Recent Posts

7476

Developer's Corner / Re: Linked Lists versus Lists in .NET

« Last post by f0dder on February 28, 2007, 08:17 AM »

Well, a C++ std::vector is simpler than a std::list (since it has (fast) random access etc.), and if you need splicing and large inserts, std::list can be the solution for speed-critical tasks...

So my default, simple and efficient container would be a vector, unless I need another because of whatever characteristic.

7477

General Software Discussion / Re: Industry standards for Help About Credits?

« Last post by f0dder on February 27, 2007, 08:27 PM »

If you use any libraries/code apart from things you wrote yourself, it's good practice to mention even if the license doesn't require it. Other than that, mention everybody there's room for

7478

Developer's Corner / Re: Linked Lists versus Lists in .NET

« Last post by f0dder on February 27, 2007, 07:54 PM »

If you need to splice lists into multiple lists, or need to insert a large number of items in the middle of a collection, a list will offer better performance than just about everything else. Random access is slow though, and even linear access is slower because of the memory dereferencing. Also, you can have less heap fragmentation with linked lists than with, say, a C++ std::vector.

Can't think of real-world examples where it's better atm., but if you can come up with something where you need splicing or fast large inserts, you've got you answer

7479

General Software Discussion / Re: Firewalls - please, i can't be bothered.

« Last post by f0dder on February 27, 2007, 07:48 PM »

I was looking for a rule based firewall that would allow rules that were based on executable+protocol+port+state, like what you use on unix system and like the old kerio/tiny used to be in the old times.

-iphigenie (February 27, 2007, 02:34 PM)

Hmm, a *u*x firewall that takes application executable into account? I haven't seen that yet... only on windows (I used to use Tiny, then Kerio when Tiny went commercial, then gave up after both became bloated and I couldn't be bothered anymore.)

7480

Living Room / Re: Blog Essay: You Want a 10,000 RPM Boot Drive

« Last post by f0dder on February 27, 2007, 05:32 AM »

I have had a mini-itx BSD machine that has a 4Gb flash drive for a few years, and been hoping for the move in the mainstream PC land for as long. It makes so much sense

-iphigenie (February 27, 2007, 05:16 AM)

Not until the limited erase/rewrite cycle thing has been 100% eliminated... at least not for running windows, considering how often registry access or whatever causes disk activity.

From what I've gathered, current flash solutions have much better access time than disks (duh!), but still not as high transfer rates. Seek time is going to be more important for the boot anyway, since you don't reach nearly the burst rate of your drive.

Hybrid harddrives are going to be interesting, too bad MS don't plan to support it for XP (they do need something to get people to upgrade to Vista, eh? ). Also interesting is intel's Robson technology, which adds the flash part of hybrid harddrives in another way, as a PCI express card... I'm looking forward to that, especially since it might be supported on XP.

7481

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Live Messenger ads serve up malware

« Last post by f0dder on February 27, 2007, 03:39 AM »

Shame it isn't available for download from the official site ... trouble is if you download it elsewhere how do you know if it is 'what it says on the box'?

-Carol Haynes (February 27, 2007, 03:35 AM)

Get somebody you trust that has it to give you the md5sum of the iso image? *shrug*. I did wonder how he could get away with offering the download, considering the stuff on it... seems like he couldn't . Never grabbed a copy myself, I get by fine without it.

7482

General Review Discussion / Re: quintura.com - super fast super easy web search

« Last post by f0dder on February 27, 2007, 02:37 AM »

Humm, doesn't work very well here, even after I disabled AdBlockPlus for quintara.com (it blocked on a "partnerId" string or similar), the right part (the actual hits) doesn't show up... oh well.

EDIT: does work in IE, although not as slickly as in FF. Interesting way of perpetually refining search terms. Dunno if I like it, though.

7483

General Software Discussion / Re: 12 Windows Explorer Alternatives Compared

« Last post by f0dder on February 27, 2007, 02:33 AM »

That does sound a bit silly since moving and copying is very I/O bound... it's hard to make your harddrive faster even if you do "omfg 100% assembly" programming

That said, vanilla explorer.exe is ridiculously slow for some operations, like deleting a large tree. It spends a lot of time "doing something" before the actual delete... fetching info on all files/subfolders? Haven't looked at the specifics.

7484

Living Room / Re: Beer launching fridge

« Last post by f0dder on February 26, 2007, 07:00 PM »

OH MY GAWD how cool!

Girlfriends everywhere, beware: you're about to become obsolete!

7485

Living Room / Re: Extended Character Aascii Art questions

« Last post by f0dder on February 26, 2007, 06:11 PM »

It should be pretty easy to add printing to the nfo scroller, but that would be graphical printing - which is (possibly a lot) slower than font-based printing. And if not done right, could also look ugly. I guess I might have a look at implementing that...

7486

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Live Messenger ads serve up malware

« Last post by f0dder on February 26, 2007, 06:09 PM »

Convenient but illegal 

-dk70 (February 26, 2007, 02:59 PM)

Dunno about that, really - I don't think using apatch or mess.be can be classified as illegal, and I'm not even sure if the creation of those tools were illegal (there's no "circumvention of protection" involved; on the other hand, it's not a case of RE being used for interop either).

7487

Living Room / Re: Maniac Mansion Mania

« Last post by f0dder on February 26, 2007, 12:49 AM »

Hmm, interesting - dunno what to think of some of those stories, "flesh eating zombies" doesn't fit too well with the Maniac Mansion style. MM, Zak and DOTT were some of my favourite games, so I'd be pretty annoyed if somebody screwed them up.

Some of the games are now translated to english

-Crush

Grmbl, why can't people just realize that they should do things in English to begin with, selfish bastards >_<

7488

Living Room / Re: Accesspoint and/or router - help!

« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2007, 05:14 PM »

Thanks for the effort, Carol!

I'll give the linksys thing a try, though. The place where I'm going to order it from is 30min of bicycling from here which means delivery (and, if necessary, return) is pretty fast. Certainly less hassle than tracking down a distributor... and I do have those 14 days to test whether it work okay. It's got a cisco logo on it, so it can't be all bad? . The user manual .pdf also looked decent enough, seems to have the features I need.

Of course the final factors will be speed and reliability, and we'll just have to see about that. Dunno just how much the cisco logo on it means... but I've been very happy with the PIX I got for the museum, super stable even when stressed with lots of connections and 8mbit downstream. (Yeah, that device is in a completely different price range).

7489

Living Room / Re: Accesspoint and/or router - help!

« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2007, 02:35 PM »

Hm, I had my URL wrong? Darn. Your "dk.netgear.com" site doesn't do much for me, though... can't seem to order online, and the distribution partners things is pretty useless too. Thanks for your effort, though

I'll rather have 100mbit+modem than gigabit. Gbit would be nice, but if I end up needing it, I can always get a switch.

So... LinkSys it is (it's even got a nifty Cisco logo on it ). I'll probably do a mini-review or at least post impressions here once I get my hands on it.

7490

Living Room / Re: Blog Essay: You Want a 10,000 RPM Boot Drive

« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2007, 01:04 PM »

* f0dder pets his 10,000rpm Raptor

7491

General Software Discussion / Re: Firewalls - please, i can't be bothered.

« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2007, 12:03 PM »

Appearantly a hard task to get right :]

7492

Living Room / Re: Accesspoint and/or router - help!

« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2007, 11:55 AM »

I've been looking at the LinkSys WAG300N which might suit my needs (still haven't been able to find DG834N). It only has 100mbit wired and not gigabit , but I guess I can live with that.

Payday on wednesday, I'll probably order the router then. If it doesn't do the trick, I'll just use the "ordered online, 14 days full return warranty"

7493

General Software Discussion / Re: ZoneScreen: Expand your desktop on the network

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

ameniac88: I think that just might be it, thanks for posting the link... my memory isn't what it used to be (and it never was very good to start with ).

7494

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: --> PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU POST <--

« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2007, 09:30 AM »

And even when working in "my personal area", always write your posts in a text editor, and paste to the board when you're going to post/preview.

7495

ProcessTamer / Re: 140k or not to be 140k?

« Last post by f0dder on February 25, 2007, 09:27 AM »

Also keep in mind that there's more to memory usage than what Task Manager shows by default. You'll want to use a more capable tool (sysinternals' Process Explorer), and configure it to show more details than default. The most important amount of memory usage is "Private Bytes" - Task Manager's "mem usage" is actually the "Working Set", which also includes code/data that are shared between processes and thus isn't physical memory usage.

Even a "Hello, world" program written in assembly doing nothing more than a messagebox will have a working set of 2+ megabytes because of shared DLLs. So don't worry too much

7496

General Software Discussion / Re: SKETCHR-Draw Online,export to desktop

« Last post by f0dder on February 23, 2007, 03:10 PM »

That's pretty cute use of flash, actually

7497

Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?

« Last post by f0dder on February 23, 2007, 11:10 AM »

An ATX-based (and probably BTX based as well) PC is never really off - and yeah, I guess that's to support the wake-on-* events.

-f0dder (February 22, 2007, 01:51 PM)

I wonder if that's the case even if you disable them in bios. Interesting experiments ahead.

-iphigenie (February 23, 2007, 06:25 AM)

I'm pretty sure it does... iirc there's also some standby power on the PCI slots (otherwise the iRAM card wouldn't maintain the data on poweroff, more than it's battery can sustain anyway).

7498

General Software Discussion / Re: ThunderBird users, read here

« Last post by f0dder on February 23, 2007, 11:07 AM »

A zillion mails in the OE mailbox *on disk*, not on server - wouldn't be a problem if it was on server anyway, there's an 8mbit connection there. The issue is whether ThunderBird can handle a lot of mails efficiently... According to Josh, it probably will.

7499

General Software Discussion / ThunderBird users, read here

« Last post by f0dder on February 23, 2007, 04:30 AM »

Hey!

In my hunt for anti-spam, I've decided to give ThunderBird a try at the museum I help out. Before I do so, I'd like to know if any of you have experiences with having a lot of mails in it? Currently, one of the people there has Outlook Express mailboxes of a gig or more, and I wonder if ThunderBird can import that, work with it, and still be reasonably fast?

7500

Developer's Corner / Re: Best Application for Simple Game Development?

« Last post by f0dder on February 23, 2007, 04:26 AM »

RPG Maker XP looks decent - and while the video is pretty funny, the English in it is a lot better than I expected