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6151

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 10:35 AM »

I assume you're talking about creating your custom X2 key (eg: Open_X2) under 'Folder' & 'Directory' and then making that key the default action, like it says in the manual. I was talking about modifying the 'Open' key itself to point to X2 instead of Explorer. I don't have the setting on right now coz I restored a previous Windows image so can't confirm WRT ut & ff. 

-nosh (December 25, 2007, 09:59 AM)

Ahah!

I'll give that a try later, thanks.

6152

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 09:32 AM »

I don't think anyone pointed their finger at IE, more like the people behind IE - esp. when the tools that are hard-coded to use  it instead of the default browser are made by the same corporation.

f0dder, I managed to make a few apps that always loaded explorer.exe load X2 by modifying the association for the folder shell context 'Open' key.

-nosh (December 25, 2007, 09:29 AM)

I have x2 associated to both "Folder" and "Directory", but still firefox and µTorrent choose explorer.exe...

6153

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 09:31 AM »

And that is the fault of IE how? That is the developer of said applications fault, not IE

-Josh (December 25, 2007, 08:56 AM)

Well, with the "uses IE instead of system default browser", it's the fault of IE... but it would have been the same with any other browser component, after all when you click a link IE, you don't expect it to open in firefox, even if you select "open in new browser window".

It's annoying nonetheless, when you click a link in PlatformSDK or whatever.

6154

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 08:28 AM »

I have been using Eraser and I like it. The UI is a bit odd. It doesn't, I don't know, It doesn't "flow".  But it does the trick.

-tinjaw (December 24, 2007, 05:14 AM)

Can eraser handle full partition/disk wipes? Iirc I gave it a quick spin a while ago, but as far as I could tell it could only wipe files...

6155

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Raid with SATA Disks

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 08:24 AM »

Don't do RAID-5, stick with RAID-MIRROR... with a parity (RAID-5) setup, you can still only afford losing a single disk, and the rebuild operation when that disk fails is intensive, making it likely for a second disk to fail during the rebuild. With mirroring, the rebuild operation is a bit less intensive (although you still have to read the entire of the other disk, for a 2-disk mirror).

The Pro editions of windows support software natively, and you might as well stick with that rather than buying a cheap RAID card. If you want to buy a RAID card, you'd have to go for one of those 3ware/whatever with onboard RAM and battery-backup to get any real advantage over full software raid.

The entry-level promise cards (as well as onboard raid on motherboards) don't usually offer any advantage, and at most an XOR engine to relieve the CPU a bit (and in some cases those XOR engines are so slow they end up impairing disk speed).

6156

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 08:21 AM »

Like what? What refuses to open your default browser?

-Josh (December 24, 2007, 08:19 AM)

Anything using an embedded IE control + a few other apps. Some apps (including firefox and µTorrent) also specifically launch explorer.exe instead of whatever app is associcated with HKLM\Folder and HKLM\Directory... weird, since that actually requires more code than the simple ShellExecute...

6157

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 25, 2007, 08:20 AM »

Similarity 4: Windows networking sucks irrespective of OS! Machines appear or disappear on Network neighbourhood depending on the menstrual cycle of humpback whales as far as I can tell. From Tiger->Leopard, I've lost one named machine, but gained another on our work network (a draw). I gave up long time ago looking for named shares (in XP pre-switch) and have used IP addresses since, that way networking works identically on XP, Leopard and Tiger. What that has to do with Vista I'm not sure.

-nontroppo (November 30, 2007, 07:23 AM)

Is that using windows "peer-to-peer" networking, or with a proper domain controller?

6158

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 24, 2007, 03:53 AM »

If you do full-disk encryption on linux, make sure to use encrypted swap too... having /boot unencrypted (as it needs to) isn't a security issue. I've used root-encrypted linux with slackware and loop-AES for several years, works like a charm.

6159

Living Room / Re: Happy Festivus everyone!

« Last post by f0dder on December 24, 2007, 03:13 AM »

I believe in god money, I follow consumer whoreism.

Happy holidays!

6160

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 24, 2007, 03:09 AM »

No point in wasting CPU cycles encrypting a drive, just use a multi-pass wiper...

6161

Developer's Corner / Re: Top 11 Signs Programming May Be Ruining Your Love Life

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2007, 05:18 PM »

#3 is nice. I think I've had more girlfriends than computers though, amazingly enough. But if I've had more money...

6162

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2007, 05:16 PM »

The best idea in IE7 was hiding the Menu bar automatically, using the ALT key to display it. I rarely go to the menus, and this saves valuable screen space. I wish Opera would do this.

-zridling (December 23, 2007, 03:49 PM)

I kinda hate that feature, even though I don't use menus much. I think I could learn to live with it (perhaps even appreciate it) for my web browser, but overall? Dunno.

I absolutely loathe "hide underline until ALT is pressed", and how the heck do I turn that off on Vista? >_<

6163

fSekrit / Re: Beta: fSekrit 1.35 for your testing pleasure.

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2007, 03:40 PM »

Topic locked, fSekrit 1.35 has been declared stable for release!

6164

fSekrit / fSekrit 1.35 shrinkwrapped!

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2007, 03:40 PM »

There, fSekrit 1.35 has been released!

After a relatively short beta period, this Christmas 2007 release sports the following features:

Version 1.35 - December 23, 2007 - 100kb/50.5kb

• fixed: file->export appends ".txt" instead of ".exe" if no extension given.
• fixed: file->new now clears passphrase and read-only state.
• fixed: menu items are now properly enabled/disabled depending on read-only state and whether text field is empty or not.
• added: drag&drop support: you can now drop a text file onto the fSekrit window, and fSekrit will load the dropped file.
• added: right-click popup menu with edit actions
• added: redo support
• added: unicode text support (only the note text, not filenames yet)
• added: now everything sensitive is always wiped from memory after use, as far as it's possible (with the exception of the RichEdit control).

As always, I hope there aren't any bugs I haven't caught

6165

fSekrit / Re: Beta: fSekrit 1.35 for your testing pleasure.

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2007, 03:20 PM »

Whoop, off to bed, the day's work is done

-f0dder (December 21, 2007, 08:06 PM)

Why sleep when you could be working on fSekrit?  What odd priorities you have!

-cranioscopical (December 22, 2007, 10:12 AM)

Yeah, I know, I'm a bad bad person and a lousy developer

Anyway, added beta4. I think this is the last round of features that'll make in into 1.35...

6166

General Software Discussion / Re: MD5Summer Program that work with dir

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2007, 02:09 PM »

Bwaha

6167

Living Room / Re: The Canonical LCD Thread at AnandTech.com

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2007, 11:41 AM »

Ed Bott says if you are planning on buying an LCD monitor, you need to check out this thread at the AnandTech forum, and i can see why.  Looks like a ton of up-to-date details, information about what to look for, and a nice concise recommendation section for people who don't have 300 hours to analyze charts.  Good stuff.

-mouser (December 22, 2007, 02:05 AM)

...but have 600 hours for reading 110 pages of forum posts on the subject?

6168

General Software Discussion / Re: strange problem: impossible to launch new windows.

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2007, 10:44 AM »

I think I found it. it was trayIt!, an app to minimize things to the tray.
Thanks

-urlwolf (December 22, 2007, 10:35 AM)

You should probably report that to the developers, and say they might have a GDI handle leak

6169

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2007, 09:03 AM »

A little update: I thought setting "Minimal Power Management" in control panel -> power options was enough to activate my CPU's power saving features, but apparently you still need the Processor Driver from AMD.

With that installed, the aforementioned power management profile selected, and Cool&Quiet enabled in the BIOS, my idle power consumption went from ~107W to ~97W. (Yes, the 107W is higher than the previous idle usage I reported, but I've added a second raptor drive and a second DVD burner). Not bad.

With the Amd Clock utility (also downloadable from the page above), you can even see the current speed of the cores... they're clocked down to 1000MHz on idle, instead of the full 2200MHz under load.

6170

Living Room / Re: Blu ray vs HD DVD

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2007, 08:59 AM »

Comparing the two formats feature-wise is pointless, you should go for the format that ends up winning the war (whether it means the other format heads for extinction or just that one format has more titles).

Yeah, one format has higher disc capacity, but whatever

6171

General Software Discussion / Re: fogBugz (bug tracking)by the people who write joelonsoftware. What do you think?

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2007, 08:53 AM »

Humm, I'm not too fond of Spolsky's blogs, he's too full of himself... and I'm not too fond of people writing their own "programming languages" for a specific thing like this.

But it's not like I know any other software in the category

6172

General Software Discussion / Re: TrueCrypt - FAT32/NTFS

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2007, 06:53 AM »

Hm.

Are you using "filesystem in a file" with TrueCrypt, or do you use direct partition encryption?

Whatever the case, as long as the TrueCrypt volume is formatted NTFS, it should have support for big files. But if you're using "filesystem in a file" and the container is on a FAT32 formatted drive, well... . Anyway, no need to format, use "convert x: /FS:NTFS".

6173

fSekrit / Re: Beta: fSekrit 1.35 for your testing pleasure.

« Last post by f0dder on December 21, 2007, 08:06 PM »

Hm, I dunno if I can check for keyboard modifiers with the drag-drop method I use now, will check it out... if I can't, I'd probably have to go the COM/OLE way which is somewhat more code, will have to think about that.

Anyway, the whole append thing won't be difficult to code after all, my code architecture was a bit better than I thought it was

Whoop, off to bed, the day's work is done, and people will receive their xmas mail after all, yay.

6174

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

« Last post by f0dder on December 21, 2007, 08:02 PM »

Ralf Maximus: (executable from disk) load/init speed, not render speed...

-f0dder (December 21, 2007, 02:57 AM)

Ah, well thats a small distinction, since you load a lot of IE while loading windows and it sits in memory when not in use.  I think I would rather that not be the case and pay a few extra seconds loading the browser when I use it, so to me the  Firefox implementation is the advantage, not the IE6 one.

-Tekzel (December 21, 2007, 09:55 AM)

That's bollocks, really.

Yes, the "common controls" that were originally introduced with IE get loaded at OS start, because just about every application nowadays use them. But which other IE components get loaded at startup? Internet Explorer != explorer.exe.

I've heard that argument over and over again, but nobody have been able to quantify it.

And more than a second to load a browser is *forever* when I click a forum reply notify link in my email client. Yes, I could mitigate this by using the firefox tray icon hack but I don't feel like doing so. Also, even if FF is loaded, once there's ~10 open tabs, opening additional tabs become slower.

But hey, it's still worth it.

6175

Living Room / Re: Security numerology and the art of insult…

« Last post by f0dder on December 21, 2007, 09:34 AM »

"Tell me the results you want, and I'll create the matching graphs for you" - that's what statistics are all about.

It's funny how actual numbers are called absurd, though.

I stopped reading the article about 1/6th through, it has the same kind of language use and bleh as http://www.theregister.co.uk/, gets old pretty damn fast.