Recent Posts

4951

General Software Discussion / Re: How to prevent Win+S from sending the system to sleep?

« Last post by f0dder on July 21, 2008, 04:48 PM »

Win+S doesn't do anything here either, on XP64... so either it's a Vista feature, or some custom keyboard hotkey thingie?

4952

Developer's Corner / Re: redmine: website tool for collaborative project todolist/wiki, bugtracking, etc

« Last post by f0dder on July 21, 2008, 04:43 PM »

I got redmine installed on my local in-house server last night, took a bit of fumbling (shouldn't have tried to use sqlite as database backend, recent versions are apparently imcompatible with redmine) - and I wasn't familiar with ruby either. Also, the wiki documentation is slightly out-of-date, and it isn't a 100% step-by-step newbie guide.

But with some linux experience and time for googling, it worked out without too much trouble. Haven't put it through much abuse yet, but I added issue-tracking for fSekrit, found two minor bugs (only in unicode build, which isn't near ready for public prime-time yet) and got redmine configured to auto-close tickets based on commit messages. The whole thing seems pretty slick and well-functioning so far, especially considering it's pre-1.0.

4953

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Whole Disk Encryption Just Wishful Thinking?

« Last post by f0dder on July 20, 2008, 05:19 PM »

It's nasty stuff.

Also, if (serious) law enforcement is coming after you, they have ways to move your computer without turning it off - basically attaching an UPS on the go, doing some wire cutting etc.

4954

Developer's Corner / Re: redmine: website tool for collaborative project todolist/wiki, bugtracking, etc

« Last post by f0dder on July 20, 2008, 04:49 PM »

redmine looks pretty nice, thanks for this post!

I was actually just sitting and contemplating giving mantis or trac a go, but for some reason neither of them "does it for me"... but redmine looks very nice, so I think I'll check that out instead

4955

General Software Discussion / Re: TrueCrypt 6.0 released

« Last post by f0dder on July 18, 2008, 03:17 PM »

Stoic Joker: if there's nothing to install, how do you access the encrypted part of the thumbdrive, then?

4956

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« Last post by f0dder on July 18, 2008, 08:04 AM »

Sadly, a lot of programs don't handle the WM_QUERYENDSESSION message, and thus won't save settings / open documents if the user shuts down his computer. The Bat! is one of those programs, so if you change settings you'll need to exit it before rebooting, or settings are lost. But I digress.

Mapping F12 to shutdown? Eek. On keyboards with a dedicated shutdown button, I always end up tearing said button off, after much cursing and swearing.

4957

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows update Vs Ubuntu Update

« Last post by f0dder on July 18, 2008, 06:44 AM »

allen: IMHO the problem isn't that you get an update like that (53 megs, though? O_o) - the problem is the fscktarded users that have actually bitched at MS for not including those words in the default dictionaries.

4958

General Software Discussion / Re: TrueCrypt 6.0 released

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 07:17 PM »

Does anyone know of an application like this which allows encrypted drives to be transported and opened on a system via a thumb drive?

-Josh (July 17, 2008, 07:05 PM)

TrueCrypt can do this if you use container files rather than direct partition encryption - but it does require installing a driver on the host computer, obviously requiring admin privileges. Iirc there's also a CodeProject or SourceForge project for dealing with container files directly?, probably require use of FAT32 filesystem though (but that's fine for smallish container files).

4959

General Software Discussion / Re: Commit history: how high normally & what is it?

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 06:55 PM »

Thanks fodder.

-cmpm (July 17, 2008, 06:51 PM)

No problem - it's always good getting the DC threads cross-referenced

4960

General Software Discussion / Re: Commit history: how high normally & what is it?

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 06:41 PM »

page file = swap file... swapfile is win9x terminology, pagefile is NT terminology. But it's the same thing.

The commit charge limit basically shows how much memory you can allocate, backed by the pagefile (if you use one), and possibly growing the pagefile if needed. I think I already linked to this wikipedia article in another thread

4961

Screenshot Captor / Re: Edited configdir.ini and it still creates Doncation coder in documents..

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 04:48 PM »

ok i think i've fixed the problem. i'll post an updated version of sc in a little bit to see if it solves it.

-mouser (July 17, 2008, 02:53 PM)

What'd you have to change? Always curious to hear about Vista compatibility fixes and expand my knowledge-base

4962

General Software Discussion / Re: TrueCrypt 6.0 released

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 04:41 PM »

Source code, client information, private documents?

Once I purchase a laptop, I'll be running full disk encryption (yeah, including system partition) on it... in case it ever gets stolen or lost, I don't really want anybody to rummage through my files.

4963

Living Room / Re: Anyone Here Using a Drobo?

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 04:39 PM »

I swear that sometimes, people think of a cool acronym (or "acronym pattern") and then work out what it's supposed to be an abbreviation of

4964

General Software Discussion / Re: I am looking for no install firewall.

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 04:38 PM »

What carol said

Outbound protection is, unfortunately, pretty much a pipe dream - even if it seems like a nice idea. There's just too many ways for malware to catch a free ride to the highway. The only real efficient outbound protection is from a hardware firewall that traffic *has* to flow through (so, basically on a router) - and even that has the problem like not knowing which application the traffic comes from, so it can only block on ports and (if sophisticated) protocol level. But it's possible to smuggle contraband data in a perfectly legitimate looking HTTP request, so...

4965

General Software Discussion / Re: Commit history: how high normally & what is it?

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 09:17 AM »

"Unused memory is wasted memory" - sure, you shouldn't go overkill and be a sloppy programmer, but it make sense for a webbrowser to keep page cache in-memory for fast back/forward, caching of images for re-use, et cetera.

Imho, FF3 isn't bad at all (and keep in mind you should look at "private bytes" or "working set private" figure, not "virtual size" or the "total working set").

4966

General Software Discussion / Re: Commit history: how high normally & what is it?

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 08:26 AM »

750meg commit right after booting? Wow, you must have many services/trayapps running... after running my box for 1½, having done lots of stuff in FF3 (only 4 tabs open currently though, albeit one of them being facebook), and "not so much other stuff" running, I'm at ~555megs of commit.

4967

Developer's Corner / Re: How to maintain a reusable updatable code

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 07:49 AM »

Hm, "development server"? I hope this is only a thing used to test the .asp pages, not a central place where multiple developers edit the code files... and I hope the files there are only updated automatically? Otherwise you risk a lot of interesting problems by doing automated updates that way...

Sounds a bit quirky overwriting files and re-committing, but I dunno if there's smarter solutions when you keep the shared functions in a separate repository and want automated updates of it (is that really necessary, though?)

4968

General Software Discussion / Re: I am looking for no install firewall.

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 07:39 AM »

Router with NAT + Windows Firewal,l and you're all set... isn't much reason for using anything else, really.

4969

General Software Discussion / Re: NewEgg

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2008, 07:37 AM »

And one of those risks is delivery to another address, that unfortunately you find necessary.

Is it really so unusual to want to buy something (a gift, perhaps) and have it shipped directly to another address?

-mrainey (July 17, 2008, 07:10 AM)

I wonder what happens most: people buying stuff for other people, or evil bastards abusing stolen credit cards? :/

4970

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows update Vs Ubuntu Update

« Last post by f0dder on July 16, 2008, 05:56 PM »

Most of the hotfixes dont apply to all systems and a lot of them require you contact MS directly.

-Josh (July 16, 2008, 12:09 PM)

Which is plain wrong, they should just offer them for download with whatever special warnings they feel they need. Having to contact Microsoft sucks - my best experience was talking with a Swedish MS support guy in Ireland... and that's not something I'd generally classify as a success story.

4971

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by f0dder on July 16, 2008, 05:49 AM »

PS: You have a great taste for computer mice, Carl!

-jgpaiva (July 16, 2008, 05:42 AM)

Taste for or taste in?

Pretty huge pic there, jgpaiva - I had to download and rescale it to get a decent overview

4972

Developer's Corner / Re: How to maintain a reusable updatable code

« Last post by f0dder on July 16, 2008, 05:03 AM »

There are iirc snippet managers that try to maintain a database of "where is this snippet used?", which will then update all the use-sites when you update a snippet. But imho that's still as much a recipe for disaster, as general "snippe use" is by itself.

The only real acceptable thing to do is keeping a properly maintained function library, and keep it under source control. Period. Snippet usage way too easily leads to ill-designed functions, spaghetti code, and redundancy bloat. And, as you've discovered, is a maintenance nightmare.

Sure, it's so deceptively easy to just paste something from a snippet manager, instead of all the annoyance and bother of designing a proper function library, and the boooother of checking out from your source control system, etc. But it's the only sane thing to do.

4973

General Software Discussion / Re: Turning a pc on and off remotely

« Last post by f0dder on July 16, 2008, 04:57 AM »

Hm, you say you've been able to wake your computer from your webpage - does this mean your computer is set up as a DMZ (ie., receives all internet-traffic directly)? Or (which I hope) that you have a webserver running at home, behind a NAT, with only port 80 forwarded?

You might want to look at PsShutdown from sysinternals' PsTools - that's pretty useful for running on LANs, but I personally don't want to allow netbios (or whatever Ps* requires) traffic inwards from WAN->LAN...

4974

General Software Discussion / Re: RUNDLL32 - cheat sheet

« Last post by f0dder on July 16, 2008, 04:51 AM »

Just keep in mind that not everything was designed to be called from rundll32, that some (most? ) of the uses on that page are undocumented, and can thus blow up in your face at any time. Please never use in programs or scripts that will ever leave your personal computer.

4975

General Software Discussion / Re: 20 things Windows 7 should have

« Last post by f0dder on July 16, 2008, 04:50 AM »

UAC shouldn't be ditched, but it could perhaps be implemented in a somewhat less intrusive way - like keeping you elevated for a (short) period of time, instead of requiring elevation for every action. But returning to the old days of everybody's-a-friggin'-admin? No. (And yes, UAC currently can be annoying, especially if you're in the process of setting up a new computer and it hasn't occurred to you that you can disable UAC temporarily until initial setup is done...)

With 7, MS ought to drop 32bit versions of the OS completely - and IMHO they should've done that already with Vista. I know, it would have pissed off a lot of people, but if you keep clinging on to legacy, you never really move forwards, and there's no real incitement for developers to learn how to write 64-bit clean code.