Recent Posts

6576

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by f0dder on October 31, 2007, 06:20 AM »

Is ScanPST a Microsoft or a 3rd-party tool, Carol?

6577

General Software Discussion / Re: XP or Vista user — take the poll!

« Last post by f0dder on October 31, 2007, 06:18 AM »

On the off chance... this is a tube monitor, right?  Does it have a degauss button?

Sometimes a strong magnetic field in close proximity will cause CRTs to display large black purplish bruises on one or another edge.  Degaussing it would be a free fix, if it works.

-Ralf Maximus (October 30, 2007, 02:18 PM)

Tube monitors (the last few I had before going TFT) tended to de-gauss by themselves on power-on, so a de-gauss button probably wouldn't have helped much... there's some stronger de/re-whatever-magnetizing devices that can be used in the severe cases, my mum got our TV fixed back several years ago with one... that was back when I thought it was fun to play with magnets and went all "ooooh, the news reporter is purple ".

6578

Living Room / Re: How to get data from dead flash drive?

« Last post by f0dder on October 30, 2007, 11:47 AM »

"chkdsk /f" works fine on flash drives, since what it corrects are filesystem metadata corruption, not physical defects.

Tekzel: apart from failing circuitry, what's so bad about using flash drives for backup? Once you hit the maximal write cycles (which you probably won't anyway), it's my understanding that the used regions simply can't be "re-flashed", but still retain the last written value?

6579

General Software Discussion / Re: eStarling - WiFi LCD picture frames are starting to become useful

« Last post by f0dder on October 30, 2007, 05:24 AM »

Would be wonderful having it display server stats and things like that

6580

Living Room / Re: How to get data from dead flash drive?

« Last post by f0dder on October 30, 2007, 05:23 AM »

tsaint: an amount of usb flashdrives (especially the ones that aren't tiny) have the actual flesh memory mounted as a daughter-board that connects to the circuitry - two of the drives I've owned were designed like this. I assume that if it's the circuitry and not the flash that's fried, and if you can get an identical flashdrive, you could just swap the flash daughterboard.

I dunno how likely it is that the flash memory isn't fried, though. And with the small sizes of today's flashdrives, the flash itself is likely integrated... and drives like the corsair flash voyager are hard to open yourself.

6581

General Software Discussion / Re: Evidence Eliminator - What has your experience been?

« Last post by f0dder on October 29, 2007, 06:35 AM »

radsoft.net... ho humm. Claiming that 740 registry entries will grind win9x to a halt and saying that no professionals use Visual Basic is enough to lower the site's credibility a lot. I don't doubt what it says about EE affiliate scheme and shoddy coding, but radsoft.net is just about as sensationalist bullshit as grc.com...

6582

General Software Discussion / Re: Evidence Eliminator - What has your experience been?

« Last post by f0dder on October 28, 2007, 03:26 PM »

Oh yeah, I always forget about the american-style credit cards, since I'm used to... debit cards? Ie., cards that are linked to a bank account with money, instead of giving you credit.

For online shopping, how about this idea: get a non-credit credit card , and link it to an account you only keep a smallish amount of money in - and make sure the account can't be overdrawn.

6583

General Software Discussion / Re: Evidence Eliminator - What has your experience been?

« Last post by f0dder on October 28, 2007, 01:21 PM »

Hm, "software generating credit card numbers"? Sounds like bull to me, since you need expiry date, card number, security code, and in some cases even the cardholders name.

I've never¹ had my VISA exploited due to online shopping, phishing, keylogging or whatever, it's just not very likely to happen if you stick to reputable sites. And your credit card information shouldn't be stored at the shopping sites either once the transaction is done, except for stuff like one-click purchase at Amazon.

It's more likely that a waiter at a restaurant have carbon-copied your card details, imho.

Evidence Eliminator doesn't seem particularly useful to me, it's more of a thing you'd use if you were borrowing somebody else's computer, or if you were a sneaky person hiding things from your wife, etc. If your computer is compromised, it won't help you. If a remote shopping site is compromised, it won't help you either.

1: it was, however, physically stolen once, and charged for USD~150, online purchases. Bank canceled the charges, dunno if the police dismissed the case because it was such a petty amount, never heard from them anyway.

6584

Living Room / Re: Coders' Watches

« Last post by f0dder on October 28, 2007, 01:16 PM »

Heh, program your wristwatch in assembly? Sounds like overkill

I haven't used wristwatches for several years, I've used my cellphone instead - almost always have it on me. I don't even use a normal alarm clock either these days, my Sony-Ericsson K750i is a lot more effective since it can play back MP3s... nothing like Dimmu Borgir: Purithanical Euphoric Misanthropia: Sympozium to get me started in the morning

But if I used a watch, it would be an inexpensive, small, neutral-looking digitla watch.

We've had at least one thread about watches in the past, btw

6585

General Software Discussion / Re: Do I need another anti-virus/malware program or am I paranoid?

« Last post by f0dder on October 28, 2007, 12:41 PM »

I've got bad experience with BitDefender - insane amount of crashes on win9x machines, and regular BSODs on HyperThreading capable machines running XP, problems with auto-update not being able to restart BitDefender after update, problems with not being able to shut down machines cleanly, etc...

It's antivirus capabilities seemed okay for regular purposes, but I'm not going to touch it again, ever - Kaspersky or NOD32 all the way from now on.

Windows XP has a built-in firewall since service pack 2, and you don't really need anything beyond that. If you're at the point where you need outgoing firewalling, you already have something bad on your system, and it's basically game over (yeah okay, if you're paranoid outgoing firewall means you can monitor apps... and either have the headache of setting up rules yourself, or have default rules that means security problems).

The XP firewall is fine enough for blocking you against incoming crap from the LAN, your NATing router will handle nasty stuff from the internet, whether you want KAV or NOD32 installed depends on your surfing habits, and besides that... well, SpyBot S&D if you use Internet Explorer.

6586

General Software Discussion / Re: More Vista Fun and Games

« Last post by f0dder on October 28, 2007, 09:11 AM »

Vista: the Happi happi joy joy OS

6587

Living Room / Re: dotNET compiler for LOLCODE

« Last post by f0dder on October 28, 2007, 09:07 AM »

Haha

6588

Living Room / Re: Windows Install Date Thingie: I made it!

« Last post by f0dder on October 27, 2007, 07:10 PM »

Ralf, how are you retrieving uptime?

-f0dder (October 27, 2007, 06:21 PM)

GetTickCount

Yes, I know: it rolls over every 49.3 days or something, and causes frog die-offs in Canada, and was blamed for the mass terror & hysteria at 11:59 on 1999, but it's the first thing I grabbed in the toolbox.

-Ralf Maximus (October 27, 2007, 07:05 PM)

*grin*

Didn't mean to criticize you, I just think it's too bad to have this flaw in an otherwise pretty nifty little tool. I have a snippet somewhere that grabs the uptime performance counter, which shouldn't roll over, I can look for it if you want to, dunno if it's easy to get working with VB though.

6589

Developer's Corner / Re: Best way to start learning C++?

« Last post by f0dder on October 27, 2007, 06:52 PM »

Dunno if MFC can be used with other compilers than Microsoft, btw, and I'm not sure about WTL/ATL either (but at least there you get the full source, so you aren't screwed wrt. license and no-source libraries).

So... learn the language without focusing too much on GUIs, then consider if you want vendor lock-in or a bit more complication and even more code bloat, but portable apps with a 3rd-party widget toolkit. Yeah, I know, clicking buttons is more fun and more awarding than the console, but you learn more the other way.

I also do agree that once you're beyond the basics + a bit more, you need to work on a project the interests you.

6590

Developer's Corner / Re: Best way to start learning C++?

« Last post by f0dder on October 27, 2007, 06:32 PM »

TC3 is Turbo C++ 3, back from the 16bit DOS days. Decent product with good IDE back in those times, but almost useless today unless you have some very specific needs. Back then I preferred borland turbo pascal though, it was faster and it didn't matter it generated worse code, you needed assembly for anything speed sensitive anyway

mouser: Delphi and BCB/CGTC++ are indeed pretty nifty for glueing GUIs together quickly, Borland did succeed in Rapid Gui Design (I don't want to call it Rapid Application Design, even though components can be more than just GUI elements).

But if you take away the VCL (Visual Component Library, the GUI component library, for those that aren't familiar with Delphi and BCB), not many advantages are left - and the VCL isn't something you want to start with if your goal is to learn the C++ language and become proficient in it. I dunno if VCL can even be used with other C++ compilers than Borland's?

6591

Living Room / Re: Password Cracking Made Easy Thanks to the GPU

« Last post by f0dder on October 27, 2007, 06:26 PM »

In the password/security context, hash means "one way cryptographic algorithm"

Dunno if it's a false sense of security, hashes do make it pwetty damn hard retrieve your password, unless the attacker can use rainbow tables - but those are at least partially thwarted if you use some salt with your hash (unless the attacker generates mindbogglingly large rainbow tables).

6592

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: launch application upon focusing a GUI element

« Last post by f0dder on October 27, 2007, 06:23 PM »

Nice idea - too bad if some application has a custom edit control...

-f0dder (October 27, 2007, 07:56 AM)

I'm wondering if it works for custom controls inheriting the base edit control.

-gjehle (October 27, 2007, 11:59 AM)

Subclassed yes, superclassed no.

Of course you can detect other classnames and adjust, but it's annoying - just like getting "scrolled app captures", though not as bad.

6593

Living Room / Re: Windows Install Date Thingie: I made it!

« Last post by f0dder on October 27, 2007, 06:21 PM »

Ralf, how are you retrieving uptime?

6594

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: launch application upon focusing a GUI element

« Last post by f0dder on October 27, 2007, 07:56 AM »

Nice idea - too bad if some application has a custom edit control...

6595

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by f0dder on October 27, 2007, 04:40 AM »

I agree that the 10000 files limit could be an annoying surpise : it is NOT advertised. You're right. (You might not feel like it, but you could send them a little note. That's what I'd do : some developers don't realize how small things like that can make all the difference and... They need to be told nicely.)

-Armando (October 27, 2007, 02:00 AM)

Humm, I'm pretty sure I noticed a file limit somewhere when I tried Archivarius - but it might have been a "sorry, can't index more than..." message rather than something advertised up-front.

Is an unadvertised 10000 file limit on a free trial really the same as falsely promoting something under the "freeware" tag when it's in fact... a trialware?

-Armando (October 27, 2007, 02:00 AM)

It's certainly an "artificial limit" to put on the application, rather than the normal additional-feature-in-payware-version thing, but imho it can still be labeled as freeware as long as it doesn't have a trial period, nag screens, etc...

EDIT: oops, shows how long it is since I tried Archivarius - it is indeed limited trialware (limited amount of days as well as program executions).

6596

Living Room / Re: Windows Install Date Thingie: I made it!

« Last post by f0dder on October 27, 2007, 03:46 AM »

9 months and 24 days... this install is getting old

Btw, what do you use to get running time? GetTickCount() or performance counters? GetTickCount() isn't reliable

6597

Living Room / Re: Password Cracking Made Easy Thanks to the GPU

« Last post by f0dder on October 26, 2007, 10:42 AM »

If something sends a hash of passphrase+whatever, it means your passphrase is stored in plaintext (or at least automatically recoverable) form somewhere server-side... If just a hash is sent, it could be that just the hash is stored serverside, but then of course the hash is just as good as your passphrase.

6598

Living Room / dotNET compiler for LOLCODE

« Last post by f0dder on October 26, 2007, 08:25 AM »

Okay, this is seriously ill... I it

The lolcode language (wiki) is one of those new silly esoteric languages... and now somebody is writing a dotNET compiler for it!

Including debugging support and everything - now is this twisted or what?

6599

Developer's Corner / Re: Best way to start learning C++?

« Last post by f0dder on October 26, 2007, 06:08 AM »

MS VC++ is certainly like hitting on the wall.You'll hit plenty deep on there.You can try Turbo C++ Explorer edition which is free and better than MS VC++.

-arunpawar

Define "better"?

Borland used to have some good development products back in the nineties, but the code
generation of their compilers isn't up to par (haven't been for a long time), their standard library isn't all too great, and last time I looked C++ standards compliance was somewhat behind as well.

You'll be creating better programs both console and windows with this.

-arunpawar

And why is that?

If you stick to standard C++ features, MSVC wins because of better code generation. If you start using frameworks, Borland has the incredibly bloated VCL - even MS's MFC is less bloated than that.

MS VC is nonstandard it has its platform specific code in VC++.You'll learn many bad habits with MS softwares.That u'll not agree at the start.So if you're thinking to develop programs simply then try and learn from Turbo C++ 3.0 command line compiler itis easy to use and can be better option for beginers.

-arunpawar

You say MSVC is nonstandard and then goes on to say Borland isn't? And then especially mention TC3? Heh.

MSVC has a bunch of extensions, but nobody forces you to use them. TC3 has a lot of non-standard stuff, and back in the days lots of people used that non-standard stuff.

Stay away from the inferior borland products, especially the legacy DOS stuff like TC3. Go with MSVC or GCC or even DigitalMars (or OpenWatcom if you don't need C++). Learn the base language before dipping into GUIs and platform specific code.

6600

Living Room / Re: Password Cracking Made Easy Thanks to the GPU

« Last post by f0dder on October 25, 2007, 07:36 PM »

Actually, commercial applications to crack ZIP passwords do exist. And they work pretty fast...

-Lashiec (October 25, 2007, 07:27 PM)

Afaik the original zip password algorithm was retarded, and there's other attack avenues as well - but it does show that you aren't just at the mercy of your passphrase length, but also the system it's used in.