Recent Posts

301

General Software Discussion / Re: Sudo for Windows?

« Last post by nontroppo on November 21, 2007, 04:17 AM »

Did anyone try sudowin in the end? Their documentation is excellent and this looks to be just the right balance between lock-down and liberty.

http://www.lostcreat...ns.com/sudowin/about
http://www.lostcreat...udowin/documentation

See also: http://sudown.sourceforge.net/index.php

302

General Software Discussion / DoMercury - another Quicksilver/FARR type program

« Last post by nontroppo on November 20, 2007, 05:16 PM »

Yes, text entry is very useful too

303

General Software Discussion / DoMercury - another Quicksilver/FARR type program

« Last post by nontroppo on November 20, 2007, 01:15 PM »

QiiNinja is only 468kb on disk which is why it sped past so fast ;-)

304

General Software Discussion / DoMercury - another Quicksilver/FARR type program

« Last post by nontroppo on November 20, 2007, 11:54 AM »

Actually it did install I just didn't get a "done" message.

First impressions: Nice! Very clean and minimalist launcher, you have a fast and elegant base to work from. Things I would work towards (kinda in that order):

1) Customised stores, along with customised searches (I don't use favorites for example). Quicksilver's catalog is a great goal to aim towards, containing both physical path locations and proxy objects (selections, recent items).
2) Learning heuristics (see my post above).
3) Path browsing and file selection (not just .lnks)
4) Multiple selections. You use the "," trick in QS to add a number of items.
5) Make your features modular: Plugins

You are off to a great start.

305

General Software Discussion / Re: To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon

« Last post by nontroppo on November 20, 2007, 11:37 AM »

As I remember it, images in Word 2000 caused far more problems when they jump all over the document due to anchoring restrictions. That got better in 2003 IIRC, and saved me hours of hair tearing frustration.

306

General Software Discussion / DoMercury - another Quicksilver/FARR type program

« Last post by nontroppo on November 20, 2007, 11:35 AM »

Welcome! Actually at the moment your installer is not working for me, I see the dialog and progress bar zip by then nothing.

307

General Software Discussion / Re: Mobile Browsing: Opera Mini 4

« Last post by nontroppo on November 20, 2007, 11:24 AM »

I can't answer the first question, but mobile view enables additional content reshaping to ensure vertical-only scrolling. It does depend on the site as to how it works, some sites are already well optimised, others not. In the desktop version, it is kind of like the very cool fit-to-width which stops web sites creating horizontal scrollbars as much  as possible.

308

General Software Discussion / Re: ghacks post: "Why I decided to uninstall my Antivirus software"

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 01:30 PM »

mouser: because you can't know if your OS or applications have vulnerabilities. Perhaps just visiting a web site may be enough to trigger something. It is not only about running unknown applications, but that your known apps may have issues waiting for exploits.

And don't forget gremlins can often surf illicit sites while you are asleep...

309

General Software Discussion / Re: Fixing an XP Laptop, when to give up?

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 01:23 PM »

Well, IE7 is the most probable vector in this affair - the machine was fully patched (auto updates anyway) and my friend has no recollection of specifically running an application downloaded (they don't use outlook). Secunia suggests IE7s unpatched vulerabilities are 37% of its total, pretty shoddy, irrespective of the severity of said issues (and 37% of those vulnerabilities are extremely or highly critical). The browser installed will be Opera or Firefox, with content blocker and phishing filter set up.

I am gobsmacked at how easily NOD32 was inactivated. Trend Micro Housecall cannot even download its updates via the browser for recovery via that route. Threatfire installs OK, but its scan reveals nothing. I have to say I have some respect for whoever coded that, it is invisible and has somehow fought off all the recovery products I can throw at it.

So to invert mousers question, how many security products are enough?

310

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 10:12 AM »

nontroppo: when you download a "single binary that supports all platforms", it's probably 32bit.

Universal binaries support up to four platform architectures, 32 and 64bit PowerPC and Intel builds in one executable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_binary
http://www.apple.com...echnology/64bit.html

More than that I don't really understand, except that I don't have to worry about choosing a 32bit or 64bitOS as an end user.

311

Living Room / Re: What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 09:03 AM »

A follow-up post from the same guys that did the initial testing:

http://exo-blog.blog...performance-dud.html

312

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 08:17 AM »

What I don't understand is why did MS even insist on going 32 vs. 64 bit route? *nix and OS X handle this much more cleanly, and arguments have been made about why LP64 (*nix, OS X etc) is better than LLP64 (Vista):

http://www.unix.org/...hatsnew/lp64_wp.html

With LP64, I download a single binary that supports all platforms without having to worry (and neither did the developer during building). When 64bit apps come out[1], i can run them alongside my existing 32bit apps. This seems like a win-win. Is it because the driver model cannot handle such a shared environment?

Ah, CMOS batteries, no idea, though there arecompanies selling replacements for most macs since the 90s so this is not a general issue.

----
[1] Geekbench has tests for both 32bit and 64bit - I tested my machine for both without having to install two OSs, rebooting etc. There is a 8-10% performance boost for the areas covered.

313

General Software Discussion / Re: Fixing an XP Laptop, when to give up?

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 07:59 AM »

Ok thanks guys, nuke it will be. This I have to say is the best reason i can ever think to upgrade from XP to Vista for normal users, it is worth losing 50% performance for. I know users have some responsibility for keeping safe, but the level of threat and the ineffectiveness of security solutions for XP for users who don't really know what a trojan is is frightening.

Bah, and why the hell did MS shutdown Autopatcher!

314

General Software Discussion / Fixing an XP Laptop, when to give up?

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 06:50 AM »

I have a friends laptop who recently suffered a trojan attack (I suspect via an IE popup and user click but they are not computer literate and are not clear how). The thing was running only NOD32. It appeared to disable NOD32 (yikes!) and wireless stopped working (unintended side effect, NDIS user I/O is broken); system restore did nothing. I installed Comodo firewall just fine, and outbound attempts were coming from IE, which I locked down. As NOD32 was inoperative, I used autoruns to scan for anything in startup / services / IE helpers. Nothing. Process explorer shows no new process running. Rootkit revealer gives me reams of data but I don't have time to deal with that. Trying to reinstall NOD32 causes the installer to fail whenever it tries to copy the NOD executable to the install directory. Installing elsewhere does not fool it. Spybot fails install too, only teatimer.exe installs but disappears on reboot. Adaware installs and claims to clean one trojan, but the OS still can't install NOD after a reboot. AVG, Avast, Bitdefender, Antivir - none of them can install. Avast at least ran a system scan on reboot, cleaning three trojan files, but its windows executable disappears as it boots into Windows. Comodo's BOClean installs and claims there are no problems. What a mess, and a pretty scary testament to the ineffectiveness of security software.

Anyone have any other tips before a full HD wipe (this is a favour and I can't waste huge amounts of time on it), I suspect that somehow permissions have been reset which is why antivirus exe's can't install but permissions of directories look fine in explorer.

315

Living Room / Re: What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 06:31 AM »

Hm, it appears SP1 will not do much for performance according to current beta versions (but perhaps they still have debug code and whatnot riding along):

http://blog.scotsnew...service-pack-1-beta/
http://www.pcworld.c...33e8065121c5/pg1.htm

316

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for reports of folder size

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 06:21 AM »

I used to use Scanner, but that is visual not textual:

http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/

If you have access to cygwin, maybe you can use the DU command, I use something like this in Bash (on OS X):

[Select]

alias measurebig='for f in /folder1 / folder2 /folder#; do sudo du -hsx "$f"; done'

Which gives me:

[Select]

@macbook:~$ measurebig
4.0K /folder1
446M /folder2
2.6M /folder3
3.5G /foldern

Google gave me this for PCs:

http://www.cygwin.co...006-07/msg00070.html

317

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 06:06 AM »

Things ain't looking too hot for Vista adoption in the workplace:

http://www.microsoft...WRSS02129TX1K0000535

XP is still clearly the greatest threat to Vista.

What's Apple's excuse?

Um, they fixed the move bug as soon as possible (which affected only a small minority of users behaviours, as clearly evidenced by the fact no one complained about this before). This was not a hardware complexity issue, but a simple software bug. Vista had a complex bug where moving >4000 files could fail, and it took them over 8 months to fix it (with some reports that it still ain't fixed). I'm sorry, but Microsofts patching record really ain't great. The security mess that is XP has things unpatched for months, again hardware is irrelevant here.

I thought system reliability out of the box was the whole point of Apple hardware lockdown (even to the point that you can even get into some of the boxes they produce - they won't even let users change batteries for god's sake!)

Huh!? I can access my battery just fine, can on a MBPro too, can on my Partners old iBook. I can open the Mac pro perfectly (and the chassis is much better organised for modification than our Dell workstations). I suspect it ain't easy to open a Mac mini, but the same would go for a micro PC.

318

Living Room / Re: What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

« Last post by nontroppo on November 19, 2007, 05:35 AM »

Zaine: it just depends on the OS manufacturer

I actually do think hardware has advanced and provides significant advantage. The core2duo, considering the fact that the future is virtualisation and hardware abstraction (did you see the new Ubuntu JeOS?), has been a godsend (far more than just lumping two processors together). I am working in ways now that really were unthinkable a few years back, and my productivity boost is tangible.

319

General Software Discussion / DoMercury - another Quicksilver/FARR type program

« Last post by nontroppo on November 18, 2007, 06:02 AM »

Another Quicksilver clone (though again not using the source I suspect):

http://www.qiininja.com/
http://www.littlebig...t-is-qiininja-anyway

This actually looks very nice using the noun<->verb<->argument model and only showing the argument if needed.

320

Living Room / Re: What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

« Last post by nontroppo on November 17, 2007, 07:08 PM »

Well, it would be interesting to see if an analogous script benchmark could be made for OpenOffice *and* Office - to compare OO+Linux against O2007+Vista on the same hardware.

321

General Software Discussion / Re: Scott Finnie unimpressed by NOD32 ...

« Last post by nontroppo on November 17, 2007, 12:43 PM »

So ESET agree IMON is superfluous I suppose 

322

Living Room / Re: What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

« Last post by nontroppo on November 17, 2007, 11:40 AM »

I think all the main tests in the table claim to be virtualised, which is his first phase analysis, then he will start to use real hardware. At least the table says (virtual) across the board. He is not very clear.

Booting XP into 512MB or 768MB virtual machines on my macbook via VMWare is blazingly fast (faster than any other XP machine I use), I think it depends on the Host capabilities (centrino doesn't support intel virtualization instructions?)

323

Living Room / Re: What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

« Last post by nontroppo on November 17, 2007, 10:24 AM »

Apply that same economic pressure to all of Intel's customers -- Gateway, Dell, HP/Compaq, etc -- and it's easy to see how our whole IT industry is driven by (cue trumpets) software bloat.

-Ralf Maximus (November 17, 2007, 09:39 AM)

Except quite a number of PC manufacturers have grumbled pretty loudly over Vista (and pushed for XP retention). Considering the morasses of molasses Vista is, by the bloat argument, Vista must the best OS ever crafted, and PC sales rocketing up like never before. Do I suspect a fracture in the cyclical inevitability of bloat-dharma?

And after just helping install Leopard on an 867Mhz consumer ibook from eons ago, and having it smoothly work (including the eye candy), bloat-dharma is not inevitable. I do fear for what may arrive when MS release the version of Office 2007 for Macs in a month and a half though...

it would be interesting to see the various versions of Windows and Office combined and tested as well and it would be more meaningful (to me) if the tests were conducted on actualy hardware, rather than VMWare.

-Darwin (November 17, 2007, 10:01 AM)

I'd like to see earlier versions of Office on Vista. But as to the virtual machine, I doubt that will make much difference (unless Vista has some kernel bug which triggers problems on a VM, though nothing has been described), and certainly would greatly complicate the process of testing.

324

General Software Discussion / Re: Scott Finnie unimpressed by NOD32 ...

« Last post by nontroppo on November 17, 2007, 10:01 AM »

Never experienced this with any of the browsers I use/have used over the years with NOD32 so while I don't doubt there will be cases where it could be true that it happens, it most certainly isn't for me and many other users.

-Dirhael (November 17, 2007, 07:34 AM)

Most users will not notice it, pages simply appear all at once rather than being reflown as content updates. Opera has the most agressive progressive renderer, and I extensively tested on more than one machine with reproducible effects. As I understand it, "efficiency" buffers HTML content and scans once that document is finalised. The browser therefore cannot progressively render. That makes Opera, and to a leser extent Firefox display pages similarly to IE, thus is mostly not noticed.

As AMON will protect one once that content is on disk, why bother with IMON? Perhaps it intercepts javascript which may be cached in RAM before being flushed to disk?

325

General Software Discussion / Re: Track Loading time

« Last post by nontroppo on November 17, 2007, 09:52 AM »

Process monitor will give you detailed times of all file I/O, filter for your application. But it won't tell you what the user may perceive - what does loading mean - first display of the UI, or first ability to usefully interact?

http://www.microsoft.../processmonitor.mspx

If you want to measure how many seconds until a UI is shown, the best way is to use screenrecording software and then use frame times to know from when an icon was depressed to when a UI is shown. This is much more precise than sitting with a stopwatch. There are also ways to measure change on screen, but I don't know of any apps to do that, only testing frameworks.