Recent Posts

6401

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual C++ 2008 Express and native x64 output ?

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 06:40 PM »

I figured out how to add x64 config myself, but thanks for posting it here anyway - somebody else might read & benefit (it's mentioned on the MS page I posted a link to). 40kb is a lot of bloat for fSekrit, and it doesn't really benefit from x64 version, but it was what I was working on so it was what I tried building for x64. Almost surprised it worked with no changes... dunno if there's any x64-related bugs in it, though

Wrt. supporting /MP switch, I doubt that should be necessary, unless the way the IDE works has been changed; in 2005 it doesn't invoke cl.exe with a long list of files, it invokes it once per file... so if the 2008 IDE hasn't changed, it will not use /MP but manually spawn threads.

6402

fSekrit / Beta: fSekrit 1.35 for your testing pleasure.

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 06:36 PM »

Here's a beta if you want to play around a bit, and help me find any potential bugs.

1.35 BETA4:

• 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.

1.35 BETA3:

• added:  drag&drop support: you can now drop a text file onto the fSekrit window, and fSekrit will load the dropped file.

1.35 BETA2:

• added:  right-click popup menu
• added:  redo support
• fixed:  no crash on Save As

1.35 BETA1:

• added:  unicode text support.
• added:  now everything sensitive is always wiped from memory after use, as far as it's possible (with the exception of the RichEdit control).

6403

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual C++ 2008 Express and native x64 output ?

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 05:10 PM »

The overview page specifically says "Create native Win32 and Win64 applications", and I'm attaching a screenshot of it in case Microsoft decides to fix that page



...I wonder if the dotNET framework SDK gives you the "full" compiler (ie, no handicapping of the optimizer and things like that), the 64bit libraries, and whether it's just for dotNET apps or can do native as well?

6404

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual C++ 2008 Express and native x64 output ?

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 04:48 PM »

Hmmmm, /MP? I see that it's for cl.exe, how does it work? If you specify only a single .c or .cpp file on the commandline, can it still effectively use multiple processes (I bet not)? I've been using multi-instance compiling with SCons build scripts, and supposedly VS2005 supports it in the IDE (I never got it to kick in though, it always only shows 1> in the output log, never 2>). Interesting to see it in the compiler, though.

Interestingly I don't see an option for compiling to 64bit code on the compiler, I would have expected it there, neither for vs2008 express nor vs2005 full. I googled a bit, and came across this, which says x64 tools aren't installed by default... so it would seem there are separate compiler binaries for 32- and 64-bit. I followed the instructions there to make an x64 build of fSekrit (which doesn't succeed atm ), and with Process Explorer I could see that indeed it uses a different compiler,C:\vs\VC\bin\x86_amd64\cl.exe.

The VS2008 Express edition does not seem to include a path like that, the entire install only has three files with "64" in the file name, and indeed no compiler. And iirc the installer didn't offer a custom option?

But on the download page, it says that you can create x64 native apps, HMMM!

Anyway, iirc you get the x64 compiler with the PlatformSDK, or perhaps it's the DDK, but I dunno if it's as fully featured as the compiler from VS Pro.

EDIT: seems like MS decided to rename "GWL_WNDPROC" to "GWLP_WNDPROC", but keep the GWL_ version when you're compiling for 32-mode, but drop it when compiling for x64. Fixed that, and fSekrit builds okay for x64. And heck, it even (seems to ;P) work, bloats exe size by 40k though.

6405

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 04:35 PM »

The only reasons for moving to Vista would be DirectX10 (which could be done for XP, but of course MS won't), possibly hardware drivers (Hybrid HardDrives not being supported on XP... although that's not too big a loss with the current generation of H-HDDs as performance is bleh), and when applications start (artificially or not) to depend on Vista.

There's some kernel improvements I certainly wouldn't mind, but they're bogged down by all the crap that's been added to the GUI, Vista is such a pig

6406

General Software Discussion / Re: Tool to migrate Thunderbird e-mails to The Bat!

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 01:35 PM »

Somebody should write a plugin that would allow better im/export from/to mbox files (as used by thunderbird) for TheBat... I ultimately want to move some accounts to an IMAP server, and it would be very nice being able to inject all my old email messages after that. But TheBat will only let you export individual messages (several at a time tho, ctrl+a and export gives you a single mbox file), not folder structures

6407

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 12:25 PM »

According to known news (wikipedia), windows 7 will be released as 32bit and 64 bit too, so we're not done yet

-justice (November 21, 2007, 11:42 AM)

Morons.

Vista is already at the point where you probably don't want to run it on hardware that isn't 64bit capable... I doubt Windows 7 will be better, sure their design ideas sound nice, but they'll fsck it up just as badly as they did with Vista. sigh.

6408

Living Room / Re: Man uses Wii Calendar Function to Catch His Cheating Wife

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 12:24 PM »

Sounds good to me, Ralf! Bring it on! Tom Cruise is on my list of those actors whose films I WILL NOT see out of protest for his idiocy off-screen. Why reward twits like him and Mel Gibson at the box office? Anyway, point is off-colour references to Tom Cruise will be well-received!

-Darwin (November 21, 2007, 11:48 AM)

Pirate their movies, watch other actors' movies in the cinema?

6409

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 11:21 AM »

Oh, I agree. My point was that the potential 64bit user base is now every Leopard Mac that has a 64bit PowerPC or Intel chip, as a percentage of the total userbase that is going to be significant[1] (what is the proportion of 32bit to 64bit vista installs?). That gives a Mac developer incentive to do the grunt work to make his code portable, because in theory anyone with a newer mac and Leopard will benefit.

-nontroppo (November 21, 2007, 09:35 AM)

I dunno about the ratio - and I'd like to repeat what I've said earlier, releasing a 32bit version of Vista was a mistake. Just like it was a mistake not to put more pressure on driver manufacturer when XP64 was released. Lots and lots of 32bit windows code runs just fine under 64bit, and the problematic stuff is either stuff that breaks on non-administrative accounts (ie., from developers with a "win9x mindset"), or because of crappy protection code.

6410

Living Room / Re: You may not know it, but you're part virus

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 11:15 AM »

borg borg.

6411

Living Room / Re: How good are you at spotting spyware, spam & phishing traps?

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 07:41 AM »

Hm, you were supposed to research? I did the same as Eóin, first impressions + previous knowledge. Didn't visit the sites, only looked at the screenshots.

I had 7/8 on the spyware quiz, Tightrope Walker I am

FAILURES:

Spoiler

I did wrong on the anysonglyrics.com vs. azlyrics.com test, which I sort of expected - it's a bit of a trick question because one of the sites has a "firefox prevented popup window", which obviously makes you go into alert mode. Also, anysonglyrics.com has a "contact" link, which does give a bit of confidence imho.

When judging a site by first looks, I generally look for the following:

Things to be wary of: ringtone advertisements, casino advertisements, "tell all your friends" links, "competitions" of various sorts, "your email address" "login" boxes, smiley/cursor/etc packs, pharmacy/drugs stuff.

Things that inspire confidence: contact links, forums, in some cases login/registration (but other times it screams bloody murder at you).

I failed pretty miserably at the Spam Quiz - 4 of 8. But again, that was based on first impressions, in a real life situation I'd either use a fake/spam email address for that kind of site, or I would do proper research.

FAILURES:

Spoiler

Failed on bullseyesgames.com vs. miniclip.com: I would have voted for miniclip because of site design, but I guess it was the ringtones ad of miniclip that threw me off. But of course, why would bullseyegames require login to play games?

Failed on funnyreign.com vs. superlaugh.com: the "JOIN for FREE" email boxes are very suspicious to me. But the "free greeting cards" and "We are now on MYSPACE" at funnyreign didn't seem kosher to me either - I wouldn't have left my email address at either site.

Failed on creditcardmenu.com vs. wiredplasticvisa.com: again, would never have used either (I visit my physical bank for money related matters), but the "retail locations" of wiredplasticvisa seemed like a plus.

Failed on petitionspot.com vs. thepetitionsite.com: thepetitionsite had something looking like a referer ID in the URL bar, I'm very wary of those. Should've looked closer at petitinspot.com, the money stuff and gmail address (instead of using their own domain) is fishy.

6412

Living Room / Re: When children design laptops

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 07:03 AM »

Oh my, those OPEN and CLOSE buttons are huge, I'd hit them by accident all the time

6413

Living Room / Re: Man uses Wii Calendar Function to Catch His Cheating Wife

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 07:01 AM »

Seriously, I'd like to echo (Deozaan, Fodder? Can't quite remember who) in thanking you for posting these great links 

-Darwin (November 20, 2007, 08:51 PM)

Huh, which links? Either it wasn't me, or I'm in denial.

Sounds like the wife was pretty retarted, doesn't it?

6414

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 06:59 AM »

No magic, just a bit of convenience  In general, I simply like the fact that i don't have to choose a 32bit or 64bit OS, I just have an OS that runs 32bit code and will run 64bit apps as they come out.

-nontroppo (November 21, 2007, 04:27 AM)

Then you have chosen (or rather, it has been chosen for you): you're running a 64bit OS. A 32bit OS won't run 64bit apps - the 32bit binary from the fatexe will be chosen.

That said, I heard something about the 64bit version of OS X being somewhat peculiar.

This i hope will lower the barrier to developers ensuring 64bit portability, because everyone will be able to run them without reinstalling their OS.

-nontroppo (November 21, 2007, 04:27 AM)

Actually it doesn't help wrt. 64bit portability - sure fat binaries are very smart, but it's still the programmer's job to, in source code, make sure his code compiles cleanly for both 32- and 64-bit modes. I'm not sure if xcode automatically compiles for each platform, or if you have to specify which platforms your fatexe should build for, but I can assure you that 32/64bit portable code doesn't happen by magic, you do need to design properly.

6415

Living Room / Re: What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

« Last post by f0dder on November 21, 2007, 06:54 AM »

In the case of Doom III, I don't think ID has deliberately tried to make it NT-only... but they might have done the sane thing and not worried about 9x compatibility. There is quite a difference in that regard, considering all the limitations 9x has.

But from 2k->XP there isn't really a lot of new and incompatible stuff added, and those XP-only games... well. foo.

6416

Older Newsletters / Re: Newsletter for November 19th - Codename "Postcard Club"

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 05:41 PM »

Nice newsletter, I really like the style of it

6417

General Software Discussion / Re: AlbumArt Downloader - where?

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 04:18 PM »

Heh, weird - it worked wonders for me. But I probably did tweak how it recognizes parts of filenames etc.

6418

General Software Discussion / Re: AlbumArt Downloader - where?

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 03:02 PM »

Hm, what did you google for?

Let me guess, his name... that's the one thing I didn't try

6419

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: XYplorer File Manager

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 02:18 PM »

I'm really happy with X2 too but one can't help but envy the XY users when one hears they have new builds to play with every few days. Argh!! 

-nosh (November 20, 2007, 02:14 PM)

I personally prefer somewhat longer inbetween builds, and have them stable (NOT saying that xyplorer isn't, don't have experience with it!) - now "in my older days", I don't suffer as much from versionitis as I used to

6420

General Software Discussion / AlbumArt Downloader - where?

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 01:22 PM »

Does anybody know where Album Cover Art Downloader went off to?

It's written by Sami Kyöstilä ([email protected]), and used to be hosted at
http://www.kempele.f...il/projects/albumart , but hasn't been present there for a while - and I haven't been very successful in googling for it.

The screenshot I'm attaching doesn't do the program much justice, as I don't currently have my mysic collection available from my computer, but it's the program that has been the easist to use & has given me the best results so far...

6421

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: XYplorer File Manager

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 01:07 PM »

Getting hot, getting hotter...

Personally I prefer a file management tool that lets me switch between single- and dual-pane view, and has tabs. xplorer² does this perfectly (I used 2xExplorer, nagged for single-pane mode, dropped 2xExplorer, and was super happy a while later when xplorer^2 was released).

I'm very keyboard-oriented when doing file management, and x^2 has very good hotkeys for managing tabs and everything. Here's a shot showing how I have x^2 configured (notice, no mouse-friendly toolbars ), and why I think dual-pane and tabs is useful...

Note that this isn't meant to belittle xyplorer or hit you in the head or anything, just to give a perspective on why I think dual-pane and tabs are good, and wouldn't use a file manager that hadn't got those features.

6422

Living Room / Re: What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 12:36 PM »

Which begs the question: why would a videogame manufacturer try to force customers to DirectX 10, available only on Vista?

-Ralf Maximus (November 20, 2007, 12:26 PM)

Duh?

Why would DX10 be Vista-only, when there's no reasons it couldn't be implemented for XP?

Why was Age Of Empires III artificially XP-only?

6423

General Software Discussion / DoMercury - another Quicksilver/FARR type program

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 12:00 PM »

nontroppo: I remember adding Sleep() calls in an installer for a program once, because otherwise you wouldn't get a chance to see the progress bar, even on 486's... actually, I think I've done it twice.

And I'm pretty sure CoolEditPro did it as well, helluva annoying. Same goes for those transition effects in some installers, where install pauses during background transition.

6424

fSekrit / Re: LATEST VERSION: fSekrit 1.3 shrinkwrapped!

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 10:54 AM »

Doh, there was something I forgot - updating the version string. I was in a hurry to get it released... my girlfriend would only let me use the computer for five minutes, so the whole release process was not properly planned

Don't worry, it is the final 1.3 release. I'm working on 1.35 as we speak, I hope to have something ready in the next couple of days. But I guess I could quickly fix the version string bug, thanks whatever_deity for source/version control software

6425

Living Room / Re: Breaking News: Multiple Universes Exist!

« Last post by f0dder on November 20, 2007, 10:52 AM »

Sometimes I wonder if those unified theories etc. could be relevant, or if it's simply the result of mathematicians gone insane. People like Holger Bech Nielsen and Steven Hawking are quite some characters, and I'm simply not smart enough to tell if they're raving mad or geniuses.