Recent Posts

7851

Developer's Corner / Re: Code Co-op: Peer-to-peer Version Control for Distributed Development

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2006, 07:19 PM »

Hm, not sure I'm fond of "peer to peer" combined with version control... there are other systems than co-op supporting this too, by the way - there's even a wiki list

PS: with subversion, you don't really need a centralized server - you can run locally. Only really works in single-developer situations, though

7852

Living Room / Re: What present should we get Cody for xmas?

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2006, 03:13 PM »

Price is no object since he is imaginary.

What do you suggest we get for him?

-mouser (December 08, 2006, 02:08 AM)

How about a Linux distro with the ability to hack NORAD and launch ICBMs wherever Cody pleases?

-Deozaan (December 09, 2006, 09:01 PM)

If that suggestion wins, it is of course I that should receive the mug

As for animal charity donation, I think there's better causes - think of all the poor children who are only getting a punch in the face for christmas

Anyway, my gift suggestion: a cute & lovely (think popcap games style) computer game, starring Cody himself.

7853

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual diskette reader

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2006, 03:07 PM »

I'm fairly certain there's some free windows floppy emulator/whatever - or you could use vmware or similar, or simply copy the (installed) files from the other computer?

7854

Official DonationCoder.com Reviews / Re: Best Anti-virus

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2006, 11:58 AM »

Hmm, are you sure BitDefender uses the KAV engine? I thought it used BullGuard stuff (since that's what some of the MS KB articles that I get from BSODs lead to)...

Doesn't matter if it uses the KAV AV engine for some things though, other of it's components (ie, the drivers) are shit unstable - four Pentium4's that need HyperThreading disabled don't lie. And golly I'm glad I finally got all boxes upgraded to XP, the BitDefender experience on Win9x was even worse.

Funny thing really, since it worked perfectly on my home box - which is why I chose it for my workplace >_<

7855

Living Room / Re: Cody - The 3d model

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2006, 10:48 AM »

Cool, but isn't cody a bit thin? I'd have expected him to be a bit rounder, in the huggy-friendly kind of way, not implying he's fat

7856

Official DonationCoder.com Reviews / Re: Best Anti-virus

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2006, 10:46 AM »

I dunno whether to use Kaspersky or NOD32 - both are pretty great. Kaspersky might be a bit heavier, but it's behavioral blocking is really nifty. NOD32 migth catch a bit more things now and then, but it's at the cost of false positives - not something that I can afford at the place I admin. It also doesn't save it's "is this file already scanned?" database to disk, which makes it a bit slower at first-time-after-reboot scans than KAV.

STAY AWAY from BitDefender. It's scanning engine isn't all that good, and it's an unstable POS. I've had to disable hyperthreading on all P4 boxes to avoid BSODs.

7857

Living Room / Re: What is the DonationCoder.com Internet Citizens's Club (Cody's Club) ??

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2006, 10:38 AM »

OMFG MOUSER SET UP US TEH WAIT!

7858

Living Room / Re: Learn How to create No-CD Cracks.

« Last post by f0dder on December 23, 2006, 10:37 AM »

I dunno if this topic should be discussed any more, though, since most people's use for no-cd patches is to pirate games, not to avoid scratches or inconvenience.

-f0dder (December 21, 2006, 09:21 PM)

I have 1TB of HDD space so I always try making a disc image of every game I own (and some programs), but when the image doesn't work I look for a no-cd/dvd.

-Deozaan (December 23, 2006, 02:54 AM)

Same here, and I have two younger brothers that, although they are now 15+, I don't want to mess around with my originals.

7859

Living Room / Re: Tower Defence: Flash Game of the Day

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2006, 04:56 PM »

I really want to code my own "tower defense" kind of game one day, when I get zillions of little pieces of time that I can string together.

7860

General Software Discussion / Re: 3D directX

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2006, 05:37 AM »

I'm afraid you'll have to be a bit more specific - there could be a ton of different problems:

- bad graphics driver version (try older, try newer)
- hardware running too hot
- bad hardware (psu, gpu, ram, ...)
- problems with game version (try older, try newer)
- ...

You'll have to give some more info

7861

Living Room / Re: What is the DonationCoder.com Internet Citizens's Club (Cody's Club) ??

« Last post by f0dder on December 22, 2006, 05:36 AM »

You tease, you!

7862

Living Room / Re: Learn How to create No-CD Cracks.

« Last post by f0dder on December 21, 2006, 09:21 PM »

Virtual-CD programs generally won't do the trick, though, since game copy protection specifically check for those... and then we're back to the age-old cat vs. mouse problem.

I dunno if this topic should be discussed any more, though, since most people's use for no-cd patches is to pirate games, not to avoid scratches or inconvenience.

7863

Living Room / Re: Learn How to create No-CD Cracks.

« Last post by f0dder on December 21, 2006, 04:54 PM »

Definitely not a topic for DonationCoder.

And it's basically something you should forget about - these days it's a very very very complicated task to remove game copy protections. For nuisance removal for your legally bought games, google

7864

General Software Discussion / Re: The experiences of XPLite customized installations

« Last post by f0dder on December 20, 2006, 05:59 PM »

Why buy xplite when there's the free www.nliteos.com ?

My experience with nLite is that it works great, but you need to be a bit careful and test your image in vmware before rolling out - you can shoot yourself in the foot and remove some critical services.

But the end result of having an unattended windows setup with latest updates and lots less fat is worth it

7865

Living Room / Re: adding SATA to a non-SATA motherboard

« Last post by f0dder on December 20, 2006, 05:57 PM »

PCI sata adapters are dirt cheap these days, unless you want a zillion ports or raid5... their main disadvantage is that the PCI bus is limited to 133MB/s (iirc), but that's not really a problem until you try to do sound, gigabit networking and a hefty RAID at the same time - single drive sustained rate is, what, 50MB/s or so.

Getting a SATA drive + pci controller is smarter than an IDE disk... you can re-use the drive in a new box, sata has command queing, and the connectors are nicer and smaller, which allows for better airflow.

Hotplug probably won't be supported, but who needs that anyway?

7866

Living Room / Re: Tower Defence: Flash Game of the Day

« Last post by f0dder on December 19, 2006, 09:35 AM »

Nasty game! Nasty game!

With a score of 12, I now almost don't have time to eat before going to work >_<.

I WILL return, and refine my chinese water torture method.

7867

General Software Discussion / Re: Wanted: Advice on Nlite'ing Windows

« Last post by f0dder on December 19, 2006, 09:13 AM »

First piece of advice: test in vmware beforing installing, this will save you a lot of grief.

Some of the applications can be 'installed' directly from the install CD, others can with some registry tweaks (that can be applied install-time), and some will have to be installed manually after windows.

Also look at RyanVM's post-sp2 update packs.

7868

General Software Discussion / Re: moral behaviour in the shareware industry

« Last post by f0dder on December 19, 2006, 07:56 AM »

Well, mention the app and perhaps somebody can find a replacement for it, as well as warning others to not purchase it?

7869

General Software Discussion / Re: Sharing files: How to P2P with password among few friends?

« Last post by f0dder on December 18, 2006, 09:35 PM »

Seems interesting... I just hate that "everything should run inside a browser!11!1!" mentality >_<

7870

What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by f0dder on December 18, 2006, 08:26 PM »

I think we really need to link to that comic...

7871

General Software Discussion / Re: moral behaviour in the shareware industry

« Last post by f0dder on December 18, 2006, 06:44 PM »

#1 - sucks. I wouldn't find it immoral to use a w4r3z copy in this case, considering you paid for the software.

#2 - tough luck, have to agree with Josh on this one.

#3 - pretty bad. Find w4r3z copy, or ask your CC company for refund. (Slightly off on a tangent: when my VISA card was stolen and abused, I got 100% refund even though it took 12 hours before I realized the theft and blocked the card. The refund did involve filing theft with the police, and giving a copy of the statement to my bank...)

Can't see why disclosing names of any companies/products would be a bad thing - software authors have to take consequences of their actions, just like everybody else.

7872

General Software Discussion / Re: Sharing files: How to P2P with password among few friends?

« Last post by f0dder on December 18, 2006, 06:24 PM »

Hamachi is an interesting idea - it's main appliance seems to be playing pirated games across the internet, though >_<

Depending on how you need to share files, and how big they are, there's various options. I wouldn't use the "\\computername\share" way across the internet, even with an encrypted VPN connection, since SMB/CIFS isn't the world's fastest nor most reliable protocol.

If only one person needs to make files available for a few other people to download, a personal webserver just serving a folder, is very easy to set up.

If multiple people need to manage files, setting up some ftp might be the best option.

If you need to distirbute some really large files, look into torrents - µTorrent has an easy-to-use built-in "mini tracker".

7873

General Software Discussion / Re: O&O Defragmenter 8.5

« Last post by f0dder on December 18, 2006, 06:14 PM »

The only defrag app I've used since moving from 9x->NT that made a perceivable difference from the built-in NT defragger is PerfectDisk. Diskeeper doesn't seem to be worth much. Haven't tried O&O Defrag in a while, might find a trial and give it a spin sometime...

I'll have to agree that there doesn't seem to have been major benefits from new versions of PerfectDisk lately, though. The only thing I've noticed is the somewhat laggy UI, appearantly introduced because they switched to wxWidgets.

7874

General Software Discussion / Re: Regex Renamer

« Last post by f0dder on December 18, 2006, 06:05 PM »

Hm, I've only used TortoiseSVN (which was modeled after TortoiseCVS afaik ), but found that pretty intuitive and easy to use, hence why I recommended TCVS.

I've only ever checked stuff out from CVS, but that didn't really seem harder than subversion... you still need username/pass, and port number if a non-default is used.

7875

Living Room / Re: Recommendations for good external hard drive solutions?

« Last post by f0dder on December 18, 2006, 06:02 PM »

app103: if you're going for a tray solution like that, why not go for internal instead of USB? Better performance etc...

Anyway, definitely go for a metal enclosure (much better heat transfer than plastic), and watch out for fan specifications... some of them have tiny but extremely loud little fans >_<