Recent Posts

6126

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Use locate32 with Farr

« Last post by f0dder on December 27, 2007, 08:03 AM »

Just so nobody else ends up looking as stupid as me, here's the plugin

6127

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Locate32 Plugin for FARR by Okke

« Last post by f0dder on December 27, 2007, 08:01 AM »

Just started using FARR yesterday, and remembered the Use locate32 with Farr thread. Cursed a bit at not being able to find the plugin, until I smartened up and just looked at the FARR subforum.

Great work, man, it works like a charm! Only thing I would ask is (if it's possible) to be able to customize the "loc" keyword, I'd prefer "!loc" myself so it doesn't interfere with anything else... also, adding the alt+number "big icon" like FARR itself does would be nice, but not as important

6128

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use a light or a dark background in your editor for programming?

« Last post by f0dder on December 27, 2007, 07:39 AM »

f0dder, which editor have you learned to love then? Maybe it has a desert color scheme too?

-housetier (December 27, 2007, 07:28 AM)

"Learned to love" doesn't really apply to any editor I use, but Notepad++ does the job pretty well, and loads faster than VIM. Also, the source editor in Visual Studio is neat, especially when coupled with WholeTomato's Visual Assist (some options in the auto-complete category tend to get in my way, so I turn those off - but other are very nifty).

6129

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations Destroying Storage Media??

« Last post by f0dder on December 27, 2007, 06:40 AM »

Good advice to wrap CDs in newspaper/whatever before breaking, you wouldn't want to get splinters in your eyes. Non-microwave destruction? Burn them. Nasty smoke, though.

6130

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista’s ReadyBoost benefits on your Windows XP machine with eBoostr

« Last post by f0dder on December 27, 2007, 02:13 AM »

I have tried many many "boosters" over the years but with poor success.  Mostly they're a bunch of hype.  Then I discovered MemTurbo 4.  It's a very configurable cache manager, RAMbooster, and process handler program that has considerably improved performance on my 2.8 ghz XP computer.  But it isn't freeware, it's commercial.  $19.95

-Tinman57 (December 26, 2007, 10:46 PM)

It's cache tuning might work, but I suspect all that does is tweak registry settings (some of which only worked on Win9x), and which there are freeware apps for doing anyway. it's "memory boosting technology" aka RAM freeing is snake oil, discussed many times before.

6131

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations Destroying Storage Media??

« Last post by f0dder on December 27, 2007, 02:09 AM »

A few seconds in a microwave works wonders on a CD-R. Need to watch really closely though and hit stop as soon as the lightning starts to flicker on the CD's surface.

-jdmarch (December 26, 2007, 08:20 PM)

I did this once, and it was freaking scary. The blue lightning across the surface looked cool, but the noise... the noise creeped me out. The result? Look for yourself:

6132

Living Room / Re: Ideas to make DC even better

« Last post by f0dder on December 26, 2007, 08:17 PM »

I'm not too fond of ads, but if they're subtle (google adwords-style) and opt-IN, I'd even go as far as add donationcoder.com to adblock plus exception list (ie, "don't filter this domain")

The #1 idea sounds good, if done right... emphasis being on in-house respectable people, rather than "programmer dating service"

6133

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use a light or a dark background in your editor for programming?

« Last post by f0dder on December 26, 2007, 08:10 PM »

That other thread I just linked is kinda related to this one, so it's probably worth a read if you're interested in this one.

-f0dder (December 26, 2007, 08:03 PM)

I was first.

-Gothi[c] (December 26, 2007, 08:04 PM)

<spam>only because I wrote a lengthier post, involving having to do a search </spam>

6134

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use a light or a dark background in your editor for programming?

« Last post by f0dder on December 26, 2007, 08:03 PM »

Black on white, since it's the default. Big bother messing around if there's no predefined color schemes. I kinda like one of the light-on-dark schemes in VIM (I think it's called desert? yes it is, forum search for VIM desert worked ), but I never really learned to love VIM - can't be bothered.

That other thread I just linked is kinda related to this one, so it's probably worth a read if you're interested in this one.

6135

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you archive your Email or MBox2CHM?

« Last post by f0dder on December 26, 2007, 08:02 AM »

Humm, I don't really think Maildir is a good storage format for client PCs. It's nice for servers with a small-file optimized filesystem (ReiserFS comes to mind), and it's very easy to do efficient incremental backups of it. But for archive+search usage, I'd prefer bigger bulk files.

Sounds nice that MailStore uses FireBird, at least you're not going to suffer from total proprietary lockin. I wonder why they use FireBird and not SQLite though, since FB (afaik) is a full-blown client/server database, whereas SQLite was written for being embedded...

6136

Living Room / Re: Tell me why I have to be a PowerSlave?

« Last post by f0dder on December 26, 2007, 07:54 AM »

Yeah, laptops do draw a lot less power than a full-blown PC. When running on AC current, the ones I'm currently fixing up draw ~77W while charing, iirc ~40W when fully charged and running, and "very little" while standby/poweroff but connected.

Interestingly enough, when the power brick is plugged in but not connected to a laptop, it draw 0.0W. Since there's power transformation in power bricks, I didn't expect 0W usage...

6137

General Software Discussion / Re: Leopard is the New Vista, and It's Pissing Me Off

« Last post by f0dder on December 26, 2007, 07:47 AM »

Windows peer-to-peer networking never worked really well, and the SMB/CIFS protocol used isn't the best in the world (you'll realize that, with disappointment, as soon as you move to gigabit networking). But having a domain controller does help a lot, and perhaps having an always-on machine with a higher browse master priority might help (you could set up SAMBA if you have an always-on linux server at the company).

Anyway, if you're sharing stuff, it's best to do it on a central machine anyway, instead of relying on individual client machines to be online when a document is necessary

6138

Living Room / Re: What's the best registry cleaner? Ask Leo says: none

« Last post by f0dder on December 26, 2007, 07:43 AM »

ows registry is the tree structure, and many software design to "full explore" this function with each every information, configuration all stored into the registry, and the only result is slowing down the system.

-supertechnogeek (December 25, 2007, 08:27 PM)

That's bull. Registry lookups are very efficient since binary search is used for looking up keys; this basically means that the number of keys has to double for one extra compare instruction to be necessary.

Oh, and when you're an affiliate or have any form of connection with a product you're posting about, you should state this very clearly in the post. Nobody here likes hidden agendas.

6139

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations Destroying Storage Media??

« Last post by f0dder on December 26, 2007, 07:38 AM »

I don't feel like using DBAN and leaving Windows just to wipe an external drive clean... and I don't have a floppy drive in my computer anyway. And does it handle external (USB, FireWire) drives, and drives on RAID controllers?

6140

General Software Discussion / Re: Current IE8 build renders the ACID2 Test correctly!

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 06:30 PM »

Humm, I just changed "Folder" back to using "Open" as default, and changed "open" to use xplorer2. FireFox still launches explorer.exe. Renamed the DDEExec key as well, and still the same. Shitty coders.

6141

Living Room / Re: Tell me why I have to be a PowerSlave?

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 06:26 PM »

f0dder, any instance of sound scratchiness while doing things in the computer and you have some music playing in the background? (in a audio player, of course )

-Lashiec (December 25, 2007, 04:56 PM)

Humm, haven't used my computer for MP3 playback after I moved to XP64... are you thinking wrt. the raptor drives or the CoolNQuiet stuff? Iirc there weren't any audio glitches when I played with it under XP32 years back.

6142

General Software Discussion / Re: ... [ARRRRRRRGH!]

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 06:25 PM »

The ellipsis(...) isn't a "widget" - it's simply a piece of text, and it's up to each and every individual developer whether (s)he wants to add it to a menu item, button (etc.) or not.

But I guess you could catch a fair amount by globally hooking SetWindowTextW() and replacing all occurrences of "..." with "".

6143

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations Destroying Storage Media??

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 06:19 PM »

Thermite? You don't need a few kilos of thermite... not even 100g. Easy to make as well, although you should never try making magnesium filings/powder yourself - buy it in powder form or don't mess with it at all.

6144

General Software Discussion / Re: How many of you use encryption?

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 04:32 PM »

If you've used PGP to encrypt individual files, and haven't used wiping tools, you have residue left on your harddisk that's easy to restore. Using multiple layers of keys hasn't been mathematically proven to make you more secure, you shouldn't use a cipher you don't trust a single layer of.

For text files, fSekrit is pretty good. At least that's what the government has told me to tell you

6145

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you archive your Email or MBox2CHM?

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 04:29 PM »

Humm, I'm considering moving my mails to an archive myself, and there's a couple of points I find very important:

• Either a documented storage format, or a way to output to MBOX. I don't want to be locked-in with a proprietary format. The app itself can be as proprietary and closed-source as it wants to, though.
• Has to have really good searching features, as that's obviously something you'll need for an email archive.
• Easy import from the major players and formats (at least MBOX (thunderbird etc.) and outlook/express.
• One Big File or at least just a few of them.

I'll look into the various offerings sometime soon, I guess... I really want to get the bulk of my mails moved to archive, and then start using IMAP instead of POP3. My host supports it, but I'm not going to trust anybody else to archive my mails.

6146

Older Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for December 24th - Codename "Here Comes Your NANY"

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 04:20 PM »

I like the somewhat "chatty" tone, and I like how you describe a block of links instead of each individual link. Works very well. Perhaps the text blocks are a bit on the long side, but it is an end-of-the-year newsletter after all. Was nice reading through.

And I was mentioned!

* f0dder jumps up and down frantically.

6147

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Raid with SATA Disks

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 03:57 PM »

Thanks for the replies and Cuffy that's an excellent link.

f0dder when you say mirroring with parity are you suggesting something like :-

-Eóin (December 25, 2007, 10:24 AM)

Nonono, not mirroring with parity, I meant regular RAID-5 (aka parity) mode.

Stick with a mirror, really. You get about same write speed as a single disk, and decent implementations will stripe your reads; nForce4 lameness won't, linux won't (at least by default), intel RAID matrix <3 will - haven't ever used windows raid, so dunno if it does. And no, read striping isn't dangerous, you still catch errors through drive CRC failures...

A mirror also has the advantage you can always pull out the disk and use it in single-disk mode, you can port it to another RAID controller, etc...

6148

General Software Discussion / Re: ... [ARRRRRRRGH!]

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 03:44 PM »

I like the ellipses, just like I like the Alt+Letter underlines. They both serve a purpose, and I can't understand people who find them un-aesthetic.

If you want to remove the ellipsis, you'll end up modifying at least a bunch of .exe resources, and for some apps you'd have to touch regular data and even code as well, since menu items can be constructed dynamically. Good luck

6149

Find And Run Robot / Re: Bug: Memory error on latest version

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 03:39 PM »

Ugh, user.exe and not ever user32.exe? Nasty. Perhaps handle leaking, double-freeing of some resource, or a problem with an API parameter, those would be my initial guesses to get a crash there.

6150

General Software Discussion / Re: How many of you use encryption?

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 03:29 PM »

FAT access would be pretty darn easy, NTFS... ugh. Although linux read-only access is stable enough, so that code could be ripped. But one could probably live with FAT for use on a flash pendrive, which is where a device-driver less solution is required...

Would take a bit of work though, sure