Recent Posts

401

Living Room / Re: do you have a monitor screen size - 1440 x 900 OR 1440 x 960 pixels

« Last post by Mark0 on October 19, 2007, 07:11 AM »

1440x900 on some iMacs too.

Bye!

402

General Software Discussion / Re: Now you can know what a tinyurl corresponds to

« Last post by Mark0 on October 08, 2007, 01:53 PM »

Nice to know about url(x)! Thanks!

403

Living Room / Re: Do you archive/store your downloads (mainly install files)?

« Last post by Mark0 on October 08, 2007, 01:44 PM »

I practically don't archive. When I reneed something, I find that I can download it fast enough to be a non-problem.

Bye!

404

General Software Discussion / Re: Back up files with a printer and scanner

« Last post by Mark0 on October 05, 2007, 06:54 PM »

Didn't the media industry suggest this for blank audio cassettes and blank CD-Rs at one time. I think is was implemented in some countries. In which case they already get their 'royalty' from the blank media and so it should be perfectly legal to do what you like with it.

-Carol Haynes (October 05, 2007, 06:46 PM)

Off course they have, and here we pay some money on empty tape, CD-R, HD; practically every digital media. Just to feed some parasitic entities that no longer belong to this times, obsoleted by technology, but still able to control political groups with sounding money.

Bye!

405

General Software Discussion / Re: Back up files with a printer and scanner

« Last post by Mark0 on October 05, 2007, 06:12 PM »

Uhm... Considering that app like PaperBack are around, and enable one to store digital data on plain paper sheets... hope some Marjors-funded politicians don't come with some bright idea about taxing paper!

406

General Software Discussion / Re: Back up files with a printer and scanner

« Last post by Mark0 on October 05, 2007, 03:19 AM »

Maybe it can also be used to make quite an original b-side of a business card, with some zipped files in: company logo, a VCARD with alla the contacts data, something like that...

407

General Software Discussion / Re: Back up files with a printer and scanner

« Last post by Mark0 on October 04, 2007, 12:29 PM »

Probably not very practical, but it's surely cool, IMHO.
I had thinked about something similar much time ago, so it's very nice to see it implemented and working.
Thanks Cpilot!

408

Living Room / Re: Linux Genuine Advantage™

« Last post by Mark0 on October 04, 2007, 09:44 AM »

Awesome! Now it's really ready for the desktop!!

409

Living Room / Re: LLOOGG invites available

« Last post by Mark0 on October 03, 2007, 06:05 PM »

Some invites sent. 7 left!

410

Living Room / LLOOGG invites available

« Last post by Mark0 on October 03, 2007, 12:52 PM »

I have some invites for LLOOGG.
It's a free web stat / counter that can show a lots of info about visitors, in near real time. I'm using it by some times (in addition to StatCounter, best free web stat service, IMHO) and it's quite nice & informative.

If you want an invite to try it, just post or PM a suitable mail address to witch to send the invite.

Bye!

411

Living Room / Re: "Content-Aware Image Resizing!! OMG!!!!!!!".. Calm down: it's useless

« Last post by Mark0 on October 01, 2007, 06:27 AM »

There's now also a GIMP plugin:
All about Linux - Liquid rescale feature now available as a GIMP plugin

412

Living Room / Re: Update on member KenR health status: Surgery went well

« Last post by Mark0 on September 25, 2007, 11:51 AM »

Nice to hear that. Buona fortuna!

413

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for an E-Mail Client which can be run on an USB Stick

« Last post by Mark0 on September 25, 2007, 11:48 AM »

PopCorn may also come handy; it's a very very small email client for some quick mailing needs.

Bye!

414

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite eBay/auction helping software?

« Last post by Mark0 on September 14, 2007, 06:58 AM »

Gixen - eBay Sniper, an online service. Helped a lot of times! 

Bye!

415

Living Room / Re: Forum Signature Spam: Let's discuss how to handle..

« Last post by Mark0 on September 14, 2007, 06:52 AM »

Add a vote for the simple "minimum post count".
I kinda like the signatures because, like the avatars, they help identifying and characterizing a poster / user, IMHO.
On some forums there are strict & specific rules about them (like heigh in pixels, number of images or smiley, etc.), but I think that we just need to enforce some "taste". When a signature show up that will be unapproriated enough, I think one user or the other will find a polite way to notify it to the author and suggest changes.

Bye!

416

General Software Discussion / Re: Stay Away From Microsoft VISTA

« Last post by Mark0 on September 06, 2007, 06:17 AM »

One think that I think Apple do right is don't hesitate too much to discard some old, legacy crap for the better (or what they think would end up better). They have accomplished things that would seems impossible in the Wintel ecosystem: changed from MC68K series to PowerPC CPUs; then from System 9 to OS X; then again from PowerPCs to x86 processors. That are some pretty drastic, big changes!

Granted they have a much smaller users base, so it may be easier: but that also mean that they take more risks about screwing up and losing a part of that already small quota. There were also some "casualties" on one drastic-shift or the other, it's inevitable.

417

General Software Discussion / Re: Adblock Plus: the nuclear plug-in (nice blog post)

« Last post by Mark0 on September 06, 2007, 05:53 AM »

Am I the only one that isn't annoyed at all by most forms of online advertising (except the most obstrusive ones, that open windows above what you are reading, obviously)?

Bye!

418

General Software Discussion / Re: Data recovery software suggestions?

« Last post by Mark0 on August 31, 2007, 05:44 AM »

SpinRite is a big pile of marketing FUD.

-f0dder (August 31, 2007, 04:55 AM)

Amen to that!!!

419

General Software Discussion / Re: The software awards scam

« Last post by Mark0 on August 21, 2007, 06:16 PM »

Submitting a fake-software was a nice thing to try!

I for one am "guilty" too of showing some of those awards and linking back. At firsts, some years ago, when I released the firsts versions of TrID, I was pretty excited when the first xx stars notifications showed up on my mailbox, and promptly edited the webpages to reflect the achievements. Then started to notice the trend, and the "little magic" vanished! I have almost stopped adding new awards, but haven't removed most of them probably out of simple laziness more than other.

Anyway, check this comment posted on the corresponding story on Slashdot:
The Software Awards Scam - Been there, done that - by Anonymous Coward

[...]
But then I thought, Hey, most of these guys have some amateur frontpage-site or some badly used CMS with some crappy logo of a smiling dog or something. I can do that better. Much better. In fact, I had the system of a fully automated site with a webcrawler looking for .pads, autogenerated reviews and awards so people would link back to it suddenly right on my mind. And then I did it. I wouldn't say that I invented it but I didn't know of a similar site at the time. And yes, I cloned it to various domains.

Long story short, my network generates around 2500$ ad-revenue a month today, which is a lot of money over here, and I have a clear conscience. It is perfectly legal, I pay my taxes.
[...]

Bye!

420

General Software Discussion / Re: Seeking opinions about combination antivirus/firewall products

« Last post by Mark0 on July 17, 2007, 06:05 PM »

BitDefender surely have some interesting features... 

421

General Software Discussion / Re: Is this EXE "malformed"? A question about PE header structure

« Last post by Mark0 on July 17, 2007, 09:26 AM »

Thanks for the tip f0dder!

422

General Software Discussion / Re: how can I convert swf files to avi?

« Last post by Mark0 on July 16, 2007, 10:16 AM »

You can also try one of the various online converters.
I have collected a couples here: File-Extension.net - File Formats Converters

Bye!

423

General Software Discussion / Is this EXE "malformed"? A question about PE header structure

« Last post by Mark0 on July 15, 2007, 06:11 PM »

This is about an issue that come out various times in the past on PowerBASIC's forum, and briefly resurfaced recently. Specifically, some (me included) believe there is something strange on the majority of EXEs produced with PB compilers previous to version 4.x and 8.x (Console and Windows versions respectively). Nothing dramatic, off course, but worth noting, IMHO.
Here's a sample output from my simple PEDu tool, analyzing the compiled EXE of one of the PB Console Compiler samples:

C:\Tools>pedu \PBCC\Samples\COM\Excel\ExcelAp2.exe

PEDu - PE Entry point Dumper v1.40b - (C) 2003-07 Marco Pontello

Binary type: Win32 Console - Target machine: Intel 386

Alignment: Section 1000h - File 200h - Base of code 1000h

Data directories            Size
 1 Import Table             2020
 5 Base Reloc. Table         464

Section   V.Offset   V.Size   R.Offset   R.Size
.text        1000h    4969h       400h    4A00h
.data        6000h     724h      4E00h     400h
.link        7000h     7E4h      5000h     800h
* Real address overlap with previous section by 512 bytes!
.rloc        8000h     1D0h      5800h     200h

Entry Point RVA: 16D0h
Code dump      : 55 8B EC 53 56 57 BB 00 60 40 00 66 2E F7 05 00
                 1F 40 00 04 00 0F 85 08 01 00 00 6A 00 FF 15 64
Comp/Enc/Pack  : PowerBASIC PB/CC 3.0x

As you can see, the link & data section overlap by 512 bytes.
This is detected as strange enough by UPX, for example, that stop with:
CantPackException: superfluous data between sections.

Also, a tool like PE Explorer say this, when analysing the EXE:
Warning! Section <.data> extends beyond the raw file offset of section <.link>.

Note that, if I manually edit the EXE and set the data section to the correct (non overlapping) size, the EXE work correctly, and UPX is able to pack it without any problem.

PB basically maintain that there's no a problem at all, since the Microsoft specs don't explicitely say that there can't be any overlapping (?!), and more than that because of the evidence that Windows can, in facts, load & execute the EXE without any problem. Recently they asked for an "adequate demonstration" of this "alleged problem", but then my posts with this findings have been silently ignored. Off course, like some of you may be aware of, things like this are... a bit difficult to be calmly discussed on PB forum.

But I'm not convinced of the previous "explanations". IMHO, the docs can reasonably omit to say that, because it's obviously a strange / erroneously situation. And Windows can load it without complaining because, as it's usual for us coders to do some sanity checks on input, and correct where possible, I believe that the Win loader can be simply clamping the section header to the correct / reasonable size, for example.
Also, the fact that newer major versions of the compilers don't sport this quirks, make me tend to believe it was some sort of oversight on the compiler's part.

So, I'm asking the opinion of anyone who have the necessary knowledge of the PE header structure & Windows loading process inner workings, to shed some light on the subject. What do you think?

If you need some EXEs to analyze, you can find many, obtained from various versions of the compilers, here (just search for "compiled executables"):
http://www.powerbasi...oads/all%20files.htm

Thanks,
Bye!

424

Official Announcements / Re: DC-IRLDD #2: DonationCoder Real Life Dinner+Drinks, Sat 7/14, Champaign Illinois

« Last post by Mark0 on July 11, 2007, 04:17 PM »

Would love to be present, but unfortunately I think I am a bit too far away!
Have a nice event, and post some photos!

Bye!

425

General Software Discussion / Re: Audio Editors?

« Last post by Mark0 on July 06, 2007, 08:50 AM »

Sad but true!