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8076

Living Room / Re: Vista licensing - will it kill enthusiasts interest ?

« Last post by f0dder on October 16, 2006, 06:05 PM »

Well, hardware changes are going to remain the same when it comes to activation.

-Josh (October 16, 2006, 06:00 PM)

What's the stuff about tying your activation to one piece of hardware and only being able to change the piece of hardware to tie to once?

As for apple, they love DRM even more than Microsoft, and used to have a hardware monopoly for their platform... imagine not just an operating system monopoly, but hardware as well. So as tempting as OSX might seem, well...

8077

Living Room / Re: Vista licensing - will it kill enthusiasts interest ?

« Last post by f0dder on October 16, 2006, 05:47 PM »

Josh, I want to be able to move my software to a new pc (as in only having it installed on one) without purchasing a new license. I want to be able to change any hardware component in my PC without having to buy a new license, or being a suspected pirate and having to call a swedish Microsoft support guy in ireland, tell him a 5x5 digit number and get another 5x5 digit number back (or are those numbers even longer?). And yes, that's how bad the support situation is for us living in .dk - at least it was a few years ago when I needed to phone-activate Office2003.

Now it's fine that Microsoft wants to make money, more power to that - but their licensing scheme is getting out of hand, and only hurting the end-user. I've been so tempted to install a pirate XP with VLK and WGA crack on the ~15 computers at the place I support, even though I've got legit licenses for them all... just because it's such a goddamn PAIN to deal with.

I agree that there aren't any real competitors and that OSX comes closest (and boy, I think Apple are even worse than Microsoft... if they get a chance). But I hope Vista will be such a flop that other systems will get a chance.

8078

Living Room / Re: Vista licensing - will it kill enthusiasts interest ?

« Last post by f0dder on October 16, 2006, 05:32 PM »

I've never been interested in Vista, and I'm going to stick with XP for as long as I can. It bothers me that DX10 will only be available for Vista - bye bye, games. Soon, anyway. I've never been a fan of the activation crap, and with Vista they're appearantly taking it to extremely unacceptable lows.

Carol: it took a while before XP was cracked, actually. The reason it was available for pirates early was because of the leaked "DevilsOwn" Volume License Key. Then followed a brute-force keygen ("XP key recoverer and discoverer" or something), took around 10 minutes to find a key, and after some freeloading period this hole was easily patched by Microsoft.

Then somebody found a weakness in MS's elliptic curve cryptography, and made the "4in1" keygen that made instantaneous and valid keys, and this wasn't defeated until the WGA crap, where Microsoft proved that they indeed do have a database of all valid VLKs.

I just hope Vista will be a big flop and might give alternative operating systems some chance of profiling themselves. But people are sheep, so they'll probably embrace that pile of manure...

8079

Living Room / Re: (Defend the) Final Fortress - Flash Game of the Day

« Last post by f0dder on October 16, 2006, 05:01 PM »

I got all the main-cannon upgrades, 1 bio cannon, 3-4 sam sites, and turrets for the rest... with all those turrets and sam sites I only had to focus on shits; it was actually a mistake to buy the BIO-cannon

8080

fSekrit / Re: Beta: fSekrit 1.3 beta thread

« Last post by f0dder on October 16, 2006, 09:08 AM »

But I've been too busy to get 1.3 finalized - will probably take a couple of weeks. Sowwy!

8081

General Software Discussion / Re: Abbreviation expanders for DOS boxes under Win9x?

« Last post by f0dder on October 16, 2006, 03:39 AM »

Heh, I thought the same as you, Jibz. 4dos was <3 back in the days of DOS and 9x... for a while I even had shell=4dos, and used win9x as a multitasked, protected-mode, better-filesystem-cache version of DOS ^_^

8082

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 15, 2006, 05:02 PM »

I don't see a problem with how mouser has handled the situation and haven't taken any insult. I'm used to deal with much worse trolls like ***** (my own censure there). Personally I would probably have locked the thread, and looking at the track record MasterTech has, would have banned him.

But on the other hand, look at how nice the whole DonationCoder site is, and how friendly people generally are - I think it's at least partly due to how the admins handle situations here.

I'm going to be 100% honest though and say that I believe MasterTech is a annoying little troll and that I'd kick him in the stomach if I met him face-to-face... and yes mouser, I'll have some chocolate and cola now

8083

Living Room / Re: Laptop acts sluggish even after all attempts are made to increase speed...

« Last post by f0dder on October 15, 2006, 04:57 PM »

JavaJones: I think it's "sasser".

And the builtin firewall is far from useless, and it's not a silly thing to include (linux and bsd generally come with firewalls as well, even if not enabled by default). Yes, if you run as admin a piece of malware kan turn the firewall off... but it could do the same with any other firewall as well.

I prefer a NATing router anyway, "personal firewalls" are too much hassle for me compared to what they're worth. The only thing I miss is the ability to easily see apps that phone home, but it's not that big of an issue to me.

8084

Living Room / Re: Buying New PC. Suggestions?

« Last post by f0dder on October 15, 2006, 06:55 AM »

Couldn't have done it without you.  I submitted this query to a number of different forums, but this site is the only one that was actually helpful.  Funny that I'm also involved in political debates on certain other (unnamed) sites, and unaware that something seemingly cut-and-dry would cause such diversity in opinion.  It's peaked my interest, already.

-MilesOhToole (October 14, 2006, 09:58 PM)

Hardware is almost a religion - you will find very biased AMD or intel, NVidia or ATI, fanboys that simply haven't realized "pick the best bang for the buck", but will instead defend "their" hardware religiously...

Fantastic that it went so smooth here, DC is a fantastic place

8085

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 14, 2006, 08:04 PM »

I only have one thing to add: http://www.google.co...h?q=mastertech+troll

8086

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 14, 2006, 07:43 PM »

I suggest all the rest of you stop wasting time on this troll as well... I got a nice privmsg from another member, which I hope he won't mind me quoting anonymously.

Hi, I see you wisely say goodbye to Mastertech. Just to make sure and to prevent future damage, you do know who he is right? Try Google if not. Banned from tons of tech forums due to spamming, manipulation of quotes, forum rules, facts and generally being a pain in the butt. Last week he got kicked out of Avast forum of all places, list is never ending. Even has a website dedicated to him http://nanobox.chipx...6.com/FirefoxFables/ about his favorite topic which he have no idea about.

If you get the idea all it takes is cool facts think again. If lucky he will simply ignore you. Somehow I doubt many DC members are interesting to his black/white/myth logic but dont forget you have no idea what he can make you do

The regular annoying clown X 10 = Mastertech.

-anonymous

(Sorry, mouser)

8087

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone else checking out FireFox 2.0 rc2?

« Last post by f0dder on October 14, 2006, 02:52 PM »

Hmm, so no one has commented yet on my stylish use of recursion in the screenshot .

-Eóin (October 14, 2006, 04:41 AM)

I thought "nice, recursion" when I saw the shot, but of course I didn't see the thread until now... otherwise I would've commented on it

Is FF2 going to be faster and less of a hog than 1.5, or have they just added some bells and whistles?

8088

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Audio Book Set, 5 books/20 ta

« Last post by f0dder on October 13, 2006, 12:21 PM »

Nice - and read by Douglas himself

I'll pass though, don't want anything* to spoil my memory of the story.

*) yes, I did watch the movie. grmbl.

8089

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 13, 2006, 07:48 AM »

Whatever.

Done wasting time on you.

8090

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 13, 2006, 06:51 AM »

Remember, folks...this is the same Microsoft that brought you things like WinME...which even they have never had any clue on how to make it stable. 

-app103 (October 13, 2006, 06:43 AM)

Windows ME was more stable than 98 since that is what it was based on. It simply required ME compatible drivers and Bioses. During the time ME was released, mainboard manufacturing moved over to mainland china, we saw the beginning of the capacitor fiasco and people were trying to install Win9x drivers on ME. There was nothing inherently unstable about ME, no more than 98. It was not Microsoft making ME unstable but the end users and the hardware. Both of which are obsolete and don't hold a cadle to 2000 and XP.

-Mastertech (October 13, 2006, 06:48 AM)

Back in the day my school bought ~20 new boxes from a big vendor with pre-installed WinME with only WinME drivers... after a month, it had to swap all the WinME licenses for win98. The amount of BSODs simply was too much.

8091

General Software Discussion / Re: 12 Windows Explorer Alternatives Compared

« Last post by f0dder on October 13, 2006, 04:57 AM »

Hrm, that wasn't exactly a review... there's only a few lines of text for each, no justification on how he has rated the programs, no pros/cons, and for Total Commander he even writes: "Having only used it for about 30 minutes total (so far), take these comments with a grain of salt."

Perhaps not a bad start, but certainly not very useful in it's current state, except for showing a batch of explorer replacements that you might want to try out, as well as having copy/pasted their feature highlights from their webpages.

8092

Living Room / Re: Laptop acts sluggish even after all attempts are made to increase speed...

« Last post by f0dder on October 13, 2006, 03:42 AM »

Have the game every run okay on your laptop? It *is* a relatively demanding game for a 9600 card when details are set to highest. Also, does the video chip have dedicated memory, or do your system use a unified memory model?

And... why two installations of XP? Does SP2 give any measurable speed impact anywhere? (apart for possibly a bit longer bootup time).

8093

Living Room / Re: Where to find barebone case with 5.25" bays?

« Last post by f0dder on October 13, 2006, 03:38 AM »

So... do you want a computer case for 2x5.25 and a motherboard etc, or *just* 2x5.25 devices and a powersupply, but no computer?

8094

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 13, 2006, 03:31 AM »

Whatever, I'm not going to waste any more time on you. People can try out the settings for themselves and judge whether it works for them or not.

8095

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 12, 2006, 02:18 AM »

No they clearly explain how something works and what it is for. This tweak is ONLY for if you use your machine as a File Server. The reason is it will consume up to 80% of your RAM with the file cache thus forcing the working set down on running applications and causing more paging.

filesystem cache will be purged if needed. While windows does use the paging file when not needed, it will still prefer to resize FS cache before paging out to disk.

Please quote and post from what page in the WinInternals book that says this setting is recommended for applications or desktop use in XP. And I mean this exact setting LargeSystemCache. If it doesn't or you don't have the latest version of the book don't tell me to read something you are guessing at.

It doesn't mention LargeSystemCache, but it describes how the windows memory system works, how the filesystem cache works, how paging works, et cetera.

8096

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 11, 2006, 05:14 PM »

Let me know the results if you try it out.

8097

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 11, 2006, 05:07 PM »

nudone: probably not for most of the stuff; the settings tell windows it's okay to use just about much RAM as it wants for filesystem cache, and cache more aggressively. This is mainly useful if you shuffle a lot of file data, and if you need the data more than once.

Think software development, where header files and libraries are used again and again. Or messing with nLite setups and testing in vmware, where the resulting .iso file can often remain cached during install.

There might be some advantage when doing premiere editing, but it depends on how much memory premiere wants to gobble up for itself...

While you might not gain an improvement, you shouldn't see a penalty for the setting - there are situations where it could happen though, like if an application restricts it's memory use based on the currently physically available amount of RAM.

And then there's the warning that you should never enable the setting if you use an ATI card, since their drivers sucks (I wouldn't be surprised if ATI is the sole reason for the BSOD warning in the Microsoft knowledgebase article).
 
Might be worth a try for you.

8098

Living Room / Re: WiFi woes and a big WOW from Netgear's new product lines !!! WOW WOW WOW !!!!

« Last post by f0dder on October 11, 2006, 09:29 AM »

Hm, I'd ve careful with buying hardware when standards are only in draft - also, is the super-high speeds only available if you use a netgear wlan card? I seem to recall there were gotchas like that in the past with some of the faster-than-standard solutions.

8099

Living Room / Re: Frozen Bubble - Now available in Flash!

« Last post by f0dder on October 11, 2006, 09:27 AM »

If a flash game is faster than a native windows port, those developers must suck >_<

8100

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Myths

« Last post by f0dder on October 11, 2006, 09:25 AM »

Microsoft target their knowledgebase articles at the general masses and the general needs. Now let me quote myself, this time with a bit of emphasis:

This tweak can be nice on Desktop machines, not just servers, depending on the way you use your system.

-f0dder (July 19, 2006, 02:14 PM)

I've got a lot of memory in this system (2 gigabytes) and I regularly do lots of file operations. LargeSystemCache=1 is a noticable improvement for me, even though this is a desktop machine and not a server. At the same time it doesn't have negative impact, since the FS cache is dynamically adjusted when apps need more memory.

Do take a look at "Inside Windows" and the sysinternals tools if you want to be able to talk about topics like this.