Recent Posts

5451

General Software Discussion / Re: Open Source Sorftware Security

« Last post by f0dder on March 25, 2008, 09:07 AM »

Hm, I don't know if there has been exploits for Foxit Reader (or Sumatra, which is both freeware and open-source) - but Acrobat Reader has had security hole(s) that were exploitable by maliciously crafted .pdf files.

Whether open-source software is more or less secure than closed-source software is hard to answer, imho. One advantage is that once an exploit is publically found, a patch can typically be released pretty fast (partially because to FOSS community doesn't do/has to do the same level of compatibility testing as some commercial vendors).

There's also the theoretical advantage that "because the code is there, everybody can audit it[/i] - problem is that this doesn't happen automatically, and exploitable bugs like the "Transfer-Encoding: chunked" apache bug was iirc present for several years before it was discovered (publically...) and patched.

The openness of FOSS can also be a problem. Even though there's some interesting binary analysis tools available, it's easier to audit source code than executable files. If blackhats manage to find a relatively obscure bug and keep it to themselves, they have an attack vector that could go undetected for quite a while. And keep in mind that it's not just the big projects (which usually have code reviews) that can have interesting attack vectors.

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Developer's Corner / Re: [BEST] Boxer Editor Scripting Thread

« Last post by f0dder on March 25, 2008, 08:49 AM »

I wonder why you want to "encrypt a registry key" with ROT13? Just for fun and testing? It's pretty useless for anything else

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General Software Discussion / Re: Does KGB Archiver really achieve high compression rates?

« Last post by f0dder on March 24, 2008, 10:25 AM »

WinRAR sorts input files based on extension, and there's an additional "RarFiles.lst" so similar-in-content files are grouped together: ie., .html and .txt would be relatively "far away" if grouped just on extension, but they have similar (plain-text) format, and thus should be grouped together-ish. The file also has a "$default" entry where the group-by-extension logic goes, and after that basically uncompressable files are listed so they don't "poison" the compression dictionary.

Also, it has supported "input filtering" for a while, which basically makes some (100% reversible) translations on certain input formats (iirc .wav, .bmp and .exe are included) to achieve better compression for those formats.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Does KGB Archiver really achieve high compression rates?

« Last post by f0dder on March 24, 2008, 09:43 AM »

.jar are just .zip files - for download (as opposed to applet-on-a-site) use, I'd probably use STORE compression method, so the .jar's can be properly compressed

But yes, you do have a point, lots of file formats don't compress very well.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Linux and Windows andLinux

« Last post by f0dder on March 24, 2008, 09:09 AM »

Hm, only uses a single windows process to contain all the linux apps? Dunno if that sounds like such a great idea. But as long as it at least uses multiple windows threads inside that single process...

5456

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Portable vs Regular Firefox

« Last post by f0dder on March 24, 2008, 08:28 AM »

But you could hand-tweak the portable edition to use %TEMP% for cache...

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General Software Discussion / Re: Does KGB Archiver really achieve high compression rates?

« Last post by f0dder on March 24, 2008, 08:24 AM »

Slow compression can be justified the compression rate is very good, and that decompression is substantially faster...

5458

General Software Discussion / Re: Linux and Windows andLinux

« Last post by f0dder on March 24, 2008, 08:17 AM »

sorry. the question is: if linux is 'just a process' from windows' perspective, then maybe it can live on one core only. That'd mean that you are wasting your second core (no matter how many linux processes are claiming the CPU) if you develop using andlinux on windows.

-urlwolf (March 23, 2008, 08:56 PM)

Unless coLinux has deliberate limits, you will be able to use your cores just fine... and I would be surprised if coLinux doesn't do translation of the threading APIs

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General Software Discussion / Re: Linux and Windows andLinux

« Last post by f0dder on March 23, 2008, 05:19 PM »

I'm not sure I understood your question about cores - with coLinux, do you have to dedicate an entire core to it?

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General Software Discussion / Re: Linux and Windows andLinux

« Last post by f0dder on March 23, 2008, 03:52 PM »

In my tests, this linux install (with whatever system calls translations etc) runs ruby code about twice as fast as the native windows interpreter. No kidding.

Wtf? The native windows interpreter must suck bigtime, then... compiled with old version of GCC using cygwin translation libraries?

5461

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

« Last post by f0dder on March 23, 2008, 12:29 PM »

Why do a subjective blind-listening test when you can do an object bit-correctness test?

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General Software Discussion / Re: Linux and Windows andLinux

« Last post by f0dder on March 23, 2008, 07:51 AM »

Fodder, you know a lot about low-level stuff.
What's the performance price you pay by having linux installed like this? Is disk access where it suffers most?

Shouldn't be too bad, since you run code natively and not emulated. There's a translation layer being used between linux syscalls and windows calls, but that is minimal overhead compared to emulation.

Haven't run any tests of coLinux myself, though.

5463

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

« Last post by f0dder on March 22, 2008, 02:31 PM »

Were this not true, modern computers could not function.

Indeed not - use any motherboard monitor and check how "stable" voltages are being reported...

Using ExactAudioCopy I can ensure that I'm getting the precise recorded data.

Yes and no - you need to add AccurateRip to the mix to be sure you get the correct data. And for some of the protected audio CDs, you're entirely at the mercy of the drive's error correction capability, and for instance a plextor and a LiteOn drive probably wouldn't give the same AccurateRip result. I think you need some preeeeetty high-end standalone CD players to achieve this kind of correctness, not to mention that for the protected discs, EAC can go below 1x speed, meaning you wouldn't be able to playback realtime.

Anyway, I probably have to take back the statement about checksumming for HDMI, as I couldn't find a reference to it any place (I was sure I had seen it somewhere, though). But then again, HDMI is only the transport, which can carry multiple formats, meaning that a format could carry checksumming. Checksumming would have limited use anyway, since the stuff is realtime you can't really re-transmit on error, but at least you could detect that "this cable isn't good enough".

Oh, and sure, if you want 100Hz 1080p content at 30m distance, you need better cable quality than a 1m cable from your BluRay player that's right beneath your TV. You don't need gold wires for the latter

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

« Last post by f0dder on March 22, 2008, 01:27 PM »

Hirudin: please don't bring spinrite into this, it's snake-oil , and mr. Gibson only has buzzwords and "it's super secret advanced tech!" to say, nothing quantitative.

Curt: as for improving digital media, there's a couple of factors. For CD players alone, there's a few... one thing is that audio CDs don't have synchronization tracks, which means you can't 100% accurately re-position (or even position) the laser. There's also the quality of the error-correction circuitry (and sadly, with copy-protected CDs, that circuitry IS necessary, even if your CDs aren't scratched...), if you don't have your CD player hooked to your amp with a digital connection the D/AC quality has quite something to say as well, and you might even have interpolation/up-sampling involved, too.

If you use a digital connection between your player and your amp, some of those points-of-degradation are eliminated, but not all of them.

High-definition formats are, afaik, stored on data discs with proper sync info. I haven't looked into the audio/video container formats used on those media, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's checksum info included. This eliminates some of the error points you have with CDs.

Then, you add in HDMI connection instead of a lossy analog connection, and you either have bit-perfect transfer or you have nothing. Cable quality has something to say wrt. how long cables you can have, but it's not like paying 3x for a 1m cable will yield any difference in quality. Either it works at full quality, or it doesn't.

For analog transport, it's a somewhat different matter, but I'm with Renegade here. Self-suggestion and product buy-in are the "quality" factors here, as long as you go for a certain minimum quality.

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

« Last post by f0dder on March 22, 2008, 09:07 AM »

Curt, with digital signals, either it's going to work or it's not going to work. And it should be trivial to test, since you can do an exact bit-by-bit comparison at the destination, which is 100% objective and doesn't rely on something as fragile and subjective as the human ears. Iirc, the HDMI protocol even has checksum built-in, so corrupted signals can be detected. There is no arguing this.

With analog signals, it's a bit of a different story, because you can't do the same kind of bit-by-bit comparison, and then people get all emotional about their investment and obviously want to justify spending a zillion dollars on gold wired cables. All you really need, though, is cabling with the right level of resistance and enough shielding. If you live in a normal withtout a lot of EMI, buying super-expensive audio cables is just plain silly. I daresay that normal power-chord cables would do the job just fine

5466

Living Room / Re: [SORTED] how big is a webpage :) broadband - 1 or 10GB?

« Last post by f0dder on March 21, 2008, 06:46 PM »

I live in .dk, ~€50/month for 20/1. They upgraded me to 20/2 for free, but apparently the copper quality wasn't good enough, so it was more like 12/1.2, so I asked them to put me back at 20/1 instead.

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Living Room / Re: [SORTED] how big is a webpage :) broadband - 1 or 10GB?

« Last post by f0dder on March 21, 2008, 06:02 PM »

An extra gig is €20? That's insane

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General Software Discussion / Re: USBDeview - Guaranteed eject of your USB drive

« Last post by f0dder on March 21, 2008, 05:57 PM »

Sounds like a somewhat dangerous utility - the reason you get the "can't be removed right now" message in the first place, is because some application is "using" the drive. Granted, most of the time it might just be a thread that has it's current working folder on the drive for some reason, which is pretty harmless, but other times you could risk filesystem corruption.

I wonder if such a "forcibly eject" application is actually any safer than simply unplugging the device?

I use NTFS and "optimize for speed" with my external drives, so I'm a bit paranoid about doing things the right way

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Living Room / Re: a 3D game that is only 97kb!

« Last post by f0dder on March 20, 2008, 11:19 AM »

"Bootable game OS" for PCs wouldn't make sense, really... console's strength lies in uniform hardware and very capable CPU/GPUs.

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Living Room / Re: Get-togehter: Scandinavia / Denmark

« Last post by f0dder on March 20, 2008, 11:18 AM »

Don't really have a date in mind yet, wanted to see what the interest is - then we can set a date

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Living Room / Get-togehter: Scandinavia / Denmark

« Last post by f0dder on March 20, 2008, 01:55 AM »

I was wondering if any DC members in the Nordic region are interesting in a little heads-up?

I can personally offer a 50m^2 apartment in Århus, Denmark - room for lots of people in sleeping bags, and I can cook etc. I could probably also facilitate something in "the general area of Copenhagen" (although it'd be a bit outside, and other people might be better hosts), which would be more interesting for people from, say, .se and .no.

Any interest? At the very least, Curt and I could have a beer

edit: fixed spelling

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Living Room / Re: "Grivitation-like" paradigm would have helped in the interim

« Last post by f0dder on March 20, 2008, 01:38 AM »

I have to agree with Mouser... I do tend to get tangled in political and other non-appropriate discussions, because those are hellishly interesting. But even though I'm a hypocrite and can't help myself engaging in somewhat-inappropriate stuff, I do agree that we should move it elsewhere.

The IRC channel seems a lot more suitable.

Anyway, I hope we can get back to a discussion on how we can distribute this forum to combat future attacks!

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Living Room / Re: "Grivitation-like" paradigm would have helped in the interim

« Last post by f0dder on March 20, 2008, 01:22 AM »

Granted.  I had anticipated a response, but not anywhere near this caustic.  In my defense, I know of no other initiative that sports a collective, distributed model which is why I used "Grivitation."

-CodeTRUCKER

And that is quite fair. Hate to say it, but I think that he's right at least in that the traditional forum model could do with a work-over. And some entirely new ideas. I think that Gri's ideas are both too radical and conservative, though.

As for friendly: this requires care & condieration from all parts, and delibarete "under-consideration" as well. Things get totally out of hand when we over/mis-interpret eachother, everybody here need to calm down a bit. Things are getting slightly heated, try to mediate via PMs? Just a suggestion.

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Living Room / Re: "Grivitation-like" paradigm would have helped in the interim

« Last post by f0dder on March 20, 2008, 01:08 AM »

CodeTRUCKER: Imho mouser is a heart and a diamond for keeping this whole thing in place (I love how many different people are here, and on IRC we can do those topics that fit in here at all) , and beyond that - **** calling names etc. But Gri seems to get on the nerves of a lot of people.

Can we leave it at that, and return to friendly?

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Living Room / Re: "Grivitation-like" paradigm would have helped in the interim

« Last post by f0dder on March 20, 2008, 12:42 AM »

I dont' see what WordZilla is doing wrong, sorry. On the other hand I don't see Gri's stuf as an evil, but it has certainly been weird, spammy, mostly incomprehensible and out of place/space