it - ~24GB disk image). Tested it superficially on my testing box, then deployed on my laptop. Didn't inject any drivers when doing the "P2P Adjust", had to install intel chipset drivers + intel graphics drivers + ACPIHIDMAPPER driver, and that resolved all that was missing. So far, everything seems good, but I'll test it properly for a couple of days before jumping to conclusions.

Certainly hope it works out well, so I can construct an image for my workstation... 5 days until the Win7 RC runs out, heh. Took me a couple of days speccing the requirements for the laptop image, can reuse most of that for the workstation - but it'll probably take two days of work sorting out the rest + creating image. Woop.
2548
General Software Discussion / Re: Win7, disk imaging, vmware
« Last post by f0dder on February 24, 2010, 09:41 PM »
The holy grail has been found!

Thanks to tinjaw for posting about Paragon Virtualization Manager 2010, which is capable of doing a lot of nice stuff: p2p, p2v and v2p. I've success done a couple of v2p transfers from vmware to physical hardware, deploying the image to my test machine and, after verifying the basics, now also my laptop (which I use daily). Seems to work just perfectly, so if nothing bad happens I'll do an even more elaborate setup for my workstation - 5 days until the Win7 RC runs out, so I'm in a bit of a hurry :P
2549
Circle Dock / Re: UAC Issues - Vista/Windows 7, 32 & 64-bit
« Last post by f0dder on February 24, 2010, 04:31 PM »
Sarge: your issues sound a bit weird - wish I had the time to help a bit with the CircleDock codebase, I'm sure most issues can be fixed there. I've been using 64bit versions of XP, Vista and Win7, and haven't run into major differences (excluding adding UAC from xp->vista, of course) - and the only noticeable performance impact on 32bit applications I've seen is Foxit Reader, where performance dropped abysmally on 64bit XP (haven't tested rendering of complex PDFs lately, so dunno if it's fixed on Vista/Win7 or in FR itself). For "normal" stuff, I haven't seen performance benefits, and memory requirements tend to go up a bit.

Anyway, if the only UAC-related problem is the SS2 ini file, I hope you'll take my recommendation and change the NTFS ACLs of that file, rather than adding a privilege request to the manifest file...
2550
Living Room / Re: Confessions of an Internet “Shock Jock”
« Last post by f0dder on February 24, 2010, 01:47 PM »
There's been a whole bunch of draaaaaama about this guy during the past week - serves him right for being a fool. Considering how much he's lied, cheated and misrepresented information in the past, I do wonder how much of this confessions story is true and how much is made up... or just grossly twisted from the truth.

At least it's (hopefully!) game-over posting crap. :-* on Ars-Technica and the rest of the people that's helped expose the moron.
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