Recent Posts

3576

Living Room / Re: Recommend to me the BEST USB stick to get

« Last post by f0dder on April 20, 2009, 06:11 PM »

Another thing to consider is do you want to buy it now with the USB 3.0 standard due out so soon?  It might take a while for the tech to propagate, sure, but it will be faster (that you can pretty much guarantee) and it should be backward compatible as well IIRC.  Just a thought...

-steeladept (April 19, 2009, 04:28 AM)

Is that really going to be much of an issue? USB2 is 480mbit, and enve though it's hard reaching the full 60mbyte/s sustained through USB, isn't that plenty bandwidth for pendrives? How fast are the fastest now, anyway?

3577

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Fix Vista so I can drop a file from Windows Explorer to cmd yet again

« Last post by f0dder on April 20, 2009, 05:11 PM »

Skrommel: so it clobbers the clipboard?

3578

Living Room / Re: for the past 50 years, American students were taught bullshit

« Last post by f0dder on April 20, 2009, 05:08 PM »

Actually grammar is a relative construct by human beings, it is unnatural. I would  say that do not rely on grammar much. Grammar kills the language and puts it in a box. Grammar is elitist and creates class division.  Let languages flourish as they want to be. I hope it makes sense. I am an anti-grammar guy, really

-kartal (April 19, 2009, 01:16 AM)

Eye r liek 2tally in aggrement!

3579

Living Room / Re: ZDNET: Have we arrived in the post-Windows era?

« Last post by f0dder on April 20, 2009, 04:59 PM »

It's not true that Vista and Win7 haven't added anything... anybody claiming so should do a little research.

Windows Vista: added transactional NTFS, prioritized disk I/O, UAC , and (not so important, but nice) a smoother GUI (if you have the GPU for it - could've/should've been done more efficiently).
Windows 7: doesn't have that much end-user visible new-niceness (though it has usability enhancements), is a sort of "polished Vista" - but has some nice improvements for running on (and scaling to) higher-end hardware.

...and XP unifying the 2k and 9x codebases? - the systems might have been unified, in the sense that Win9x was dragged into the backyard and shot, and XP was made a more consumer-oriented system than 2k. But unifying the code bases? come on.

3580

Living Room / Re: copying files over a school network

« Last post by f0dder on April 20, 2009, 04:54 PM »

+1 for 40hz' solution using read-only shares... pushing files around should be avoided if possible, it's such a mess.

3581

Living Room / Re: Scratch - A Game Programming Language For Children

« Last post by f0dder on April 20, 2009, 04:43 PM »

That cody animation was... trippy. Made about as much sense as modern art

3582

Developer's Corner / Re: Microsoft releases SmallBasic for Newbie Programmers

« Last post by f0dder on April 18, 2009, 02:40 PM »

...except earlier dotNET versions don't want to uninstall, saying there's applications that need 'em - hmm!

3583

Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by f0dder on April 17, 2009, 01:18 PM »

I wonder if they would have gotten less of a slap if they didn't insist on acting like defiant little macho twits all the way through the trial.

-40hz (April 17, 2009, 12:57 PM)

And that is actually the only thing I have against TPB (even if it's been amusing).

They're going to appeal, though, and (while I find it unlikely) I do hope the case goes all way to supreme court (or whatever it's called in sweden) and that the TPB guys end up winning.

Not because I care much about the site itself, but I don't like swedens iPRED, I don't like the general anti-privacy tendency all around, and I don't like the implications of a site that doesn't hold anything directly illegal being shut down. Who's next, google?

3584

General Software Discussion / Re: Another 'Lifetime' license bites the dust

« Last post by f0dder on April 16, 2009, 09:00 PM »

I can't see why people are bitching over slysoft - would you bitch if a PRO version of an application was released after you bought a license for the NORMAL version?

DVD, HD-DVD and BluRay are three different optical formats (afaik), but that's kinda irrelevant since the optical drives handle that.

What does matter, though, is that it's different file formats, codecs, and copy protection. The ability to decode protected BluRay (I assume that's what slysoft does) is quite some code (and reverse engineering) compared to DVD DeCSS... not something I'd expect getting in a program upgrade/update/whatever.

3585

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows editors - do they have to be so bad?

« Last post by f0dder on April 16, 2009, 04:15 AM »

STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR work irrespectively of a command shell - when you use win32 CreateProcess, you can override those handles at will. Even GUI processes can use stdin/stdout/stderr, not just console processes.

If you press almost any other key, you lose the marked area and have to start again.

This is a Windows standard so I suspect that is why most windows editors do this. But in Zeus this is configurable.

Another piece of Microsoft stupidity that has to be fixed by the aftermarket...

Dunno if it's stupid, I guess it depends on what you grew up with. Most of the time, with my usage habits, this is a decent enough default. For a serious editor, I prefer also having the option of persistent selection, as well as mark-begin + mark-end.

3586

Developer's Corner / Re: Python newbie question

« Last post by f0dder on April 15, 2009, 06:10 PM »

Umm... cmd.exe == console/shell.

The "capture console output" window in IDEs lack a lot of stuff that a "real" console has. Unprofessional that \r isn't handled correctly, though

3587

Developer's Corner / Re: Python newbie question

« Last post by f0dder on April 15, 2009, 05:41 PM »

Hm, your IDE probably doesn't handle the \r character properly - try running it from a cmd.exe console instead...

3588

Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by f0dder on April 15, 2009, 08:17 AM »

I don't really care if an artist makes some hundred million dollars on music if it's decent. Sure, it might not have been as hard as working 10 hours a day in a factory, but if people like what they produce, then fine. My gripe is with the record industry who doesn't really do anything to add value, and grab the lions share of the profit.

PS: PETA -> People for Eating Tasty Animals

3589

Developer's Corner / Re: Python newbie question

« Last post by f0dder on April 15, 2009, 08:13 AM »

If you're always printing text of the same length and don't mind printing it at the start of the line, just use a single \r character at the start of your string - if that doesn't work, something's wrong

3590

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA:Auto-boot Up computer after power outage?

« Last post by f0dder on April 14, 2009, 08:54 AM »

What's wrong with using "restore power on AC power loss", if that option does resume after a clean shutdown?

3591

Developer's Corner / Re: Amazing looking forum software -- AJAX/Web 2.0 at its best

« Last post by f0dder on April 13, 2009, 04:18 PM »

I saw one before kartal's post (I guess that's what revived the thread?), and reported it as spam.

3592

General Software Discussion / Re: I'm Steaming About Steam

« Last post by f0dder on April 13, 2009, 09:53 AM »

No, that's not the reason.  I have steam installed on my desktop and laptop, and log myself out by logging in on the other one all the time- it never forgets my password though.

-wraith808 (April 13, 2009, 09:49 AM)

Both machines are probably on the same WAN IP, though? That's not the case with p3lb0x and I

3593

General Software Discussion / Re: I'm Steaming About Steam

« Last post by f0dder on April 13, 2009, 09:19 AM »

Steam sometimes forgets my password, but I think that's because I share the account with p3lb0x - my guess is that steam "forgets" my password if he's been logged on from his IP.

3594

DC Gamer Club / Re: Playing Grim Fandango on a modern PC

« Last post by f0dder on April 12, 2009, 07:41 PM »

FWIW: the corrupted screenshots you posted don't look much like the bug I fixed in the XCOM games. There's both a DirectDraw and an accelerated (D3D?) version?

3595

Site/Forum Features / Re: March 2009 Fundraiser Wrap-up

« Last post by f0dder on April 12, 2009, 06:31 PM »

3596

General Software Discussion / Re: I'm Steaming About Steam

« Last post by f0dder on April 12, 2009, 06:19 PM »

That's quite a horror story :/

Sucks that there isn't any proper support! So... pray tell, what was the problem & solution? You found the lost password, or was it something sneaky?

3597

Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by f0dder on April 12, 2009, 03:02 PM »

After all, rereleasing a movie from VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray costs virtually nothing and is almost pure profit. Likewise, rereleasing an album from cassette tape to CD to digital formats also cost virtually nothing.

-Deozaan (April 12, 2009, 02:54 PM)

I do wonder how much it costs to remaster an album for a new format? Probably "virtually nothing" compared to the cost of shooting a movie , but I do wonder. Still, quite the money machine I bet!

It should also be reasonable that if you own the right to view/hear the content, that you can allow others who don't own the right to the content to view/listen to the content as well, much like having friends over to watch a movie or listen to your music album.

-Deozaan (April 12, 2009, 02:54 PM)

Not 100% sure about that one, if we're talking more than "a handfull of friends" - otoh, I think it's darn lame that... whoever... want amazon to take out the text-to-speech feature from the kindle2. Come on, be reasonable

3598

Living Room / Re: The entitled generation....Are they right?

« Last post by f0dder on April 12, 2009, 02:21 PM »

Games and movies costs a lot of money to produce... music a lot less so (unless you spend silly dollars on marketing talentless singers), but imho content producers are well within their rights to be paid for their work. Some people will claim that "you can't compare it to theft since no physical product is stolen", which might partly be right - but there's a lot of people who would have spent money on whatever if they couldn't get it for free, so it's still lost profit.

On the other hand, I think RIAA and MAFIAA (what an appropriate name) are slimy scumholes, and I'd like to see them and their lawyers purged from the face of the earth - they're being totally unreasonable in the way they ruin ordinary people's lives, instead of going after the big-time pirates running copy plants. But of course that's somewhat harder targets, and you can cash in some decent dollars by throwing in-country lawsuits. Sickens me.

It also sickens me how countries are bending over and introducing really nasty and freedom-limiting internet regulation. Obviously it's not going to stop the pirates, but only be a minor speed bump, as always. The digital media copy protections will always be defeated, and p2p will simply move away from centralized torrent trackers to heavily encrypted decentralized networks... private trackers are already using SSL encryption for client<>tracker communication and main site browsing, and people are using forced protocol encryption for client<>client communication. The people behind ThePirateBay are launching VPN services now to protect against the (nasty!) swedish iPRED stuff.

Funny thing is, the thing I hear again and again is "if the media companies would just embrace digital distribution, I wouldn't really bother with this". Obviously nobody wants to spend $ludicrous on drm-infested crap, but if I could pay DKK30 (~$5) to stream a movie for, say, 24 hours at a reasonable quality and without requiring crappy drm-infested custom players, that would sound like a pretty sweet deal to me. For music, if the prices were right, I'd definitely buy .FLAC and cover-art in .PDF - but I don't want to pay DKK150 (~$26) when I'm not receiving a physical product. And again: NO DOYC-DAMN DRM!, and definitely lossless format!

But things definitely don't have to be free. And even though I could easily get more or less whatever I want for free, I actually kinda like supporting artists... especially if I can do it without supporting the slimy record labels.

3599

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA PC/Hard Drive Security Pre Boot

« Last post by f0dder on April 10, 2009, 06:35 PM »

Wiping the harddrive is plain silly.

What you want is TrueCrypt. No need for disk wiping when you've got encryption

3600

General Software Discussion / Re: I'm Steaming About Steam

« Last post by f0dder on April 10, 2009, 06:32 PM »

I've never needed steam customer support, but I really like the platform. It's convenient, and the copy protection used isn't all messy and drivercrappy like retail games.

The only two things that annoy me is
1) the price issue. Games bought this way ought to be cheaper than boxed games.
2) that some games aren't available in all regions at the same time - this is plain lame.