Recent Posts

751

General Software Discussion / Re: Win7: Anyone else getting excited?

« Last post by Eóin on September 29, 2009, 08:44 PM »

Adding those security levels, or at least the way they implemented them, is one of the stupidest bend-over-for-morons things that MS has done for quite a while. Run anything but the max setting, and you're once again wide open to exploits.

-f0dder (September 29, 2009, 03:39 PM)

Is that still the case? I did a search for any recent reports of UAC issues and couldn't find any. The results that were returned by Google all related to either the beta or RC with MS promising to address those issues for RTM

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General Software Discussion / Re: How can I force a process to never start more than once (only one instance) ?

« Last post by Eóin on September 27, 2009, 02:21 PM »

- this makes me ask if  Explorer is meant to run twice - the first one at startup, for the taskbar etcetera, and (later) the second one, for my folders (when I open them)??

-Curt (September 27, 2009, 01:04 PM)

That could happen if the "Launch folder windows in a separate process" option is checked under "Folder Options >> View"

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General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3.7 pre default theme has glassy border

« Last post by Eóin on September 19, 2009, 08:27 AM »

Oooooo puuurdy 

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General Software Discussion / Re: Dual Boot Win7 - Win7

« Last post by Eóin on September 10, 2009, 04:10 PM »

The "Vista / Longhorn" option in EasyBCD should really work just fine. Can you see the second Win 7 install drive for within the one which is currently booting? What error do you get if you tell EasyBCD to add an entry for "Vista / Longhorn" on the drive and then select it at the boot menu?

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Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 36-09

« Last post by Eóin on September 09, 2009, 09:04 AM »

Perhaps if developers could add their owns applications to the Microsoft Update infrastructure already there? But then who would take on the burden of managing it, especially from the point of security.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Choice of application installer?

« Last post by Eóin on September 07, 2009, 05:35 PM »

It's difficult to use but I always recommend WiX. Worth looking into as it's free, and there is an actively developed GUI, WixEdit.

757

General Software Discussion / Re: What is your preferred font?

« Last post by Eóin on September 05, 2009, 05:00 PM »

Not my code actually, I think it's from a WTL header

I find a variable width font very pleasant to work with. You can still use tabs for indentation and other alignment but as I read somewhere online when contemplating the switch- once things stop lining up you stop wanting them to line up.

Choosing the font was hard though. Most don't have enough space around punctuation, symbols and brackets which is really needed for coding where these thing occur in high densities. After a lenghty online search it turned out the perfect font was already on my PC, MS Reference Sans Serif comes with Office 2007.

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General Software Discussion / Re: What is your preferred font?

« Last post by Eóin on September 05, 2009, 03:45 PM »

For me it's usually Calibri for Windows Interface. Size 8 primarily as it increases the amount of screen real estate available. Candara is not without it's charm for the same purpose and I do switch to it from time to time. I find both are very easy on the eyes.

For printed text I use Calibri a lot again, it's the default in Word 2007 anyway. Serifs are nice too of course but most things I print are articles or documents just that bit too long of screen reading and invariably I tend to use sans-serifs almost all the time.

For programming I use either Consolas or more often MS Reference Sans. It comes with Office 2007 and for C++ coding in VS it can't be beaten. And yes, it is variable width (I can hear cries of blasphemy already).

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General Software Discussion / Re: Multi OS Boot Loading

« Last post by Eóin on August 17, 2009, 06:42 AM »

EasyBCD, was buggy, but not anymore as best I can tell.

It doesn't include the pre-Vista bootloader files which you will need if they weren't on the on the same partition as XP, etc and Vista/Win7 has since deleted them. But there is a wiki page on their site with those files for just that situation.

Also it now can install a 'neogrub' binary file for booting Linux so it handles linux and everything else Grub supports,

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General Software Discussion / Re: Multi OS Boot Loading

« Last post by Eóin on August 17, 2009, 02:20 AM »

Try EasyBCD. Builds upon the Vista bootloader, it's the only one I use since discovering it.

761

Living Room / Re: dedication finally pays off for the genuine Apple fans with a new iPhone

« Last post by Eóin on July 30, 2009, 11:15 AM »

In addition, the new multimedia device will provide true Apple fans with a high-definition video camera, one-tap editing with Final Cut Pro, and cut and paste.

762

Living Room / Re: A Dog Goes Blind: It's nighttime always now. Huh. How about that.

« Last post by Eóin on July 28, 2009, 04:51 AM »

That's fascinating. Goes to show animals don't dwell as much on the 'Why?' as we humans do.

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Living Room / Re: stunning 3D projections on buildings

« Last post by Eóin on July 24, 2009, 08:56 AM »

Beautiful, would love to see such a performance in person.

764

Developer's Corner / Re: Hidden Features Series

« Last post by Eóin on July 22, 2009, 09:24 PM »

Thanks for pointing this out. Hours of reading material indeed.

765

Living Room / Re: What have I done!?

« Last post by Eóin on July 16, 2009, 12:16 PM »

How about best wishes and congratulations

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General Software Discussion / Re: Google Chrome: Time for a Second Chance?

« Last post by Eóin on July 15, 2009, 03:13 PM »

I've been using Chrome on the pc I've also been trailing Win7 on and am very happy with it. Still though I miss one or two features from FireFox, mainly NoScript and Xmarks.

I for one though really like how Chrome looks with Aero Glass. Must also give SRWare Iron a spin.

767

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 evaluation

« Last post by Eóin on July 14, 2009, 07:22 PM »

Well I've seen a number of comparisons in magazines which say Win 7 out performs XP, even on older hardware.

Honestly here I can't see thread counts being a valid measurement. Yes in theory more threads need more resources, but the assumption that therefore fewer equals better performance isn't backed up at all. The threading model differences between XP and 7 are enormous.

Also memory consumption is very dubious a comparison these days as idle memory means potential resources not being utilised. Memory usage when there is plenty available doesn't necessarily equal memory requirements when it's scant.

I'm not really questioning the benchmark test, rather the interpertation. Also no mention of the test machine(s) specs, or if the Vista and Win7 were 32bit/64bit largely discredits the article in my opinion. Unless I've missed those details somewhere.

768

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 evaluation

« Last post by Eóin on July 13, 2009, 11:58 AM »

You can't even run 16-bit apps on a 64-bit Win7 I have heard.

-Innuendo (July 11, 2009, 04:17 PM)

No x64 versions of Windows have been able to run 16bit apps I believe, List of limitations in 64-Bit Windows.

769

Living Room / Re: Show us a photo of your mutt or other creatures..

« Last post by Eóin on July 09, 2009, 04:42 PM »

My cat is jet black, every picture I've ever tried to take fails to capture anything other than a black furry ball Maybe I need professional spotlights.

770

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 evaluation

« Last post by Eóin on July 09, 2009, 03:28 AM »

Any chance Win7 might be spotting a fault with one of the ram sticks (assuming there's 4 1gb ones of course) ? Maybe run a ram check.

771

Living Room / Re: Truely amazing piece of animation art

« Last post by Eóin on June 30, 2009, 09:15 PM »

It is good, very good. The name is terribly misleading though, it's has nothing to do with civilization at all really. It is exactly what it describes itself as - "Civilization depicts a journey from hell to heaven interpreted through modern film language using computer-enhanced found footage.".

Just me being picky I suppose but I watched it first have only read the name and thought this makes no sense. Once I read the hell to heaven bit then it all clicked.

Impressive, to be sure, but I wonder how long it will last before the MPAA shuts it down for copyright infringement.....or did they secure the rights to use every single one of those elements?

-Innuendo (June 30, 2009, 03:33 PM)

Fair use?

772

Developer's Corner / Re: Multithreading tutorials

« Last post by Eóin on June 23, 2009, 08:15 AM »

Taking advantage of some existing libraries can be a great idea since then you've documentation and sample code hand-in-hand. Two good one's I'm aware of are

• Intel Threading Building Blocks
• Boost.Thread

The Boost library would be a very steep learning curve if you've never come across Boost before. Codeproject would have loads of smaller, more accessible, examples. For example Synchronization in Multithreaded Applications with MFC. That might be more your thing if you don't want to go down the road of big libraries.

Another advanced source of expert advice would be Herb Sutter's "Effective Concurrency" columns.

773

Developer's Corner / Re: What (programming) languages are represented?

« Last post by Eóin on June 22, 2009, 05:36 AM »

Very valid point of course

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Developer's Corner / Re: What (programming) languages are represented?

« Last post by Eóin on June 22, 2009, 05:06 AM »

Not to dis Euphoria, in fact it looks very interesting but this is a funny feature to advertise these days

"You can create programs that use the full multi-megabyte memory of your computer, and a swap file is automatically used when a program needs more memory than exists on your machine."

775

Developer's Corner / Re: What (programming) languages are represented?

« Last post by Eóin on June 22, 2009, 04:01 AM »

Primarily C++ for me too. Matlab almost exclusively for my college work however. Dabbled with Ruby for a good while, eventually decided I just really didn't like it. No flame war, it was purely a personality conflict, on a technical level I had no issues with it.

Want to get into a very different language to broaden my understanding of different ways of doing things. Functional languages seem like a good choice. Haskell caught my eye but for some reason I'm more drawn to Scheme.