Recent Posts

4001

General Software Discussion / Re: How do I get rid of hidden characters like †in text file ?

« Last post by f0dder on January 26, 2009, 02:39 AM »

The thing wrt. Unicode is that you really ought to design your programs with it in mind from the start, it can quickly become a major bother trying to retrofit support. And if you use 3rd-party components without unicode support, you might have to include both ANSI and UNICODE stuff, massage data around in the right formats, etc. Slightly++ messy

4002

General Software Discussion / Re: How would you market Windows 7?

« Last post by f0dder on January 26, 2009, 02:35 AM »

"Windows 7" is indeed a pretty bad name, as it's relatively hard to do proper searches for - a more unique name would be more sure to get you the right hits.

4003

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

« Last post by f0dder on January 26, 2009, 02:13 AM »

I don't really have any ideas off top of my head, but I'm going to try and take a look at the stuff a bit later - I hope the crash also happens on XP64, otherwise debugging is going to a bit harder (although I do have Vista64 on my laptop)

4004

Living Room / Re: Gadgets that make you look like a jerk

« Last post by f0dder on January 24, 2009, 07:03 AM »

I pretty much agree with the list (and with Ehtyar - iPods themselves are also for wankers).

Bluetooth headets can be useful, but shouldn't be worn in public.

4005

General Software Discussion / Re: myrekrig.dk site isnt working

« Last post by f0dder on January 24, 2009, 06:56 AM »

No problem

If you end up coding an interesting ant, be sure to post the code here!

4006

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

« Last post by f0dder on January 23, 2009, 06:41 AM »

Is it true you can dock the taskbar on the side of the screen like KDE allows?

-zridling (January 23, 2009, 06:27 AM)

You've always been able to do that afaik, but with Win7 it finally *feels right*

4007

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

« Last post by f0dder on January 23, 2009, 05:51 AM »

Heh, from that article (and damn I hate sites that use CSS to hide selection color):

(sorry, Windows 2000, you're 32-bit only)

- that's wrong . It doesn't run on x86-64, though...

Btw, I find it relatively lame that the article keeps mentioning DRM for tasks that have nothing to do with (and aren't influenced by) DRM. Yes, there's nasty DRM in Vista and it's real enough and does have real-life effects. But please, don't use it as a catch-all when it's not in effect (except, perhaps, for the WMP test).

I wonder what exactly makes Vista and Win7 slower in his tests (does he use clean OS installs, or multiple OS installs on a single disk, meaning OS #2 has a "closer-to-disk-end-slowness" disadvantage - et cetera) ... and how other kinds of benchmarks would fare.

4008

Living Room / Re: Obama staffers find no Mac love among White House computers

« Last post by f0dder on January 23, 2009, 02:21 AM »

Wouldn't having access to official email outside of the office (discounting the productivity obstacles) expose White House officials to an equivalent level of risk as having access to external email/social networking inside the White House (excluding the viral infection aspect, which I don't believe you were referring to)?

-Ehtyar (January 23, 2009, 01:54 AM)

Dunno about that - it should obviously require VPN login and probably only work through "approved" computers, thus enforcing strict separation between work and private machines... at least that's the policy I'd require for anything with this level of importance. Oh yeah, mandatory TrueCrypt on all laptops as well.

4009

General Software Discussion / Re: RedHat Linux: Fedora 9

« Last post by f0dder on January 23, 2009, 02:17 AM »

Ah, my bad - I read that as 8GB (SSD harddisk implied) or 512MB usb drive

AFAIK some of the ATOM models do include 64bit, but the models used in netbooks are 32-bit only - could be wrong, though. But again, even if it supported 64bit, I'd go for 32.

Anyway, there's only "x86_64"? I personally read that as 64bit-only - but it's damn annoying that 64bit x86 has been called so many things, can make the things a bit muddy. Personally I prefer x64, since you can say simple "x86" or "x64", same number of chars. A lot of linux distros prefer "i386" or "amd64", respectively... while I'm not fond of those naming conventions, at least it makes stuff pretty unambiguous. Ubuntu uses this naming scheme, hint hint

Any particular reason you feel like sticking with redhat? It sounds like you've only had relatively limited linux use so far, things that are going to be more or less the same across different distros. Imho Ubuntu is a good choice because it's got a lot of inertia going, and it's relatively easy to deal with - without trying to to clone Windows and such.

4010

Living Room / Re: Obama staffers find no Mac love among White House computers

« Last post by f0dder on January 23, 2009, 12:59 AM »

IMHO disallowing personal email accounts inside the whitehouse.gov is a good thing - people can check their private mails at home. Forcing the use of official email accounts for official business makes it easier to enforce data retention policies.

As for facebook and similar, let somebody outside the whitehouse deal with it, and coordinate via (official) email. I'm sure there's plenty of more important stuff to do in Office than updating your status. "OBAMBAMa is sending Iran a gift of Plutonium - air mail style, lolz".

Having no macs in there? Cry me a river. XP and Office2003 are just fine for productivity.

4011

General Software Discussion / Re: RedHat Linux: Fedora 9

« Last post by f0dder on January 23, 2009, 12:54 AM »

Personally, I'd go for Ubuntu or KUbuntu - easy to use, pretty updated, comes on a single install media. Should be possible to netinstall (though I never did that myself. You need a netboot installer, which come as CD ISOs usually, dunno the procedures involved in getting it onto your flashdrive).

Grab the x86 version, you don't have a use for x64 - I'm not sure whether the ATOM CPU in the machine supports 64bit anyway.

8GB SSD for both XP and Linux? Going to be cramped for space.

4012

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by f0dder on January 22, 2009, 10:42 AM »

superboy: no clue, sounds pretty weird to me - has always worked perfectly in my multi-monitor setups :-s

Might be a monitor, video card or driver issue... pick one, pick three

4013

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by f0dder on January 22, 2009, 05:00 AM »

Weird, never had that issue with any system I've used/maintained (and that's a lot ).

System standby, on the other hand, is a darn can of worms though >_<

4014

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by f0dder on January 22, 2009, 04:42 AM »

Why do you hate power saving mode?

One thing is that it saves your screen from burn-in, but it also reduces power consumption noticeably. Besides, preventing burn-in (and you'd want "blank" for that, not a slideshow or anything else!) is just one thing, but I expect that real power-saving mode also increases the lifetime of the back-light bulbs...

4015

General Software Discussion / Re: myrekrig.dk site isnt working

« Last post by f0dder on January 22, 2009, 04:07 AM »

ok im sorry.. and that about programing your races... thats y i want the game but if you have it i would be very happy if you could send it to me or something im very interessed in getting it ^^

-thedbbp (January 22, 2009, 04:01 AM)

I already attached the stuff to the post above

4016

General Software Discussion / Re: PlayOnLinux might be what the Linux world needs to succeed

« Last post by f0dder on January 22, 2009, 03:18 AM »

Don't follow your logic about how "GPL isn't free at all" however.

I'm confused. Care to elaborate?

-40hz (January 21, 2009, 07:47 PM)

That's pretty easy.

GPL pretty much guarantees that the software is open and that it will usually be gratis (at least the code, you can keep the product as a whole non-gratis by keeping data resources under a commercial license). To achieve this, however, GPL imposes a truckload of restrictions, very much inhibiting freedom.

4017

General Software Discussion / Re: Incredibly funny parody of Linux first experiences :)

« Last post by f0dder on January 22, 2009, 03:15 AM »

Heh, the IRC session is pretty spot on the sugar... sadly, that is how the linux channels work, at least on efnet.

-f0dder (January 21, 2009, 06:19 PM)

IRC? Too many kiddies.

-40hz (January 21, 2009, 07:24 PM)

Depends on the channel - efnet/#donationcoder is pretty fine (and so is #C++, #winprog and a few others). But anything linux-related tends to be full of them. Perhaps freenet/whatever is better, but I couldn't be arsed going there.

A shame really, because instant communication is nice for getting stuff solved. Mailing lists have a better success rate (and nicer people!) but is unfortunately a lot slower than irc...

4018

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by f0dder on January 22, 2009, 03:11 AM »

superboyac: first of all, you should always press a "non-destructive" key like Ctrl or Alt when getting out of power-saving mode. Enter or Space are bad (and for DOS apps, just about any non-modifier key), since they tend to alter program state if there's a dialog or messagebox, or whatever.

As for whether you need power saving, it depends. TFT/LCD monitors are susceptible of burn-in, unfortunately. Mostly happens if you have pretty static images on the monitors for many hours a day (like the data-entry software we use at post.dk). I guess if you use your box for ~8hr/day and turn off your machine at night it isn't too big a risk, but I still personally prefer having power saving enabled.

Just remember to bring the monitors back by wriggling your mouse or hitting one of the modifier keys on the keyboard, and you should be OK

4019

General Software Discussion / Re: Incredibly funny parody of Linux first experiences :)

« Last post by f0dder on January 21, 2009, 06:19 PM »

Heh, the IRC session is pretty spot on the sugar... sadly, that is how the linux channels work, at least on efnet.

4020

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

« Last post by f0dder on January 21, 2009, 06:09 PM »

No matter how much good press Win7 gets, as Carol warns, I wouldn't go near it until all drivers are ready to go for my existing hardware. I'm tired of [not] learning that lesson.

-zridling (January 21, 2009, 04:48 PM)

Basically, Vista drivers should work fine on Win7 - they haven't touched the driver architecture. In reality, both DaemonTools and MagicISO break, though... but fortunately, (free) SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive works as a charm. I'm considering whether to drop MagicISO on my workstation and go for VCD instead.

Anyway, it's a bad idea to install a Beta (or even RC) operating system as your main OS. You should test with virtual machines or dedicated test-machine... I'm probably going to install it as a dual-boot option on my laptop, though, since we're now outside of exam periods @ study, and I have all the important stuff on the laptop under subversion control

4021

Developer's Corner / Re: .res filename extension, header starts with EMR1, any idea?

« Last post by f0dder on January 21, 2009, 11:16 AM »

http://www.wotsit.org is also a decent site for file types and such.

You're probably better off mentioning the application name anyway - something like ".res" is a pretty standard extension, and could be a zillion nonstandard contents.

4022

Living Room / Re: IRC chatroom - web or client - problems?

« Last post by f0dder on January 21, 2009, 11:15 AM »

Try SSL.EFNET.ORG - it dishes out ssl-enabled servers in round-robin. Afaik there's only like three client-side SSL enabled servers at the moment... You probably need to specify port as "+9999".

Anyway, if your current anti-whatever solution doesn't allow you to set up a warning-exception for your IRC client, imho it's a piece of junk and you should find something else

4023

Living Room / Re: Secure deletion: a single overwrite will do it

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2009, 12:27 PM »

what's a recommended utility for Windows systems?

-justice (January 20, 2009, 10:31 AM)

TrueCrypt, and forget about wiping

4024

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2009, 12:26 PM »

i put it on and off about 6 times.

-superboyac (January 20, 2009, 10:57 AM)

Ummm... did it come with thermal grease or a thermal patch? Generally, taking your heatsink off is a bad idea if you don't reapply thermal material, but you can usually get away with it if it's thermal patch and the system is hasn't been powered on long enough for the thermal patch to melt.

4025

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by f0dder on January 20, 2009, 04:56 AM »

I freaked out a little when putting the cpu fan on

been there.

-mouser (January 20, 2009, 04:47 AM)

Broke that?