Recent Posts

3776

Living Room / Re: NIN Coming to Kansas City

« Last post by f0dder on March 09, 2009, 11:26 AM »

Unfortunately, Reznor + cfew are coming to Roskilde Festival this year, it seems. Why is this unfortunate? Simple. RF is simply too big, dirty and bleeeeeeh - NIN is so much better at gigs of their own, and showing up at RF means it's a lot less likely they're doing a normal tour in Denmark anytime soon.

* f0dder - now in mourning.

3777

Living Room / Re: Gimme a drink mate ... pic

« Last post by f0dder on March 09, 2009, 06:42 AM »

Cute

Interesting that (at least so I've heard) Koalas are usually pretty fierce, but in situations like this they act more like they look

3778

Living Room / Re: Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras 09

« Last post by f0dder on March 09, 2009, 05:52 AM »

Whooop, the religion card was played - I sense this thread might have to be closed soon . Society is ruled by civil law, not by religion (pity on the countries/state that mix the two). What people do at home is their own business, as long as they don't hurt anybody. I just don't necessarily want to look at it or hear about it.

3779

General Software Discussion / Re: Maxto-very interesting...

« Last post by f0dder on March 09, 2009, 02:34 AM »

And the resources used is not that much. 20 or 30 mgs of ram should not be a problem.

-cmpm (March 09, 2009, 02:20 AM)

Not a problem on any recent-spec machine, but it's quite a lot for what should really be a tiny tool - and for users on older machines, it could matter. I mean, geez, even IE6 browsing the donationcoder main page doesn't even take 20 megs of private bytes...

3780

Find And Run Robot / Re: Google launches possible FARR competitor for windows

« Last post by f0dder on March 09, 2009, 02:10 AM »

Heh, requiring you to install their toolbar? Lame.

Wouldn't have made me switch from FARR even if it didn't, though

3781

General Software Discussion / Re: Why Windows must go open source

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 10:04 PM »

Besides Babcock's assertion, the problem with Windows has always been that it doesn't scale; that is, it won't run on netbooks and servers, i.e., you have to write different and -- usually somewhat incompatible -- versions to accommodate a variety of architectures and devices.

-zridling (March 06, 2009, 09:23 PM)

The NT kernel scales pretty well - it's used for WinCE on cellphones through desktops and, yes, even on supercomputers. With Win7, scaling bottlenecks are removed. Iirc for older versions, there was a lot of work to ensure the kernel can run out of ROM.

No, you can't just take Vista or XP and slap it on any old hardware, but saying that Windows doesn't scale is wrong. And getting a properly written app running on WinCE shouldn't be that much different than porting a linux app to a smaller device... you have to worry about limited resources and screen resolution on both. (OK, WinCE has a limited subset of the win32 API, and limited devices usually support .NET Compact Framework rather than the full deal... but are you going to try and run, say, a database server on your cellphone?)

Ah yes, NT is indeed ported to fewer platforms than linux, but that's a design decision... why spend money porting to something that doesn't have much marketshare (or perhaps, rather, just "possibility of income"). It has already been shown that porting NT to architectures such as Alpha and Itanium could be done pretty quickly, so it's not like it's impossible to do... the Windows platform as a whole has a lot of problems, but the NT kernel is a solid & impressive piece of work.

3782

General Software Discussion / Re: Maxto-very interesting...

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 07:32 PM »

It would be nice with a short description and possibly a screenshots, instead of just posting a link to the site . Btw, why link to that blog instead of the main site?

Anyway, the program is actually something I wanted to write a while ago, but never got around to: "taming" the maximize button of applications, and make them "maximize" to predefined regions, depending on where on the screen the application currently sits. I'm going to give it a test drive and see how it works.

EDIT: here's a grab of their main page ->


EDIT2: one thing I can immediately say I don't like about the application is that it bases it's "where the window is located" on mouse position rather than window position... so if I use the keyboard to maximize a window and have the mouse cursor on the second monitor... well, you guessed it. I also find it would be more intuitive to base position either on the upper-left corner of a window, or on where the middle of the window is located. It also gobbles up a fair amount of memory: 26meg private bytes for MaxTo.exe, and 1.8meg for that MaxTo64.exe it spawns on XP64.

3783

General Software Discussion / Re: Temporarily Blocking Apps access to the internet?

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 06:27 PM »

Personally I'd never go for any non-flatrate internet connection if I could help it (OK, if on-the-go was subscription-free and had very low price per gigabyte, it could be interesting)... but yeah, as things are now, your suggestion would make for a nice application. Let's see if any of the other DC'ers know of an app

PS: for media player, perhaps check out Foobar2000. It's a pretty no-nonsense player that handles a lot of formats and does it well... and doesn't do anything on the net unless you want it to

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General Software Discussion / Re: Temporarily Blocking Apps access to the internet?

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 04:57 PM »

Interesting idea...

I guess the only thing that really swallows bandwidth would be windows update and any auto-updaters... so the easy option would be simply disabling those, and only running WinUpd automatically?

Btw, 1gig of traffic is used up very fast, even when only doing mail and surfing with AdBlockPlus... ugh

3785

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 04:47 PM »

wr975: cute - the gothopotmaus and insanity-wood are classics, I really love them... and the obamabeating toon strip is, well, cute.

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Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 10:47 AM »

A bit sad, but still pretty humorous

3787

Living Room / Re: XP Password work around?

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 09:15 AM »

How about Ophcrack? it can crack your windows XP password and display it. It worked pretty well for me.

-gexecuter (March 07, 2009, 07:43 PM)

Looks like Ophcrack requires you to be able to get into your machine, which would be nice if she could remember her password. 

-Mizraim (March 08, 2009, 09:05 AM)

You should be able to use BartPE or the like to get access to the necessary password files, then take them to another machine and use a cracker. Ophcrack mentions having a liveCD, so possibly it's automated.

3788

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 10-09

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 08:11 AM »

Interesting items this week. Flaws in djbdns... perhaps fanboys will finally stop thinking the guy is an infallible guru? (no, I'm not anti-dj, but I don't like when people blindly worship something. qmail, anyone?).

Af for PDF readers, other readers might have flaws and exploits as well, but it will still be safer using them than Adobe Reader, since malware authors obviously target the applications that have the largest marketshare.

3789

Living Room / Re: Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras 09

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 08:04 AM »

People's sexuality is their own private choice. I don't really want to be faced with it in public, and it makes absolutely no difference whether we're talking gay or straight people (regular mardi gras makes me sick as well). Stop being such attention whores, dammit! >_<

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General Software Discussion / Re: Acrobat bug can lead to malware installs without even opening an infected file

« Last post by f0dder on March 08, 2009, 07:59 AM »

Whether you use Adobe Reader or not, you have an attack vector if it's installed - it's not just Windows Explorer that opens you to the attack, but any file manager that uses the standard file property sheet stuff... which means basically any alternate file manager I've seen.

So you really do need to uninstall AR, and do it completely

3791

General Software Discussion / Re: registry editor

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 04:24 PM »

You are most welcome. Do you have a favorite registry editor, besides the basic built-in one?

-dforionstar (March 07, 2009, 04:13 PM)

I haven't found one which I really like, but I do often miss features in the standard Windows regedit. I've tried Resplendence Registrar, but I don't like it enough to register, and find it's GUI a bit strange... but it's search&replace is definitely better than regedit

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General Software Discussion / Re: registry editor

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 04:09 PM »

Thanks for the link, that could turn out very useful!

IMHO BartPE was pretty easy to setup, and it can be pretty useful. I used it, for instance, to get all files in %SYSTEMROOT%\system32 NTFS compressed

3793

Living Room / Re: World of Goo - Indie Game with Great Reviews?

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 03:14 PM »

xplorer2 comes with a toolbar nowadays? 

-Shades (March 07, 2009, 03:10 PM)

Yeah, free version unfortunately does - afaik it's optional to install it, though. Seems like the developer actually finds the toolbar useful and doesn't just add it to score a little extra cash... it's still a bit sad though, imho.

3794

Living Room / Re: World of Goo - Indie Game with Great Reviews?

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 02:27 PM »

First, you need to find a tool for creating NTFS Junctions - I personally use xplorer². Create destination folder on your BigPartition^TM, then make the junction in your source folder and point it to the destination folder.

It's interesting that NTFS junctions have existed since... dunno, probably NT4?, but haven't been integrated in explorer yet, so you have to rely on 3rd-party tools to manage them.

3795

Living Room / Re: World of Goo - Indie Game with Great Reviews?

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 12:48 PM »

be sure to install Steam to your large drive if you think you may be using Steam for future purchases.

-Deozaan (March 07, 2009, 12:42 PM)

Or use NTFS Junctions to redirect the SteamApps subfolder elsewhere, that works as well

3796

Living Room / Re: World of Goo - Indie Game with Great Reviews?

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 09:20 AM »

I used to feel the same, but I kinda like STEAM - it's very convenient.

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Living Room / Re: World of Goo - Indie Game with Great Reviews?

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 09:02 AM »

I am not familiar with Steam : if i buy the game from Steam's webite, does it mean i'll have to install Steam to play the game ? Will i be able to install the game on any of my computers ?

-ak_ (March 07, 2009, 08:45 AM)

You will have to install STEAM, yes. And you can install steam on several computers and run the game there.

3798

General Software Discussion / Re: Making my life difficult - Windows 98 - advice needed

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 08:23 AM »

64meg would be a bit on the low end for Win2k... but if you could get a RAM stick for cheap, it would very likely be a much better choice than keeping a win98 machine together with duct tape

3799

Living Room / Re: which is better for hard drive transfers: ide or usb cable

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 08:17 AM »

USB2 runs at 480mbit/s, or a theoretical max of 60MB/s. In practice, you're not going to get that high however, but probably closer to 40-50MB/s. This is a good deal slower than what modern harddrives can run at when connected internally, but it's still less than five minutes for 10 gigabytes so it's probably going to be fast enough - and definitely a lot more convenient than powering off your computer, mucking around inside the case, etc.

3800

Living Room / Re: What's your favorite food snack?

« Last post by f0dder on March 07, 2009, 08:03 AM »

I eat raw bacon sometimes