Recent Posts

7001

General Software Discussion / Re: Am I the only one who hates smooth scrolling?

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2007, 07:03 PM »

I hate logitech drivers - bloatware. Thanks whatever_deity for USB mice and the standard-features support in XP

As for their Wii-like mouse, dunno... if it isn't a couple hundred times as precise and easier to use than the Wii controller, it's useless on a PC.

7002

General Software Discussion / Re: Multisession burning

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2007, 07:01 PM »

Hm, I remember having a lot of weirdness on a dell machine because of some pre-installed software, probably some of that packet-writing hell. Meant that all CDs burned on that box, regardless of what software was used, would only work if that crap was installed.

7003

DcUpdater / Re: Crazy and probably not feasible idea: DCUpdate swarming.

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2007, 09:20 AM »

I don't think swarming is something that should be implemented in the dcUpdater - but it's not a bad idea for other types of updaters. Like, blizzard uses it for it's WOW patches... too bad blizzards torrent client is retarded, so you're much better off extracting the .torrent and grabbing it with µTorrent or something

7004

General Software Discussion / Re: old software + dual core = ???

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2007, 09:15 AM »

If an app does have problems why not simply limit it to one core? Just change affinity in Task Manager by right clicking on the process.

-Carol Haynes

That's what I've been saying for a while

Curt: you can buy a non-celeron processor - depending on which board you have. If your machine is recent enough that you have a socket-775 you're pretty lucky, as upgrading the CPU will be easy. If you have one of the older systems, getting a (reasonably priced!) CPU might be hard, and otherwise you'd have to exchange motherboard, cpu, ram and possibly your graphics card as well.

7005

General Software Discussion / Re: Is this EXE "malformed"? A question about PE header structure

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2007, 09:03 AM »

Good luck ever getting the PowerBASIC people admitting any kind of failure - they're friggin' zealots.

That said, the PE format specifications are pretty loose, which is the cause of a great deal of headaches (I'm sure Jeremy Collake is going to agree ).

Anyway, this particular case does look pretty ugly to me, and it's probably an error on their side. Would be interesting to see how various windows versions handle such an executable, I'd recommend creating a little app that launches a process in SUSPENDED mode and dumps the {imagebase, imagebase+peheader.SizeOfImage} range of memory, and then test that on 95,98,Me,NT4,2k,XP since there's tiny differences in the PE loader...

7006

General Software Discussion / Re: Am I the only one who hates smooth scrolling?

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2007, 08:45 AM »

I hate smooth scrolling in browsers, it's one of the first thing I turn off on a new install (well, it happens automatically with my unattended setup CD). It's awful. Ugly. Ugh.

I use mousewheel most of the time, sometimes the "middle button click" thing like curt, and other times pgup/pgdn keys... depends on where my hands are and what I'm reading etc.

7007

Living Room / Re: Flash game/fun: The Cadaver Calculator

« Last post by f0dder on July 17, 2007, 08:26 AM »

Too bad you got an infection in it, app, otherwise you could have sold it and made a fortune!

7008

General Software Discussion / Re: old software + dual core = ???

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2007, 10:00 PM »

I'm very happy about my dualcore AMD, definitely a step up from single core. I did choose a dualcore with the same per-core GHz rating as my old singlecore, which meant going from a 3500+ to a 4400+...

But I'd rather have a dualcore somewhat-slower-per-core system than a single-core super-fast system. Multitasking is just so much smoother, especially with heavy stuff running in the background. Loving it 

Celeron? Ewww, handicapped cache (but cheap - we do like that).

7009

General Software Discussion / Re: old software + dual core = ???

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2007, 09:18 PM »

Sounds like an ugly workaround >_< - if your incompatible and rdtsc-using apps/games aren't mulithtreaded (and most won't be), just use a tool to limit affinity to one core...

7010

General Software Discussion / Re: old software + dual core = ???

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2007, 06:49 PM »

There's a few things that cause problems with apps on multicore - and that's basically programs that are timing-sensitive and written in a bad way. This includes just about all games based on the Unreal game engine.

Btw this only affects AMD dualcore CPUs, not the ones from intel... and can usually be fixed, anyway, by limiting CPU affinity so the app only runs one a single core.

7011

Living Room / Re: Why is the 'N' key always the first to go?

« Last post by f0dder on July 13, 2007, 06:57 AM »

Get an old IBM keyboard, and none of your keys will ever go... and you can keep the entire building block awake at nights if you're a fast typer. SHOULD the keyboard ever become defunct, at least you have a device that's solid enough for building demolishing.

7012

Living Room / Re: Flash game/fun: The Cadaver Calculator

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2007, 10:53 AM »

$3790 here... I don't like how this thingy is on a... dating site? O_o

7013

Living Room / Re: Cody Relatives Spotted in the "wild"

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2007, 04:57 AM »

Would you mention relatives who wear hats like that on their tails?? 

-Grorgy (July 12, 2007, 04:07 AM)

Or would you keep them locked in the basement and hope nobody mentions them?

7014

General Software Discussion / Re: Excalibur 32-bit

« Last post by f0dder on July 12, 2007, 04:52 AM »

Both SpeQ and Calcute look pretty nice - thanks for those link!

7015

Living Room / Re: Who is more corrupt?

« Last post by f0dder on July 11, 2007, 06:52 PM »

I ended voting Government Institutions. The media industry is obviously very sick, and the banking institutions are greedy bastards. But it's the government that lets itself be lobbied to death, passes incredibly stupid laws, and accept moronic patents.

7016

General Software Discussion / Re: Excalibur 32-bit

« Last post by f0dder on July 11, 2007, 06:47 PM »

Once you have learned to use the stack in an HP calculator (an RPN implementation), for instance, you'll understand why RPN is so popular with the more technical-minded among us.

-JohnFredC

If the alternative is a calculator without decent editing facilities, perhaps... but with even the simple editing of a, say, TI-83, I see no advantage of RPN over standard algebraic syntax that most people can read fluently.

7017

Living Room / Re: totally pathetic comparison about apple and microsoft

« Last post by f0dder on July 11, 2007, 06:45 PM »

you are right about it being that clip. i apologise to all mac fan-boys.

i guess my comments just show how biased i am against apple stuff.

-nudone (July 11, 2007, 03:05 PM)

And you're obviously not alone.

7018

General Software Discussion / Re: Need some help in recovery data from a damaged external HDD

« Last post by f0dder on July 11, 2007, 06:44 PM »

1.) Never let Chkdsk do anything to a damaged hard drive, it will only make things worst and unrecoverable.

-brahman

Used to be (very) true on win9x, and does hold for FAT filesystems. With moderate corruption, chkdsk is fine for NTFS filesystems though (ie., a standard BSOD or poweroff - but if you've been dealing with driver development or there's garbled file/folder names, get a better tool).

3.) Don't do anything to the harddrive until you have mirrored the drive to another drive with special software (NOT with backup mirror software like Ghost or Acronis TI) that is used for HD recovery

-brahman

Very important advice - with more-than-minor corrupted filesystems, never do in-place "repairs", always restore files to another drive, or do a mirror first.

Ghost and Acronis are fine for imaging if there's not any physical damage to the drive btw.

7019

General Software Discussion / Re: "XPLinux" Running Windows XP and Kubuntu on one joint desktop

« Last post by f0dder on July 11, 2007, 06:41 PM »

10) Use plink.exe from the command line (or run box) to connect to your running VM:

C:\Program Files\PuTTY\plink.exe -ssh -X -C -pw badpass [email protected] kicker

-rssapphire (July 11, 2007, 10:05 AM)

Why bother with SSH encryption when you're running the X server on the same machine as the VMware guest, though? Why not just connect directly?

VMWare6 sounds like a lot of possibilities for "getting out of the box", if it hasn't been very carefully coded... but sounds interesting as well.

Something that looks very interesting is parallels coherence...

7020

General Software Discussion / Re: Pink Floyd - Painted Ladies: Wow!

« Last post by f0dder on July 10, 2007, 06:12 PM »

i'm curious as to what is painted on their fronts 

(i also like pink floyd - after syd and before roger went.)

-nudone (July 10, 2007, 01:56 PM)

Same here, syd sucked, way too acidy stuff. They did do some okay things after roger went though, but my faves are clearly {dsotm,wywh,tw,tfc}.

7021

Living Room / Re: OWNING "hacker tools" illegal in Germany as of TODAY (jail & fines for everyone)

« Last post by f0dder on July 10, 2007, 09:48 AM »

In my experience, the real hackers call it hacking - only the wannabe /. crowd and a few people who have used ready-made exploits call that sort of activity "cracking". Ah yes, and some of the *u*x crows hangs on to the old definition of "hacking" as well.

7022

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Snailware: Newer Software for Older Slower PC's

« Last post by f0dder on July 10, 2007, 06:11 AM »

I used to run Word 2000 on a PMMX-200/64meg ram, ran like a charm. Word97 runs on even lower-spec hardware...
 
Anyway, nice initiative, app!

7023

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: RETURNIL - Giveawayoftheday

« Last post by f0dder on July 09, 2007, 03:28 AM »

Humm, perhaps it's a "normal edition" vs. "home edition" issue?

7024

General Software Discussion / Re: HDD Speed Control

« Last post by f0dder on July 07, 2007, 05:49 PM »

Afaik the "acoustic management" programs don't change your drive's RPM, but they do change the rate at which the read/write heads travel. At least that's my impression, the ambient noise has never changed on any drive I've AAM'ed, but the noise when accessing the drive has.

Still worthwhile though, and might even reduce wear & tear?

7025

Living Room / Autobots, transform and roll out!

« Last post by f0dder on July 07, 2007, 05:48 PM »

Okay, just went to see the new Transformers flick today, and it was pretty awesome (though, as always with hollywood, there was way too much sitcom crap for my taste). But while the movie was cool, this flick which my co-cinema-watching friend just sent me, is bloody amazing!