Recent Posts

5126

Living Room / Re: Spore Creature Creator Released - Make Cody Creature Contest!

« Last post by f0dder on June 18, 2008, 06:45 AM »

Hey, be glad they relaxed the restrictions, the first ones were absolutely obnoxious.

-Lashiec (June 17, 2008, 07:38 PM)

Still isn't good enough, though. They should give up their crap and release the games through STEAM, that's probably the least obnoxious scheme available.

5127

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3 Released

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

I like the awesome bar so far, fits pretty well with my laziness.

Default skin ugly? Icons might not be all that pretty, but I like how simple & clean it is, how little "real estate" is wasted on useless graphics.

As for speed, seems like FF3 install by default turns off HTTP pipelining even if it was enabled in FF2 - turning it back on helps increase page load speed.

5128

Living Room / Re: Spore Creature Creator Released - Make Cody Creature Contest!

« Last post by f0dder on June 17, 2008, 07:16 PM »

Spore Creature Creator installs cmdlineext.dll, a Sony SECUROM Copy Protection Component.

-PhilB66 (June 17, 2008, 07:12 PM)

Christ, why do they have to try and obfuscate the names? It's not like it confuses the pirates and the crackers anyway. I really want to purchase spore and support the developers, but seeing that it's EA branded and with the horror stories about the new phone-home and limited-number-of-activations crap... I almost feel like pirating it, just to set an example >_<

5129

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3 Released

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

More or less just installed, it seems a bit snappier - though the real stress test will be 8 hours with facebook, that used to cause ff2 to slug down to a crawl. FireBug and MouseLessBrowsing aren't FF3 compatible yet it seems, my other extensions didn't complain.

5130

Living Room / Re: Accessing the contents of another computer's hard drive

« Last post by f0dder on June 17, 2008, 06:13 PM »

First of all, you need to disable "simple file sharing" - and then you need to grant some access rights. Make sure you have identically named (and passworded) users on both machines, that makes things easier. On some windows versions, you can access the "administrative shares", on some you can't.

5131

Living Room / Re: Spore Creature Creator Released - Make Cody Creature Contest!

« Last post by f0dder on June 17, 2008, 06:08 PM »

mouser: apparently the creature editor is being sold as a standalone toy, for people who can't be arsed playing the game but like playing around.

Pretty well done, justice, by the way

5132

General Software Discussion / Re: "The browser is the new OS" ...(really?)

« Last post by f0dder on June 17, 2008, 09:20 AM »

mouser: JAVA had the potential to do much of what you want. dotNET has the potential. Neither are going to be embraced for it, though. For a lot of applications, it simply does not make sense - sure thing, all your simple and not-so-dataheavy or precise-interaction stuff can be run "in a browser" or "on the magic platform", but as soon as user-interaction-timing critical things (games/whatever) or data-heavy tasks (graphics, video editing, ...) or "fast user feedback"/"smoothness" (drawing in a paint application) are involved, it's basically FAIL - even if everybody had low-latency high-bandwidth flat-rate fiber-optic internet connections.

And even after all these years of JIT research, we still need native code where speed is critical. OK, so dotNET can produce native code from a bytecode executable (see ngen.exe), but you still don't get native performance. And no, that doesn't really matter for a spreadsheet or word processor, but it sure as hell matters for games and video editing

Run-anywhere is a pipe dream. And even if technology matured and capable programming languages evolved (AND you convinced programmers to use them), monetary interests would block run-anywhere. It would suck anyway, basically having to code for the lowest common denominator - ugh.

I don't really mind simple-apps^TM running in a browser or whatever, my grudge in the previous post was with morons who say "operating system == browser". Application server, perhaps, but no - not OS.

Lashiec has good points as well

5133

Developer's Corner / Re: Visual Web Developer 2008 - newbie questions and help requests

« Last post by f0dder on June 17, 2008, 08:22 AM »

You'd have to make an ActiveX object (which will only run in internet explorer) or java applet then because of security limitations it's not possible to silently run executables without a sandbox.

-justice (June 17, 2008, 06:21 AM)

And thanks goodness for that.

Also, you cannot "run applications over the internet" - the whole executable has to be downloaded to the client machine first. This also goes for ActiveX objects, but that would happen silently of course. ActiveX isn't all-trivial to code, and you'll need to pay out to get your control digitally signed... so probably not an option for you.

5134

General Software Discussion / Re: "The browser is the new OS" ...(really?)

« Last post by f0dder on June 17, 2008, 08:18 AM »

I'm not even going to read the article, the few excerpts zridling posted were enough.

I'm really fed up with morons trying to compare browsers to operating systems - it's like comparing apples and nuclear bombs, it doesn't make sense. At all. On any level.

Sure thing, a browser can act as an application server, but that has nothing to do with an OS, really. And even if simple commodity applications can run in a browser, the browser + web isn't going to replace standalone native code anytime soon. Try doing a graphics editor or a full 3D shooter browser-style? hah.

5135

Developer's Corner / Re: Is it possible to change to working directory within the running programm?

« Last post by f0dder on June 17, 2008, 07:56 AM »

Alternative solution: write to the keyboard buffer.

-ethan (June 17, 2008, 06:48 AM)

Baaad idea

One thing is that it will obviously fail if the console window loses focus (and it might, for a zillion different reasons). Another potential problem the following blurb:

Microsoft Windows Vista. This function fails when it is blocked by User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI). Note that neither GetLastError nor the return value will indicate the failure was caused by UIPI blocking.

(obviously that would also block the other various hacks, but not the batchfile thingy).

5136

Living Room / Re: Philips Flat TV 20"

« Last post by f0dder on June 17, 2008, 07:48 AM »

640x480 spread over 20 inches? 

I guess that would be good if you have vision problems, but other than that it would really, really suck.

-Deozaan (June 16, 2008, 11:49 PM)

Indeed. It's pretty fine for old analogue TV, but it'd suck majorly for use as a computer monitor

5137

Living Room / Re: How can I get hard drive space... without deleting (my) stuff?

« Last post by f0dder on June 16, 2008, 07:12 PM »

Combining partitions? It's possible, but there's so many things that can go wrong, so you shouldn't do it unless you have all your data from both partitions backed up... and if you had the means to back it up, you would probably have another drive lying around already.

If you're in the .us, you can get a 320gig drive for less than $70...

5138

Living Room / Re: Philips Flat TV 20"

« Last post by f0dder on June 16, 2008, 08:14 AM »

Just about any TFT monitor made today will be fine for your needs - the only thing you really need to specify is which resolution you want it to be (ie, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, whatever). You say you don't need gaming or TV, so you're obviously not going to need a TV tuner in it.

I have a couple of 17" Acer TFTs, running 1280x1024 - solid, clear, crisp and flickerfree, and pretty cheap as well.

5139

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Week: Robokill

« Last post by f0dder on June 15, 2008, 08:47 PM »

JUST completed the free part of it now, must say I quite enjoyed it - pretty well balanced, just the right amount of die/retry frustration - enough that the game isn't supereasy, but not enough to make me want to smash stuff.

I really like the graphics and sounds, the whole atmosphere of the game. Certainly has some Alien Breed feel to it, if a bit simpler/easier. I'd love to see what the team behind Robokill could do if they produced a native non-flash game...

5140

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command Console LE from JPSoft

« Last post by f0dder on June 15, 2008, 06:11 PM »

*shrug*, sometimes console2 crashes for me, and that sometimes takes out all the running console apps as well.

-f0dder (June 15, 2008, 04:56 PM)

Well, yeah, they would be considered child processes of Console, and when the parent croaks, so do the kids.

-DMcCunney (June 15, 2008, 05:53 PM)

Nope, Windows doesn't kill child processes when the parent dies. Most of the times when console2 has crashed on me, the child console programs tend to be "orphaned", still running but without any attached console. I guess it might be possible to revive them with some code injection, but meh. Once or twice, I'm pretty sure the children died as well though.

If those problems were fixed, it would be a really great app, having tabs certainly beat several open cmd.exe windows

It works well enough here for me to use it regularly.

-DMcCunney (June 15, 2008, 05:53 PM)

It just sucks having a crash when you're in the middle of doing a software build - ugh >-<

5141

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Take Command Console LE from JPSoft

« Last post by f0dder on June 15, 2008, 04:56 PM »

*shrug*, sometimes console2 crashes for me, and that sometimes takes out all the running console apps as well. And by "fullscreen" I didn't mean alt+enter fullscreen, but "GUI console apps" - at least a few of them work very poorly with console2.

If those problems were fixed, it would be a really great app, having tabs certainly beat several open cmd.exe windows

5142

General Software Discussion / Re: Monster Cables- The World should know!

« Last post by f0dder on June 15, 2008, 04:50 PM »

Hahaha tomos, that's a good one

5143

Find And Run Robot / Re: [Bug report?] farr - short freeze every 6 launch/close

« Last post by f0dder on June 15, 2008, 11:06 AM »

Hmm, here's a wild guess - I haven't traced the issue or anything, so it's just that - a guess. Here goes... when using traditional INI file routines, is the file opened and close for every write operation done? That could explain why it's slow, and why nod32 slows it down even more...

5144

Living Room / Re: The 10 most annoying programs on the Internet

« Last post by f0dder on June 15, 2008, 09:50 AM »

I usually use WinScraper, and resize the window to 1x1 pixels, moved far off my screen

5145

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Week: Robokill

« Last post by f0dder on June 14, 2008, 04:21 PM »

Only looked at the screenshot from mouser's first post - brings back memories of Alien Breed. I think I'm gonna give it a try... but I better fix some dinner first, if it's half as good as mouser insinuates

5146

Living Room / Re: SFFS Version 4.20: copying files in parallel

« Last post by f0dder on June 14, 2008, 10:26 AM »

just got a mail: SFFS Version 4.20 will allow copying files in parallel. Now that's an interesting feature...

-urlwolf (June 14, 2008, 10:11 AM)

For that to be an advantage, you sorta need to be copying from two physical disks to two other physical disks - otherwise the read/write head seeking will kill performance.

5147

General Software Discussion / Re: CleanAfterMe - a new Nirsoft tool

« Last post by f0dder on June 14, 2008, 09:58 AM »

Interesting, but I don't think it is a match for CrapCleaner.

-edbro (May 24, 2008, 09:41 AM)

It's not meant to be - it's meant to clean your traces after, for instance, you've used a public PC.

5148

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Another Bits du Jour version

« Last post by f0dder on June 14, 2008, 08:16 AM »

Hm... is it just me, or is that pretty lame? Why wouldn't you just go to BitsDuJour? I hate the whole idea of "resellers" >_<

5149

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Another Bits du Jour version

« Last post by f0dder on June 14, 2008, 07:38 AM »

"A verbatim copy of", or just a similar site?

5150

Living Room / Re: The 10 most annoying programs on the Internet

« Last post by f0dder on June 14, 2008, 07:11 AM »

I agree with Edvard on the Adobe/Platform/Reader idea - most people don't need the additional crud, and AR is an abomination. FoxIt is unfortunately pretty slow on 64bit Windows (with complex PDFs), and Sumatra is still a bit immatura... but both are better.

Apple? Hell yeah, quicktime and itunes, burn in hell. Along with the ugly and overpriced hardware. I guess I'd be a bit milder-mannered if Apple would offer OS X for non-apple hardware.

As for the rant about Windows Update, ho humm. The "you need to reboot now" (with "reboot" being the default-focus button) dialog is deadly annoying, especially because it keeps popping up ever X minutes. But WU itself is a good and necessary thing.

RealPlayer, yep. At least I can get along without it.

Java... I don't mind the language, but I do agree with the annoying-points. Oh, and it's too bad SUN can't for the life of them make a JVM/JIT with decent performance, Microsofts JVM was so many times faster.

Yahoo? Glad I don't have to suffer that

Norton Antivirus, I mostly agree. The worst part is how many machines it comes preinstalled in, and how annoying it is to get rid of it - "are you reeeeeally sure?", and a couple of reboots. OK if you buy a single new machine for yourself, but frustrating when you need to set up five new laptops, "and make it yesterday".

#8: Preinstalled software bundles - I only have one thing to say: death sentence for whoever came up with the idea. Oh, and the people implementing the idea.

Don't have a grudge with Outlook, really.

Flash? Oh, don't get me started. It's fine for games, videos and commercials. But please, don't ues it for anything else. It hogs up CPU time, it makes site navigation bothersome (and often makes it very hard to bookmark individual pages), et cetera. Just use clean HTML/CSS, kthx.