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4976

Developer's Corner / Re: Mutex Problem

« Last post by f0dder on July 15, 2008, 05:52 PM »

And in case Jibz should ever change his signature, I'll post the second line from it here, because it's scaringly true, and somewhat related to this thread (a mutex can be used as a threading synchronization primitive, after all):

"Multithreading is just one damn thing after, before, or simultaneous with another" -Andrei Alexandrescu

4977

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for an alternative to Nero Recode

« Last post by f0dder on July 15, 2008, 10:17 AM »

I liked
http://www.imgburn.com/

-echo (July 15, 2008, 10:13 AM)

They're talking about Nero recode, not the cd/dvd burning component of Nero

4978

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for an alternative to Nero Recode

« Last post by f0dder on July 15, 2008, 07:47 AM »

DVDShrink (whoa, the free version is back? )

-f0dder (July 15, 2008, 05:50 AM)

I'm not aware of any non-free version. I thought that Nero Recode is essentially what DVDShrink would have evolved into as commercial software, being written (afaik) by the same guy. DVDShrink hasn't been revved in quite some time.

-CWuestefeld (July 15, 2008, 06:41 AM)

After the author went to work on a commercial project (you're probably right it's Nero Recode), DVDShrink was pulled offline for a while - didn't know it was back.

you shouldn't use it for re-encoding in case you want quality. It's fast, but that comes at a price.

-f0dder (July 15, 2008, 05:50 AM)

I could not disagree more. DVDShrink is absolutely the best possible tool for the job of increasing the compression ration of an existing DVD (mpeg2) recording. That's because DVDShrink does not encode. It's just selectively removing data (key frames?) from the existing stream. Since there's decode/recode cycle, there are none of the artifacts typically associated with that process.

-CWuestefeld (July 15, 2008, 06:41 AM)

You can opt to only strip stuff (foreign audio languages, extras) from a source DVD, but if that doesn't bring you to your desired target size, DVDShrink has to transcode the video data. And it doesn't do this at the quality level of, say, CCE.

4979

Developer's Corner / Re: Apache security quides?

« Last post by f0dder on July 15, 2008, 05:56 AM »

Is the server behind NAT, or with a globally visible IP? In both cases (but especially the last!), you'll want to set up some firewalling on the box. Dunno about security for Apache per se, unless you're talking .htaccess.

The worst security holes are going to be in the web-app, anyway... there's so much vulnerable PHP code out there >_<

4980

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for an alternative to Nero Recode

« Last post by f0dder on July 15, 2008, 05:50 AM »

DVDShrink (whoa, the free version is back? ) is a nice-and-easy tool, but you shouldn't use it for re-encoding in case you want quality. It's fast, but that comes at a price.

I've used the free version of DVDFab Platinum when I've needed to deal with those pesky protected discs with ARccOS or the like. (I wonder why those bastards bother - it obviously stops neither the pirate copying fabs, nor the "scene" pirates).

4981

Living Room / Re: contrast ratio confusion

« Last post by f0dder on July 15, 2008, 05:35 AM »

Contrast is important, but not everything - you also need to consider color space, brightness (no good if a projector requires a pitch-black room in order to be usable), resolution, et cetera. For TVs/monitors, you'd also have to worry about refresh rate (and whether the listed number is a fake based on "intelligent" refreshes), and whether motion causes ghosting or other interesting effects.

4982

General Software Discussion / Re: monitoring internet usage

« Last post by f0dder on July 15, 2008, 05:33 AM »

Hm, for some reason I've always found NetLimiter a bit clunky - but it does seem to be able to determine internet vs. LAN traffic, which BitMeter can't (well, it uses a speed-based hack but that obviously isn't accurate).

Any idea how NetLimiter works? Driver, hooking WinSock, etc.? Since it shows app names, I'd guess WinSock hooking.

4983

Living Room / Re: Radiohead Nude - by Epson, Hp, Spectrum & harddrives

« Last post by f0dder on July 14, 2008, 07:42 AM »

That's... insane.

I'm loving it

4984

Living Room / Re: Computer mods: What odd things have you done?

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 09:27 PM »

Heh, doh! I was thinking in hardware terms... can't even excuse it with "but it was late!", since that post was half past midnight. It's late now, though . Wasn't a ram though, twas a female sheep

4985

Developer's Corner / Re: Collision Detection...

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 08:01 PM »

Split your world into sectors. Within each sector, start by doing an inexpensive initial test (usually bounding boxes or spheres), and for potential hits, possibly do a more correct (and expensive) test.

How to partition, how to do initial-test, and how to do expensive-test all depend on your game... 2D vs. 3D, data structures you use, etc.

But as mouser said, you might want to grab an existing engine unless you feel like doing your own collision detection for the sheer learning experience

4986

General Software Discussion / Re: Does it make sense to disable the windows swap file?

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 07:56 PM »

i just noticed that prolonged usage with Microsoft Office throws up an "low memory error" but Windows doesn't actually crashes. maybe it has something with 'undo' buffer.

-lanux128 (July 13, 2008, 07:51 PM)

Interesting! Which version of Office, how much memory? Does your total available memory drop way low, what is Office's memory consumption like, etc.?

4987

Living Room / Re: Computer mods: What odd things have you done?

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 06:37 PM »

Pretty disassembled (I think mobo+cpu have been thrown out)

-f0dder

I hope you kept the ram!

-cranioscopical (July 13, 2008, 05:29 PM)

Why? EDO RAM is pretty useless to me these days, and I really couldn't be bothered going through the hassle selling it

4988

Living Room / Re: Computer mods: What odd things have you done?

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 04:07 PM »

I believe we still have the sheepbox somewhere at home if you want it fodder. But I am not sure what condition it is in

-p3lb0x (July 13, 2008, 03:06 PM)

Pretty disassembled (I think mobo+cpu have been thrown out), and the case itself isn't in super good condition. But at least the sheep is probably still alive

4989

General Software Discussion / Re: monitoring internet usage

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 09:45 AM »

I think I'll keep bitmeter2 installed on my workstation for a while, just for the kicks. There's no p2p'ing going on here, so basically just regular heavy-duty browsing, and the occasional large download (game update patches, video clips, ...)

4990

Site/Forum Features / Re: Privacy Page for DonationCoder.com Posted -- Suggestions Wanted

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 09:28 AM »

s/dissapear/disappear - and perhaps "we will be happy to do so" from that section should be changed to "we will do it with no questions asked" or similar, because we're never really happy about losing a member, are we?

I really like how the page is split into sections, makes it a lot easier to read than those massive blurbs you usually just click "I accept" without reading the crap. And it's kept in human-understandable language (boy do I hope you'll never need it translated to legalese).

Oh, as a final thing: once the privacy page is stable, if you need to make changes later on, it would be very nice if you keep a public diff/changelog (and perhaps also archived old-versions), imho that would be a real sign that DC is serious & friendly and doesn't try to sneak things in through the back door.

4991

Living Room / Re: Computer mods: What odd things have you done?

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 09:18 AM »

Once upon a time was...

A SHEEPBOX! (~10meg mpeg, from around 1999).

This was before people really started doing casemods and the like, so when we brought it to TP99, people thought it was pretty fun. We all lost interest in casemods after all the kiddies with their cathode tubes and plexiglass windows started doing it, though... no more fun and innovation, just mindless bling-bling

EDIT: I should mention that the sheep's eyes are LEDs connected to the harddisk activity pins, and that it has a PC speaker mounted in it's chest

4992

Living Room / Re: Security issue with old hard disk

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 09:04 AM »

If the 40gig disk previous had data on it, but you installed XP (and did a format in the process), some of the old data will still be recoverable. Most people probably wouldn't bother trying a recover, especially since they don't get a "blank" disk (ie., if you had just formatted it but not installed XP, or if you had deleted the partitions or whatever).

I guess what to do depends on what kind of data you had on it. In a similar scenario, I wouldn't bother - (almost ) all my sensitive data is encrypted, so at most a badguy would be able to tell my browsing history, see some (non-xrated) picture of me and my friends, stare puzzled at passwords.exe (yes, I drink my own kool-aid), et cetera.

If you had credit-card info or similar lying around in plain.txt files, you might want to call them and get the disk back, though... just in case.

4993

Living Room / Re: Is More Memory Better? - a bit-tech.net article

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2008, 08:56 AM »

Good points, tomos!

In ye olden days, you'd have nothing but trouble if you tried to mix and match memory modules, especially when dual-channel first arrived. Heck, even something as relatively recent as the nForce4 chipset tended to have problems if you loaded all four memory sockets with identical memory modules, and would go from DDR-333 to DDR-266 by default (and that's even though the AMD64 memory controllers are on the CPU, not the chipset...)

The situation is supposed to have improved a lot by now, but I'd definitely not use different-speed memory modules (because you're limited to the slowest speed used), I'd prefer modules with the same latency timings, and I'd do my best to find identical modules. And you can't necessarily expect to be able to find identical modules if you wait a long time before upgrading - especially if you buy "old" memory modules (ie, DDR in the time of DDR2, DDR2 now that DDR3 has hit the market (with insane prices)).

I went all-out and got 8 gigs for this machine. It's long and far between I use more than ~4 gigs, even though the extra filesystem cache is nice enough. But I reckoned that DDR2-800 memory was cheap enough to go for it, and I wouldn't have trouble finding matching modules later on

4994

Developer's Corner / Re: Digital Signature to verify Publisher...

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2008, 07:11 PM »

I don't really have faith in the CAs... iirc there were some posting about just how easy it is to do a little social engineering and get certs you really shouldn't have.

4995

Developer's Corner / Re: Digital Signature to verify Publisher...

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2008, 06:57 PM »

Random companies signing their stuff in random ways = no level of trust.

That you have to go through Microsoft to get code signing means not just everybody can do it, and gives the certs some degree of trust. After all, if anybody could self-sign their executables, what would stop me from making über-evil malware and making the cert look like it came from Macromedia?

4996

Living Room / Re: Is More Memory Better? - a bit-tech.net article

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2008, 04:06 PM »

Depends on how long you want the new computer to last, I guess, and what you're going to use it for.

I wouldn't go below 2gig for a new machine today, and 4 gigs is probably a good idea if you're planning to run Vista... but of course you can add RAM later, so you could always start with two gigs. The big question is probably whether to buy DDR2 or DDR3 RAM, and which speed...

4997

General Software Discussion / Re: OH NO! Its the end of Windows 3.11!

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2008, 03:41 PM »

why would you need Windows 3.11? can't you play those DOS games in... well, DOS?

-iliiad (July 12, 2008, 01:55 AM)

Maybe. I was fairly young in the Win 3.11 and DOS days. All I really know is that the command prompt in WinXP is just a fake DOS, but the command prompt that was available when we had Win3.11 had all the old drivers and things that games were made for back in the day.

-Deozaan (July 12, 2008, 01:36 PM)

XP isn't a "fake DOS", it's simply a shell which happens to look a lot like the old command.com / DOS shell

Win3.x ran either 16bit realmode or 16bit protected mode (aka enhanced mode), and was stll based on DOS (iirc even used DOS internally), which is why most stuff ran fine inside a 3.x DOS box. Even win9x required DOS to boot, although it basically didn't use DOS once it had booted (unless you had unknown device drivers, in which case you'd be running in "reduced performance compatibility mode", and various stuff would thunk down and call the DOS drivers... very slow).

4998

Living Room / Re: Mobo Mystery

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2008, 11:30 AM »

I am not proud of what I did but I simply bought a new mobo from a reseller and returned the old one as faulty for a refund! Didn't bother them and sorted out my issue instantly. Of course if the mobo is no longer in production or the version number has bumped this may not work!

-Carol Haynes (July 12, 2008, 11:02 AM)

This is exactly the kind of trickery I'm planning. I need the new motherboard "yesterday" (can't really do development on "The Project^TM", which we need to demo for BlackHat), so mailing the old motherboard to ASUS (probably intl. office) and waiting for turnaround is just a no-go.

The ASUS website says they only do RMAs for notebooks, the RMA page is seveeeerely broken (fscked up javascript et cetera), I couldn't find a contact email, and I don't feel like calling intl. office probably just to get another automated phone system.

Oh, did I mention that the voice on phone system for ASUS.dk sounded like a Swede or German trying his best to read some not-so-grammatically-correct Danish from a cue-card? Broooooooken, I tell you.

So... Monday, trickery will be applied. The shop has P5K-VMs on store, so it should work. Rather than refunding I think I'll keep both boards, it's valuable having a spare board lying around.

4999

Living Room / Re: Mobo Mystery

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2008, 10:31 AM »

* f0dder beats ASUS around with a big thorny stick.

My testbox (P5K-VM board) started giving "chassis intrusion detected!" messages (and system lock...) at random during boots, about a week ago... this required a CMOS clear (removing the battery etc.) in order to get the system running again. Then, Thursday night, something started smelling funny, and the CPU fan stopped dead. Ugh. Furthermore, the BIOS hardware monitor showed the 12v power running at 0.6V, not good. CPUfan works fine on another board, and PSU works fine in another box, so my assumption is that the board is fried.

Turns out that the company I bought the board in has gone bankrupt - it has done a "Phoenix" trick so it still exists (now owned by another company, though, I think) which is nice and all... except the "new" shop won't handle RMA on products bought before the resurrection. Bummer.

To make matters worse, it seems ASUS only handles RMA on their notebooks, and that all other products have to be RMA'ed through the reseller you bought the product from. I even called their .dk branch, but that was one of those automated phone systems, which ended up saying "visit http://support.asus.com" - great.

Pretty displeased, I am. On the way to the dark side with aaaaanger, I am. Not feeling like spending $150 on a new board when the old one should be handled by warranty, I am. Contemplating sneaky trickery, I am.

5000

Site/Forum Features / Re: Privacy Page for DonationCoder.com Posted -- Suggestions Wanted

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2008, 10:17 AM »

The only thing I get "spammed" with from DC is the topic reply notification emails - and that's by choice