Recent Posts

601

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Outpost 2009 – A lifetime license for 3 PCs for the price of a 1-year!

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 18, 2012, 02:38 AM »

Agnitum has offered lifetime licenses (sometimes on and off) for many years.  As far as I know, they have always honored the lifetime upgrades.

You may have issues with the complexity or sometimes the stability of the software, but I don't think that you can find fault Agnitum's lifetime license support.

602

Living Room / Re: Tram-mļöi  hhâsmařpţuktôx

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 17, 2012, 10:37 PM »

"Tardis Express" reminds me of the old Jiffy Express SNL commercial: http://www.nbc.com/s...ffy-express/1356732/

Jiffy Express
We'll take the package - and the blame.

603

Living Room / Re: Tram-mļöi  hhâsmařpţuktôx

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 17, 2012, 06:53 PM »

BY JOSHUA FOER

DECEMBER 24, 2012

Oh my,  I've gotta get my Xmas shopping done!

604

DC Gamer Club / Re: iOS - Fruit ninja and all other Halfbrick games free today only

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 17, 2012, 03:47 PM »

I know it's clear in thread's title, but the original article (and Halfbrick's announcement) don't make it particularly clear:

This appears to be an Apple only deal - no freebies for Android 

605

General Software Discussion / Re: WSOD

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 13, 2012, 05:05 PM »

anyone here have any experience with the 'White Screen of Death' phenomenon?

-Target (December 13, 2012, 03:18 PM)

I get that behavior occasionally (but not nearly the frequency that you mention).  I'm running Win7 x64, and I see such behavior probably not more than once a week.  It typically occurred in Firefox, but sometimes also in Outlook (2007).

I might not see it as much as you do because most of the time I'm in a text editor, serial port terminal window, or a VMware session.

I'm generally reluctant to upgrade software, so until recently I was running some old version of Firefox (I can't remember what version exactly, but something in the 4.x - 11.x range, I think).  I always assumed that the problem was either because of FF or because of antivirus software.  

I restart my Windows box pretty much only when absolutely necessary (usually due to updates) about once a month, and Firefox maybe once every couple weeks.  I also keep about 50 tabs open in FF.  So by the time I'd restart FF, it would often have gotten pretty slow and be chewing up a huge chunk of memory.  The AV on this machine (it's managed by an IT department - also it's McAfee  ) also has various processes that seem to occasionally peg a CPU core, so I have to use task manager to kill those every now and again.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I always assumed that the "WSOD" problem was either FF or AV instability.  As a side note, FF 17.x is a big improvement stability-wise so far.

606

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Duke Nukem 3D free at gog.com until Dec 14 2012

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 13, 2012, 02:41 PM »

Are there any cool mods available?

-TaoPhoenix (December 13, 2012, 12:01 AM)

I don't know how good they are, but here's an old  forum posting that has links to about 8 mods:

  - http://www.gog.com/f...s/duke_nukem_3d_mods

607

Found Deals and Discounts / Duke Nukem 3D free at gog.com until Dec 14 2012

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 12, 2012, 10:56 PM »

Duke Nukem 3D free at gog.com until Dec 14 2012 14:59 GMT:

  - http://www.gog.com/g...em_3d_atomic_edition


To kick off a "2012 DRM-FREE HOLIDAY SALE" with

474 GAMES ON SALE  ·  NEW DEALS EACH DAY  ·  ONLY UNTIL JAN 3

608

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: SoftMaker FreeOffice available - each download donates to charity.

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 12, 2012, 12:11 PM »

By selling the tear drops from the kids in their sweat-shop(s)?

-Shades (December 12, 2012, 04:52 AM)

Out of curiosity, whose sweat shops are you talking about?

-40hz (December 12, 2012, 09:50 AM)

Do you think those registration keys that get sent out when you buy their software just appear out of nowhere?

Like convicts churning out automobile license plates, clearly the regkeys are produced by children in a warehouse with chains on the doors...

609

General Software Discussion / Re: MagicRAR Drive Press - worth anything?

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 10, 2012, 03:58 PM »

I had completely forgotten about that thread. I wonder if Josh ever got a response to his refund request...

610

General Software Discussion / Re: MagicRAR Drive Press - worth anything?

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 10, 2012, 01:17 PM »

My guess (just a gut feeling, not verified) is that their drive compression boasting is something along the lines of... when selecting "Compress this drive to save disk space", Windows doesn't select every file and folder by default (I'd guess it skips %WinDir% and other locations), whereas MagicRAR probably goes gung-ho on the entire partition.

-f0dder (December 10, 2012, 03:41 AM)

This sounds like a good guess.

I think I'll follow everyone's advice and just forget about this.  Except I might run a test in a VM sometime to see if f0dder's theory is right.

611

General Software Discussion / Re: MagicRAR Drive Press - worth anything?

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 10, 2012, 03:34 AM »

Just to be clear, the 'Drive Press' thing is part of a larger product, which is a full-blown shell integration archiver tool (ie., it makes archives look like folders in explorer).  It does apparently support RAR archives, but otherwise is not associated (as far as I know) with the outfit that makes WinRAR.  So your point about it cashing in on the RAR brand is well taken.

612

General Software Discussion / Re: MagicRAR Drive Press - worth anything?

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 10, 2012, 02:52 AM »

I'd only use something like this as a last resort or on a device I cared nothing about if it exploded or got stolen tomorrow morning.  For anything more important than that, I'd buy additional storage before doing anything like this.  I also avoid compression as much as practically possible.  But I am admittedly more than slightly paranoid about such things.

-superboyac (December 09, 2012, 11:56 PM)

I've never been bitten by any problem with NTFS compression (though I understand that Home Server had a bug in it's backup system when interacting with some compressed files).  Something I read about the 'Drive Press' thing lead me to believe that the actual compression used was the native NTFS encryption (so even if the Drive Press software were removed, the files would be handled just fine by the NTFS driver).  However, I'll need to dig around to locate what made me think that - I still haven't actually tried the software, mainly because of paranoia a bit similar, if not quite as intense, to yours. 

However, I may still test it out sometime (maybe I'm not paranoid enough),and I'm curious if anyone else knows anything about the software (or the bug it 'fixes').

613

General Software Discussion / MagicRAR Drive Press - worth anything?

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 09, 2012, 10:22 PM »

I've just heard about a utility that claims to increase the efficiency of Windows's native NTFS compression.  I'm mildly interested in this because I have a fair bit of stuff that can be usefully compressed (such as C header files and libraries - they're write once, compressible, and take up a lot of space if you have many compilers/SDKs/toolkits).

  - http://www.magicrar.com/drive-press.html

I'm curious about this software because of some of the claims made on an older site by the vendor:

All software has bugs...even Windows!

MagicRAR Drive Press uses safe, proven NTFS compression to increase your disk capacity.

But it outperforms Windows significantly! How is this possible, since both use NTFS compression?

It's a bug in the Windows drive conversion routine, which misses files that are completely safe to compress. First introduced in the problematic Windows Vista version, this bug renders a significant portion of your hard disks incompressible - even on the newer Windows 7 and Windows 8 versions! Take a look at the evidence we have collected below and see for yourself how MagicRAR Drive Press exceeds Windows's own compression, while using time-tested, proven, and completely safe, reversible NTFS compression as its underlying storage medium. And because Drive Press is multi-core and SSD capable, it will also convert your drives in a fraction of the time it would take Windows to do so. More storage and faster processing - now that's a win-win proposition!

-http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EL3b2dEehRkJ:howtocompressfiles.org/drive-press.html+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

This kind of feels like either snake-oil or maybe a registry setting that can be set without any special software. But I'd like to know more.

Does anyone have any experience with this software?  

Any  better information on how it works or what the mentioned bug in the Windows drive compression routine is?

614

Living Room / Re: Patenting Human Genes

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 04, 2012, 12:32 AM »

My retirement plan: once my kids get done with college and get real jobs, I can sue for patent infringement.

615

Developer's Corner / Re: Why C++ Is Not “Back”

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 02, 2012, 06:13 PM »

The biggest problem with C++ is that it lacks a large, high level standard (or standard enough) library for things like network communication, file and directory operations (beyond reading and writing files).    In C++ you have to decide if you want to roll your own or choose from one one of several competing alternatives and get it integrated into your build system.  Boost is the closest thing to this, but even Boost is far from universally used.

Then if you pull something down from the internet that looks to be useful, you have to make sure it'll work with your chosen library/libraries, decide to port it to those if necessary, or pull in yet another dependency (and hope there are no conflicts).

All of this exists for other languages to some extent, but it's far worse for C++.  Herb Sutter has indicated that a focus for the next stages of C++ standardization will be to try to extend the library to address this:

I’ve been beating the drum this year (see the last section of the talk) that the biggest problem facing C++ today is the lack of a large set of de jure and de facto standard libraries.

-http://herbsutter.com/2012/06/02/facebook-folly-oss-c-libraries/

There's also an indication that the C++ standardization process will try to move somewhat faster than the historically glacial pace it's taken in the past:

ISO C++ standardization is accelerating. Major companies are dedicating more people and resources to C++ standardization than they have in years. Over the next 24 months, we plan to ship three Technical Specifications and a new C++ International Standard.

-http://herbsutter.com/2012/11/03/talk-now-online-the-future-of-c-vc-iso-c/

Both of these goals are probably more difficult with C++ than other languages because C++ standardization is pretty truly a committee driven process - there is no single stakeholder that can dictate things as there is for most other languages. But it appears that many players in the C++ standardization process are trying to move it along (http://www.isocpp.org). Unfortunately, people who work on GCC don't seem to be represented very strongly at isocpp.org. Possibly because there's a significant cost - Gold at $10,000 per year, Silver at $5,000 per year, or Bronze at $1,000 per year.

616

General Software Discussion / Re: Pirate Software Dilemma

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 02, 2012, 12:21 PM »

The price better be cheaper

-Cloq (December 02, 2012, 09:59 AM)

They might grant you downgrade rights, but I'd be very surprised if they give you a break on the price because of it.  The way they'd look at it would probably along the lines of: you're buying the latest version, but if *you* decide you'd like to use something older, that's up to you.

617

Living Room / Re: clever google: httpS <--ok ad blockers, you have your hands full now

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 02, 2012, 01:41 AM »

If Adblock+ can block it, why is the Ad Muncher developer saying he can't?

-superboyac (December 02, 2012, 01:01 AM)

I think it's because the blockers that run as a plug-in deal with the content from inside the browser so it deals with the page from the DOM - after it's been decrypted.  Ad Muncher is a proxy - it doesn't run inside the browser, so it deal with the raw HTTP stream between the browser and the server.  however, that means that it can't see inside an encrypted stream.

So I think for Ad Muncher to deal with HTTPS would require a fundamental change in the design of the software.

618

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you going to wait for Windows 9?

« Last post by mwb1100 on December 01, 2012, 05:57 PM »

Then take the ever-increasing options for the consumer. Do I buy Win8 or WinRT, Metro, or Win8 Pro? Do I need a keyboard for an extra $100 or not? Do I buy an MS manufactured device or one from another manufacturer? Which chipset is better, ARM or Intel? Can I run my Win7 software on the Surface or not? And why should I pay $200-300 more for this than the alternatives (incl. laptops)?

-dr_andus (December 01, 2012, 02:35 PM)

The interesting thing is that Apple manages this same problem - the iPad is a different platform and set of applications than the Mac, but no one cares or feels confused by that.  I'm not sure why Microsoft can't see that they needed (and still need) to separate the tablet market and the desktop Windows market into distinct areas.  They should still have them work together well - everybody wants that - but they shouldn't try to market the idea that it's the same platform.

Needing to explain the difference between WinRT and Windows or the Surface vs. the Surface Pro is a bad spot to be in.

619

Living Room / Re: Off-the-wall ideas for Christmas presents?

« Last post by mwb1100 on November 26, 2012, 03:41 AM »

Generally for consumable things I either wouldnt normally buy (or not at all). There's a toothpaste I really like that's 4 euros - damned if I'm going to buy that for everyday, but if I get it as a present I'm happy as larry. Or something like pumpkin-seed oil.

-tomos (November 24, 2012, 10:45 AM)

I agree with this 100%.  But it's actually been hard to convince people that things like that make good gifts.  It seems that many people have an idea that if something doesn't have batteries or plug into an outlet, it can't be a good gift.

620

Living Room / Re: External DVD Writer

« Last post by mwb1100 on November 25, 2012, 11:33 PM »

yank out the power supply from your old desktop and short the green and black wires together.

-x16wda (November 25, 2012, 09:47 AM)

But now my computer won't boot! 

(seems like a lot of trouble to avoid spending $20 or so on a new internal DVD writer).

621

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Not-so-mini review of CrashPlan backup software

« Last post by mwb1100 on November 25, 2012, 04:01 PM »

Thanks! 

It's still at a very good discount (59%), but I wish I learned about this a couple days ago:

How the Sale works -

On Friday, Nov. 23 at 6:00AM CST, CrashPlan 1-year plans will be FREE. Every two hours after that, the price will steadily increase until Monday Nov. 26, 2:00PM CST, when your purchase will be discounted 42%. The discount will remain at 42% until the sale ends, 11:59PM CST Monday.

622

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Amiga & C64 Forever 2012 "R3" Plus Edition - 12.85 USD

« Last post by mwb1100 on November 25, 2012, 07:24 AM »

http://www.amigafore...special/cybermonday/

623

Living Room / Re: Linux users targeted by mystery drive-by rootkit

« Last post by mwb1100 on November 24, 2012, 01:11 PM »

It will be dealt with.

-40hz (November 24, 2012, 12:18 PM)

As long as it's not dealt with by "Symantec Norton Security Suite for Linux". 

Please?

624

Found Deals and Discounts / eBook deals

« Last post by mwb1100 on November 23, 2012, 07:26 PM »

eBook deals

• Informit Black Friday sale - 50% off all ebooks. http://www.informit....on.aspx?promo=139061
  
      Discount offer expires Sunday November 25, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
     
      Note that the discount is off of the list price, not the price they usually sell the ebooks for (which usually have some small discount off 'list').  Still, there are many nice books available, most of which are not DRMed.
  
  
• Apress Cyber Monday Sale
  
      On Monday November 26, 2012 all ebooks will be $15 at http://www.apress.com
     
      Apress PDFs are not DRMed (they used to use simple password protection, but seem to have done away with even that).
  
  

   

625

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Axialis software 50% off until 26 Nov 2012

« Last post by mwb1100 on November 23, 2012, 07:13 PM »

Axialis software - Icon Workshop, Screensaver Workshop and Cursor Workshop - is 50% off until December 31, 2009.

http://www.axialis.com/

-xtabber (December 29, 2009, 03:51 PM)

Axialis running a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale until 26 November 2012 - all products 50% off.