Recent Posts

3926

General Software Discussion / Re: Make Firefox 3 load faster

« Last post by f0dder on February 09, 2009, 10:39 AM »

Fixing memory leaks: hunt down bugs in source code and recompile. No way around it.

As far CleanMem, at least it doesn't use the L-A-M-E old method of grabbing a truckload of memory - good. But it's still utterly useless, since Windows automatically does this trimming when needed. And while it's not guaranteed to flush things to the paging file, it can do that. Besides, even when not flushing dirty pages, clean pages (code from .exe/.dll files) will have to be re-read from disk if the application needs it. Since CleanMem runs through all processes (except blacklisted ones), it doesn't do the Least-[/b]Recently-Used which Windows itself does.

Stop obsessing over how much "free memory" windows task manager says you have, as this is a pretty useless figure.

3927

Living Room / Re: Please tallk me off the ledge... Intervention needed!

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

Carol: £30 for a BIOS battery? W-T-F?

You're right about a new laptop being a lot better investment than just a 2gig memory stick, but (at least here in .dk ) ~$100 doesn't get you very far. A netbook-style thing (which you aren't going to game or run vista on) would be at least $500, and you'd need at least $666 for a decent (albeit relatively low-end) laptop.

3928

Site/Forum Features / Re: Badge/Award Mod Rewritten

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

Perhaps the awarded and self-chosen badges should be located at separate locations? Otherwise the awards could drown in hobby icons

3929

Living Room / Re: What are you getting for your Special Other for Valentines Day?

« Last post by f0dder on February 09, 2009, 08:03 AM »

I think my computer currently has all the stuff I need (within the affordable range - otherwise I would've gone for an ioDrive) so this year, nothing

Being serious, I think Valentines Day is a crock of crap, only made to make people spend cash and making single people miserable. I hate that Denmark has pretty much adopted it by now

3930

General Software Discussion / Re: nifty trick to address more memory under win 32-bit

« Last post by f0dder on February 09, 2009, 08:00 AM »

justice: PAE isn't disabled on XP, it's enabled and used to support hardware-assisted per-page no-execute protection. But with SP1 and onward, while PAE is enabled on supporting hardware, physical memory addresses are artificially limited to 32bit. The official explanation is, as you mention, "bad drivers" which is of course part of the truth. But I bet that "not wanting to carve the market for server OSes" is part of it as well.

lanux128: as long as your application doesn't do "dirty tricks" with pointers and doesn't assume it only has 2 gigabytes of address space available, you don't need to recompile or anything - simply use a hex editor and change a single bit in the PE header and the app is now made large-address-space-aware - editbin.exe (which is really just a frontend for link.exe) from Visual C++ can also be used for this, and is a bit easier than messing around with hex editors :]

3931

Living Room / Re: Please tallk me off the ledge... Intervention needed!

« Last post by f0dder on February 09, 2009, 07:55 AM »

I personally wouldn't go about replacing the CPU of a laptop, since it's one of those larger surgical procedures - and while it's damn easy splitting electronic equipment to pieces, it can be somewhat of an ordeal to fit the pieces back together again.

Since you've only got 512meg in the laptop and running Vista ( ) I feel pretty confident in saying that you will feel a pretty big performance boost by replacing the 512meg stick with 1 or 2 gigabytes. I dunno if I'd spend ~$100 on memory for an old and semi-broken laptop, but if you plan on using it for a while (and you use it regularly) it'd probably be money well spent. Forget about CPU upgrade though, unless it's supercheap and you don't mind potentially trashing the machine

3932

General Software Discussion / Re: Make Firefox 3 load faster

« Last post by f0dder on February 09, 2009, 07:51 AM »

Firefox page loading (and rendering) is plenty fast - when people say "load faster" I immediately think of loading the application which could be a lot faster. I really hope the dev team will focus on that issue soon. Preloading and minimize-to-tray are just symptomatic fixes, and minize-to-tray seems like a bad idea to me (while a very large amount of memory leaks have been fixed in FF3, it still has a few here and there).

Pipelining actually slowed it down. imo.

-cmpm (February 08, 2009, 07:32 PM)

Sounds weird - works wonders here. But for the few servers that use broken HTTP daemons that bork on pipelining, you could face slowdowns or even pages that refuse to load. But while you might not see speedups (especially on slower connections) pipelining shouldn't cause slowdown.

The load time for Firefox is incredible compared to any version of IE, Opera, or Safari so I have no complaints.

-sgtevmckay (February 08, 2009, 07:58 PM)

Yeah, incredibly slow - IE6 loadtime is hard to beat. And please no "IE is part of the OS" argument, it's bullocks (besides, hot-cache loads of FF are still slower than cold-cache loads of IE6).

I use cleanmem to keep firefox in check.

-cmpm (February 08, 2009, 08:17 PM)

Is that one of those snake-oil "memory optimizers"? Those applications are pretty counter-productive. First, they cause flushing to the pagefile (disk write == super slow), followed by a re-read from the pagefile when the app needs the data again (disk read == slow). Second, windows will do this "trim working set" as needed, and start with the least used applications. Third, it doesn't really fix the memory leaks.

3933

General Software Discussion / Re: nifty trick to address more memory under win 32-bit

« Last post by f0dder on February 08, 2009, 10:45 AM »

You need the combination of boot.ini flag and the PE appheader flag... there's probably a lot of programs around that don't have this flag set even though they wouldn't have any problems (problematic apps are the ones that assume they'll never see addresses higher than 2GB-1, and thus use bit31 of pointers for "whatever").

How much you gain from this tweaking is questionable though - you need some real memory-hungry apps to have any advantage, in which case (if you're a developer) it'd be best to move to 64bit. And you could run into trouble when the kernel only has 1GB address space available (at least you won't be able to have large memory-mapped files nor a lot of filesystem cache).

3934

Developer's Corner / Re: MS Visual Studio Update Killed T-Clock x64

« Last post by f0dder on February 08, 2009, 10:42 AM »

You guy's forgot me, didn't you.

-Stoic Joker (February 07, 2009, 08:55 AM)

Sorry, been pretty busy IRL - but I have a couple of days off now, so I should have time to look at it after work today, if I'm not too trashed

3935

General Software Discussion / Re: Tagging Files (Tag Everything)

« Last post by f0dder on February 08, 2009, 10:34 AM »

Has anyone noticed that the latest version of XYplorer 7.90.0100 lets you assign tags and comments to specific files and folders?  I don't know where or how it saves the data, though.  Total Commander uses the 4DOS DESCRIPT.ION system, which is convenient because some other programs use it too.

-rjbull (February 07, 2009, 03:18 PM)

Perhaps NTFS ADS?

3936

General Software Discussion / Re: Department of Defense launches open source site Forge.mil

« Last post by f0dder on February 06, 2009, 12:47 PM »

Just look at who has 'real' nuclear weapons these days. North Korea? They can't even keep their population fed and housed, but somehow they've managed to gather the necessary resources to build a nuclear warhead - or three.

-40hz (February 06, 2009, 12:08 PM)

It's a lot easier to keep your population in check if they aren't well-fed... if their everyday is a struggle to survive, they aren't going to have much energy to launch a rebellion.

3937

General Software Discussion / Re: Department of Defense launches open source site Forge.mil

« Last post by f0dder on February 06, 2009, 09:54 AM »

40hz: there's a big difference between making a dirty bomb (any monkey with enough cash and the right connections can do that) and achieving critical mass and nuclear fission. Of course the terrorist impact of a dirtybomb is bad enough, but it's destructive power is no near that of a properly done bomb. Even with complete schematics available (and ones that aren't purposefully slightly tainted, as the available ones are afaik) you need a lot of work, lot of money, and a lot of very skilled engineers.

As for reverse engineering, there's a big difference between RE'ing a piece of PC software and trying to get firmware out of sealed hardware. Stuff like missile targetting, fighter jet operating systems et cetera should imho be kept closed. And even if you got access to the hardware, you'd have a really hard time getting to the software. Sure, you can get a lot of details from the Janes catalogs or (if you have the cash and the connections) getting a sales pitch, and you might even be able to get your greasy hands on schematics. But even if you manage to build a JSF jet, you're not going to be able to use it for anything without the software...

3938

Developer's Corner / Re: Web Page Layout Debate: Tables vs. CSS

« Last post by f0dder on February 06, 2009, 09:35 AM »

the benefits have been proven.

Yes, the benifits are real, so are the nightmares. It's a tradeoff either way. Both systems suck. I vote for a 3rd option. Someone wake me up when there is one.

-Gothi[c] (February 05, 2009, 03:24 PM)

How much does CSS suck, though, when you're designing simple & clean layouts, instead of being moronic and trying to do complicated & pixel-perfect layouts? People (not saying you're part of that camp, Gothic!) should realize that web != DTP and stop overdoing the stuff.

3939

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: Post your NANY 2009 Mug/Shirt Pics here..

« Last post by f0dder on February 06, 2009, 09:33 AM »

Everyone please dont use 3rd party image hosting services which can dissapear, attach images to posts instead please.

-mouser (February 05, 2009, 07:08 PM)

+1, I would've made that post if mouser hadn't. ImageShack+NoScript=bother.

3940

General Software Discussion / Re: Benchmarked: Ubuntu vs Vista vs Win7

« Last post by f0dder on February 06, 2009, 09:32 AM »

Well, actually it looks like they have improved IO quite a lot for Win 7. I wonder how they did that, as they are still using NTFS...

-urlwolf (February 06, 2009, 03:56 AM)

I'm not taking anything in that article serious since they disabled write caching

Btw, Windows (at least client versions) is usually way too conservative wrt. disk caching. Probably because so many morons are "OMFG IT USES THE MEMORY I HAVE INSTALLED IN MY SYSTEM!11!1!", coming from a total lack of understanding of how filesystem cache works.

3941

Living Room / Re: Tower Defense games collection updated 27-9-08

« Last post by f0dder on February 06, 2009, 09:30 AM »

Ah, I should probably update my list sometime. :\

-p3lb0x (February 06, 2009, 08:07 AM)

Get to it, lazyboy!

3942

Living Room / Re: Please tallk me off the ledge... Intervention needed!

« Last post by f0dder on February 06, 2009, 09:30 AM »

Yes, going 65->45nm will save some heat and battery... but the increase in clock frequency will even it out. Plus, you're probably not going to take much notice of the additional speed, except if you spend a lot of time using a lot of photoshop/whatever plugins.

I'd say save the money in a savings account... every time you feel tempted to upgrade your current laptop, set aside the money. That way, once it breaks, you might just have enough cash to buy a new laptop, which will be nicer and faster since you get all-new parts.

3943

General Software Discussion / Re: Department of Defense launches open source site Forge.mil

« Last post by f0dder on February 05, 2009, 10:08 AM »

I'm sure that the US Military are more professional than my country's policemen.

-bgd77 (February 05, 2009, 08:08 AM)

* f0dder laughs uncontrollably.

3944

General Software Discussion / Re: How much trouble is a 64-bit OS right now?

« Last post by f0dder on February 05, 2009, 10:07 AM »

Fools

3945

General Software Discussion / Re: Department of Defense launches open source site Forge.mil

« Last post by f0dder on February 05, 2009, 07:19 AM »

I wouldn't go open-source for all kinds of systems, exactly because of the "prying eyes" argument... it makes sense for a whole bunch of systems, but the really closed stuff like weapons systems, fighter jet control systems etc. are probably best kept proprietary and locked down.

3946

General Software Discussion / Re: Benchmarked: Ubuntu vs Vista vs Win7

« Last post by f0dder on February 05, 2009, 12:23 AM »

My machine is a Q6600 quadcore (w/o HT) running 4 cores at 3.01GHz, and 8GB of ram, sporting 2x74GB raptor drives with 16MB of cache, nya-nyyyyyyyyya! (But obviously with less cache memory, less effective logical CPUs, less online storage, and slower RAM).

3947

General Software Discussion / Re: Benchmarked: Ubuntu vs Vista vs Win7

« Last post by f0dder on February 04, 2009, 06:34 PM »

Hmmm, were the file copy tests done on the same disk as the OS was installed to? In that case, it's a flawed benchmark (disks are slower towards the higher sector counts, and Windows takes up more space than linux). It also seems like a bad idea to turn off write caching... I wonder whether this means "turn off HD write caching" for linux but additionally "turn off FS write cache" for Windows? (there's a big difference between the two).

Obviously Windows does have to worry about some things that Linux doesn't, namely DRM checks

Oh ffs, STOP THROWING THAT BLANKET STATEMENT.

Also, they forget to mention which mount options are used for ext3/ext4 - like, does it run with journalling, and in that case, which kind? If they compare unjournalled ext3 to NTFS, no wonder NTFS loses out on lots-of-small-files

I'd love to see more 'scientific' benchmarks, as I'm pretty sure NTFS isn't always the best filesystem... but comparisons do have to be fair (ie., comparing to a journalled FS, copying from/to "comparable" locations (to avoid harddrive-speed issues), et cetera). This benchmark looks somewhat pseudo to me, but at least not as pseudo as the ones from that Adrian Kingsley-Hughes guy.

BTW: imho benchmark results shouldn't be averaged, as that means abnormal spikes will influence the result. Instead, the best timings should be chosen...

3948

Developer's Corner / Re: Web Page Layout Debate: Tables vs. CSS

« Last post by f0dder on February 04, 2009, 06:08 PM »

40hz: or using mobile devices... or text-based browsers.

3949

General Software Discussion / Re: How much trouble is a 64-bit OS right now?

« Last post by f0dder on February 04, 2009, 06:06 PM »

The primary reason was that Visual Studio is unstable on 64-bit, and this is a killer for developers. Worse, running VS.Net and SQL Server Management Studio simultaneously (which is how I spend most of my day) is guaranteed to crash within several minutes.

-CWuestefeld (February 04, 2009, 12:53 PM)

Weird, I run Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2005 Express and the SQL management tool under Vista64 without any problems

The SQL stuff is a recent addition and haven't been put under much load yet, but seems perfectly stable. VS2008 has run for a while. And I've used various VS versions for years under XP64 without a hiccup.

3950

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by f0dder on February 04, 2009, 06:03 PM »

As far as I can tell, the three app limit is Netbook only and I surmise it's to keep users from overloading the hardware - non?

-Darwin (February 04, 2009, 05:48 PM)

Just an arbitrary limit to segment the market and sell more versions and confuse users, *SIGH*.