Recent Posts

7501

Living Room / Re: Extended Character Aascii Art questions

« Last post by f0dder on February 23, 2007, 04:14 AM »

Hm, GetDiz (at least judging by the screenshot) doesn't have the right cp865 font, so it looks pretty ugly imho. ASCII Art Studio is a bit cute, but doesn't use the right codepage/font either (not even in edit mode, haven't tried printing).

7502

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

« Last post by f0dder on February 22, 2007, 01:51 PM »

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.

I have a feeling that some USB devices might make the situation worse, since I've experienced things like optical USB mice that don't turn off when you power down, etc.

As for monitors, that's silly as well - there's no reason I can think of for being on standby rather than "hard off" - except perhaps that they have these "soft" power buttons nowadays, rather than the clicking "hard" buttons of old (that actually did turn them off).

I have one of those power rails with an USB connection that's supposed to turn off when the computer goes off, unfortunately it doesn't work... but at least I can still pull out the USB connector to power off my monitors and external usb drive.

Darn, now I really want one of those meters, to see how much my computer consumes on "poweroff".

7503

General Software Discussion / Re: free Vista incl. bonus

« Last post by f0dder on February 22, 2007, 10:28 AM »

"about 50% of all pirated Windows programs came with Trojans pre-installed on them."

Sounds like a false claim, part of a scare tactic against piracy.

7504

Official Announcements / Re: wtfcody.com - Cody now has a home not just an address.

« Last post by f0dder on February 22, 2007, 07:44 AM »

Seems quite fine now, thanks for the fix

7505

Official Announcements / Re: wtfcody.com - Cody now has a home not just an address.

« Last post by f0dder on February 22, 2007, 05:51 AM »

so if i remove the word 'banner' from the image names it should work okay?

-nudone (February 22, 2007, 05:38 AM)

I would think so. s/banner/topstrip

7506

General Software Discussion / Re: virtual install

« Last post by f0dder on February 22, 2007, 05:31 AM »

I wonder if USB devices do Wear Leveling on the hardware level...

7507

Official Announcements / Re: wtfcody.com - Cody now has a home not just an address.

« Last post by f0dder on February 22, 2007, 05:16 AM »

thanks all. i don't like the sound of the banner being blocked that f0dder mentions.

any idea why that is?

i'd like to correct it.

-nudone (February 22, 2007, 01:41 AM)

Good question!

I'll take a look and see if ABP reports *why* an element was blocked...
EDIT: nice, it does. "Show blockable items", find the three entries highlighted in red, hover mouse... "Filter in effect: /*banner*".

7508

Official Announcements / Re: wtfcody.com - Cody now has a home not just an address.

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 06:43 PM »

Looks really nice - too bad the logo is blocked by my Adblock Plus setup

7509

General Software Discussion / Re: Singing the anti-spam blues

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 06:41 PM »

That might be a solution, Carol, but I'm afraid it's a bit too clunky and geeky for those people... will probably be a lot easier to get them moved to ThunderBird, after all it does look a bit like OE. I did come about PopFile quite a long time ago, but had since forgotten about it.

Thanks for the suggestion though, and if anybody else has anything to add, please do - even if I've pretty much made up my mind, input is still valuable

7510

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

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 06:30 PM »

Firstly, thanks for the super fast reply! :-)

Check out http://www.maxivista.com

-xingus (February 21, 2007, 04:04 PM)

Does it allow a single monitor? Does not look like, they say you have to move the mouse to the edge of one screen and then it will jump onto the other box's OS/GUI
I have just one set of KVM.

~2stespback

-2stepsback (February 21, 2007, 04:21 PM)

Hmm, I seem to recall that somebody mentioned a tool for this some time ago, cannot remember who or where though. But iirc it was free and supported multiple OSes.

7511

General Software Discussion / Re: virtual install

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

I would be careful running programs off of USB. Flash memory is not designed to handle lots of writes, its optimized for reading. And I'm guessing using your method, Altiris will be writing to flash as registry/file changes are made.

-MrCrispy (February 21, 2007, 12:38 PM)

Is it really that much of a problem with modern flash devices?

7512

General Software Discussion / Re: Singing the anti-spam blues

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 06:18 PM »

SPAMfighter is too bugged imho - when closing Outlook Express, it oftens hangs. And also I don't like the messages that it adds.

Why do you prefer the Bat? 

-Curt (February 21, 2007, 10:35 AM)

Because there's a lot less exploits for The Bat than for OE , I can view HTML mails safely if I choose to (it has it's own instead of using an IE control), it has good message filtering, good multi-account support, and decent anti-spam plugins (the free version of AntiSpamSniper works wonderfully, and it hasn't taken long to train it).

Anyway, dspam turned out to be too much bother, so I'll probably try moving the users to ThunderBird... hope it'll be painless, and that TB can cope with import of some pretty large  amounts of Outlook Express mails.

7513

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual PC 2007 Final

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 09:48 AM »

PXE, unless there's multiple acronyms, has to do with network booting...

7514

General Software Discussion / Re: global warming vs. local cooling

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 09:04 AM »

Yeah, I've been meaning to borrow (or purchase, if cheap enough) such a device myself. I think most power companies here in .dk have an offer like that?

As for LocalCooling "working", all it does wrt. actually saving power is the same stuff as the standard windows control panel applet does. I guess LocalCooling just measures how long the various power saving modes have been activated.

7515

Developer's Corner / Re: Software Development Team Issues

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 09:01 AM »

Nice short blog entry. And he's right - admit it when you're wrong. Won't always work out to your advantage, but at least you've got your integrity...

7516

Living Room / Re: Online Dictionary that visually shows relationships among words.

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 08:49 AM »

That's pretty cute

7517

General Software Discussion / Re: global warming vs. local cooling

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 08:46 AM »

Well, even if they only get 100.000 users and just 1% visit the "mothersite" and decide to buy one of their other products, that'd still be 1.000 new customers... that might be their plan with this app, anyway. And it's a good cause, helping build a nice and lovable company profile.

Okay, I'm a cynic

7518

Living Room / Re: The Machine Is US

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 03:51 AM »

I finally got around to watching it. Decent enough, but I don't see the wow factor, and I think the ending is a bit overdramatic (even if basically right). And it does show, cut to the bone, important advances in web technology during time

7519

General Software Discussion / Re: Piky Basket: Great timesaver while copying / moving files

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 03:42 AM »

A thing like that is really missing in vanilla windows - doing multiple operations at once slows down stuff majorly (no wonder). Personally I use the queuing function in xplorer²

7520

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

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 03:40 AM »

/rant
It's been said a million times before but why does a chat program need ads in this day and age ?

-tinyvillager (February 21, 2007, 01:44 AM)

Because it's a free service, and nothing is really free?

I stick to the old non-live versions of MSN when I need the real client, and patched to hide ads (mess.be or apatch or whatever), and Miranda during daily use.

The real nasty thing would be if banner ads with exploit code were served...

7521

General Software Discussion / Re: global warming vs. local cooling

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 03:30 AM »

Is there a link to at least one of Uniblue's other programs, inside LocalCooling??

-Curt

I uninstalled it, but iirc there were links in the about box. Nothing blatant, though. So while I don't like the fluff on their website (it sounds a little too Gibson'ish), and don't find the app all to useful, it does seem like a cute little toy and not a scam.

7522

Best Text Editor / Re: Is this serious?

« Last post by f0dder on February 21, 2007, 03:28 AM »

The hjkl/whatever is not very intuitive, but it might be a bit faster than moving your right hand to the arrow keys... an inverted-T mapping would've been a bit neater, but that can probably be configured (if you don't feel like using the arrow keys).

I have this feeling that VIM is pretty nifty, but I still can't really get my head around using it. Things like "dw" to delete a word is pretty great, but I'm so used to the (clunky, agreed) shift+ctrl+rightarrow followed by delete that it doesn't come as that much of an advantage - and I manage to have a pretty nifty WPM, so speed isn't that much of an issue.

So, on Windows, I find myself launching Notepad++ rather than VIM. It's not as clunky, either.

7523

General Software Discussion / Re: global warming vs. local cooling

« Last post by f0dder on February 20, 2007, 05:50 PM »

Hmmm, "more effective power save mode"? I wonder what it can do that windows doesn't already do, if you use the "Power Options" control panel applet. The site doesn't have much info, but it uses phrases like "our advanced algorithms will predict". Advanced algorithms? Doing some time-keeping and multiplying with values from a database?

Now, the idea of tracking power usage and keeping a database of power consumption for various devices sound good, but it doesn't seem to me that the app does that much, it just looks pretty and has buzzwords. I wonder what their agenda is, and how they plan on making money.

EDIT: indeed it doesn't seem like it's actual power settings do anything, compared to the standard:

...apart from being a bit more "accessible" for the... less gifted... users (it can be hard clicking start->settings->control panel->power options).

The LocalCooling UI looks pretty, but it does seem to confuse Screenshot Captor (alpha transparency). I do wonder if they take CRT vs. TFT power usage into account.


Also, the UI's "snap to edge" feature means I can't move it to my secondary monitor. Yay for developers that don't think about multi-monitor setups >_< (which probably also means they don't do multi-mon power usage yet, either).

7524

ProcessTamer / Re: MS Word2000?

« Last post by f0dder on February 20, 2007, 05:41 PM »

Word 2k does jump to 100% on my computer, for the lammest reason ever. Suddenly, the ms installer had a problem when i installed a program recently. The installer would try to install office every time i ran that program. I used a program to remove the install files of office, and now every office program uses 100% of processor.. 

-jgpaiva (February 20, 2007, 10:33 AM)

Nasty.

Did you use any of those cleaning programs? Some of them mess up Windows Installer stuff badly, especially for office (and other apps) that can install features on demand...

7525

Living Room / Re: Best choice for server-side game programming

« Last post by f0dder on February 20, 2007, 09:32 AM »

Traditional MUDs were done in C, which doesn't have OOP support; however, I wouldn't be surprised if their programming model was still OOPish, even without language support