Recent Posts

6751

Developer's Corner / Re: Software Copy Protection Questions

« Last post by f0dder on September 23, 2007, 06:46 AM »

There's nothing you can do that can't be broken, even trying is a moot point - art assets obviously have to be shown on screen (otherwise the game would be pretty boring ), so even if you employ encryption and whatnot, it has to be decrypted at some point.

Tell the company that "protection" of that sort is futile, and that they should instead rely on copyright and the legal system to settle potential problems...

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General Software Discussion / Re: What linux needs?

« Last post by f0dder on September 23, 2007, 06:41 AM »

(If you are connected to repository then it will download automatically,otherwise you've to compiler from source)

-mahesh2k

Binary packages, please.

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General Software Discussion / Re: What linux needs?

« Last post by f0dder on September 20, 2007, 09:47 AM »

Writing binary drivers doesn't just have the "it's not big enough" problem, though... binary drivers are actively opposed by many people (including kernel devs), and it's hard to do when there isn't a stable kernel API/ABI... which is a thing Linus himself has said he doesn't want.

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General Software Discussion / Re: What linux needs?

« Last post by f0dder on September 20, 2007, 08:19 AM »

Edvard: my point about standardized filesystem layout (especially the scripts) is not just for the benefit of the user, but also for the benefit of programmers writing utilities to manage things that users really shouldn't need to get their hands dirty with, without having to special-case for N different distros.

I agree on your "component" idea for window-managing/looks etc. I don't particularly mind that users can have whatever look-and-feel they want, thing is that there should be one interface that everybody uses, giving one central place to change look-and-feel for everything. Consistency, aah.

And I'm adamant about "dumbing down" the filesystem a bit. Sure, let it be accessible through the shell, that's the only place you'll really need access to it. Could be done with a toggle like "Hide operating system files" in windows Explorer. Remember, the topic of this thread, as I understand it, is "linux for regular users".

Again, documentation... manpages aren't sufficient. Sure, there's aprospos, but you really do need hyperlinked and properly indexed stuff. Microsoft's .CHM format is perfect imho (and I dunno why they moved the htmlhelp v2 and a crappy viewer).

Of course editing xorg.conf isn't too difficult for most power users, and perhaps even a regular user would be able to google and figure out how to do dual-monitor setup... but why should they have to, considering this has been supported easier-than-cooking-your-grandma since win9x?

If they made decent drivers, I don't think too many folks would care...

-Edvard

Never looked at kernel mailing lists, or even slashdot?

MrCrispy: funny that you should mention "DLL hell" - I've never been bitten by it on windows, but I've experienced it multiple times under linux...

Carol Haynes: part of the problems with printers and other drivers is of course the manufacturers not giving enough information...

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Developer's Corner / Re: What would you consider your biggest waste of time project?

« Last post by f0dder on September 20, 2007, 07:58 AM »

It should be VERY simple, just return an IMAGE object or similar which I can simply assign to something but noooo, I have to go through some code rituals which I don't understand "why?"

-SkyIDE (September 20, 2007, 04:45 AM)

To understand some parts of the win32 API, you have to remember it was based on the win16 API... back then memory was scarce, and we didn't have x86 paging to help us manage memory, thus you had to "lock" and "unlock" memory, and "unlocked" objects could thus be moved around in memory... some of that also applies to all the imaging stuff, having to select things into contexts et cetera.

Yes, it could all be done simpler today, but we're stuck with legacy. And it's not that bad once you get the hang of it

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General Software Discussion / Re: What linux needs?

« Last post by f0dder on September 19, 2007, 07:57 AM »

I don't think "game design software" is very relevant; it might be a cute thing to have, but the "real games" aren't created that way, anyway.

If linux was to be a general desktop replacement for everybody, imho what's needed is more along the lines of...

1. uniform environment (which is never going to happen). There's too many distros, too many windowing systems, too many desktop systems (GNOME/KDE/whatever). Yeah sure, you can have gnome programs run on KDE and vice-versa, but it just doesn't feel right - applications need to look consistant. At a slightly lower level, people should finally agree on a filesystem structure (not least startup scripts).

2. for end-users, some of the details have to be hidden (GNOME hides details, but it hides too much and too little). Like, regular users really shouldn't see /dev and /proc, it does more harm than good.

3. documentation. "read the source" just isn't good enough.

4. better hardware support (especially graphics, and WiFi too I guess), and less "drivers must be opensource" fascism (yeah, would be nice, but there's a lot of R&D and NDAs, and that's just the way the world works).

...and this is assuming that people can find replacements for windows software and don't need their old apps too badly, don't need too complicated file interchange with windows, etc. There's also some more tech/developer points, but those don't matter to the end-user (although they do matter wrt. "going there").

k/ubuntu have come a long way, but are by no means perfect. Having to edit the xorg config file just to get multi-mon support? And all the hoops you have (had?) to go through to get JAVA support? eek.

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Living Room / Re: Question about the "spam/advertising links" rule

« Last post by f0dder on September 19, 2007, 07:42 AM »

I personally don't have a problem with the links in your sig (haven't checked content though ) - you're a participating member here, not just a spammer, you're linking to your own pages, and there's no referrer crap in there.

I do think your signature is a big large though, I prefer if signatures are half or 2/3rds the size of this: - but I do run a lowly 1280x1024 resolution, and like to see posts rather than signatures . Personally, I'd drop the last.fm box (what's the point of those anyway?) and simply line up the links.

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Developer's Corner / Re: What Are My Options To Test On Mac OS X?

« Last post by f0dder on September 19, 2007, 07:31 AM »

There is PearPC.

This was recommended when I asked rkarman this same question about 8 months ago, on behalf of a friend when she needed to compile & test a Mac version of her application.

-app103 (September 18, 2007, 06:46 PM)

PearPC is a PowerPC emulator - macs have been running on x86 hardware for a while now.

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Developer's Corner / Re: What Are My Options To Test On Mac OS X?

« Last post by f0dder on September 18, 2007, 06:29 PM »

It's possible to run OS X under vmware, but it requires stuff that apple isn't at all happy about... might even be illegal.

If the Mac Minis were a good deal cheaper, they would be very nice for testing etc., but they're like US$1.000 here in Denmark >_<

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Living Room / Re: How much RAM do you have on your PC?

« Last post by f0dder on September 18, 2007, 06:24 PM »

I haven't relaly seen any disadvantages from turning on PAE; you can turn on PAE but still have DEP only set for the "critical system services". I've been running with DEP for everything for a while now, haven't seen any incompatibilities yet, and haven't felt a speed hit either (but I haven't done any benchmarking of it, and I do have NX-capable hardware so it's not emulated).

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General Software Discussion / Re: Userbar Generator: Cool Freeware

« Last post by f0dder on September 18, 2007, 07:42 AM »

Daniel15: could be interesting enough to see how you've done it - like, static bmp backgrounds or fancy procedural stuff

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

« Last post by f0dder on September 18, 2007, 03:59 AM »

If you use incremental backups, you'll usually be backing up at file level rather than doing imaging, and thus defragmenting won't affect things in any way - imho disk images should be for a baseline 100% clean system after you've just set it up with all your stuff, while backups should be done at the file level...

I'm still not keen on background defraggers though. I want control of when there's disk activity.

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Living Room / Re: How much RAM do you have on your PC?

« Last post by f0dder on September 18, 2007, 03:56 AM »

It's because the 4GB limit is the maximum of all memory. That includes a bit for system stuff and the graphics card memory. And my graphics card has 512MB.

-katykaty (September 17, 2007, 04:30 PM)

Wrooooong - you just need to make sure the system is running in PAE mode, which should be the default for systems supporting x86-64/NX bit (Data Execution Prevention). But as usual, Microsoft is of course imposing artificial limitations on how much physical memory is supported (see the table at the end of the above link) just to do market segmenting, those bastards.

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General Software Discussion / Re: New interesting features for Firefox 3

« Last post by f0dder on September 17, 2007, 10:21 AM »

jgpaiva: yeah, frustrating, same thing with non-english shortcuts for italic, bold etc. in office.

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

« Last post by f0dder on September 17, 2007, 10:18 AM »

Afaik you can schedule the standard XP defrag as well, so it's no excuse for removing the interface in Crapsta... I wonder if it's the general "users are dumb" attitude, or to let other people at the defrag market more easily...

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Living Room / Re: MSN messenger update or DIE

« Last post by f0dder on September 17, 2007, 10:15 AM »

I think there was *some* MS documentation or integration available for MSN in the past, at least I remember something about an article some guy (who I think was a MS employee?) wrote about interfacing with MSN...

IMHO there's a big difference between having a closed protocol, and trying to keep that protocol obfuscated... SKYPE would be a good example of an obfuscated protocol. What about miranda and similar projects? At least they have source

6767

General Software Discussion / Re: Defraggler,add another defragger to the list

« Last post by f0dder on September 17, 2007, 09:06 AM »

Download is there now - still in beta though. Not sure I want to try out a beta app to defragment files - if there are any bugs .... yikes

-Carol Haynes (September 17, 2007, 08:22 AM)

Shouldn't be much of a problem these days, Carol, since all a defrag app really does is use NT APIs - no "direct" disk access is involved, contrary to the FAT/Win9x defrag days.

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Living Room / Re: MSN messenger update or DIE

« Last post by f0dder on September 17, 2007, 08:59 AM »

Don't worry, it's already obfuscated. Thank God we have reverse engineers

-Lashiec (September 16, 2007, 09:48 PM)

Obfuscated or just no public specs? Big difference.

And yeah, thanks god there's reverse engineers that aren't as lazy busy as me

6769

General Software Discussion / Re: Defraggler,add another defragger to the list

« Last post by f0dder on September 17, 2007, 07:20 AM »

So, basically a GUI version of sysinternals' contig?

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General Software Discussion / Re: New interesting features for Firefox 3

« Last post by f0dder on September 17, 2007, 07:14 AM »

Heh, changed from FF2 to IE7? I couldn't do that... there's a really noticable lag when opening a new tab in IE7, it's in no way instantaneous... FF2 almost is.

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

« Last post by f0dder on September 17, 2007, 07:13 AM »

And defrag, how does it work without meters? Like Scandisk in XP?

-Lashiec (September 16, 2007, 09:23 PM)

There's no "scandisk" in XP, only chkdsk... and chkdsk, while being a console app, does have progress meters... (oh yeah, there's the graphical tool on drive property sheet as well, and even that has a progress bar).

Defrag in Vista simply says "defragmenting your drive, this may take between a couple of minutes and a couple of hours" and lets you cancel... but has no progress indication whatsoever (appearantly there's still a console-mode version with a bit of progress indication though, but I haven't checked that).

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Living Room / Re: How much RAM do you have on your PC?

« Last post by f0dder on September 16, 2007, 12:42 PM »

You should have set up a poll - perhaps mouser can edit one in

2048 megs here (sounds better than 2 gigs ), it's very nice - on my XP pro, it means I can disable the pagefile, have plenty of memory for caching, etc. Considering going 4gig in my next box, although I probably can't afford buying it all at once.

Do keep in mind that if you're mainly using 32bit apps (even if you're on 64bit windows), there's limits to how useful >3gig memory will be.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for Open Source... So...

« Last post by f0dder on September 16, 2007, 12:40 PM »

subversion

...but you shouldn't need to grab the latest bleeding-edge nightly build with cvs/svn just to get an app. Fortunately, most of the time you don't, except if you want bleeding-edge.

Most of the opensource stuff I use do have mention of language/platform at least somewhere in the docs, although not everybody puts it up on the front page

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General Software Discussion / Re: Open Virtual Machine Tools

« Last post by f0dder on September 16, 2007, 12:33 PM »

Wow, that's pretty interesting!

So, will we be able to easily upgrade/replace those parts in a normal VMWare distro?

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Living Room / Re: HDD - RAID 1 - problem

« Last post by f0dder on September 16, 2007, 12:32 PM »

Shouldn't really be any problems with RAID mirroring, but it might be an idea checking the S.M.A.R.T status of your disks... unfortunately you can't usually do this with the low-end/onboard RAID stuff...

Does CPU usage shoot up radically when the skipping happens? Does other things freeze, like any on-screen animation or the mouse cursor? Are you using Crapsta or XP?