Recent Posts

8251

Screenshot Captor / Re: SC crashes on right-click

« Last post by f0dder on September 14, 2006, 03:02 AM »

The thumbnail/explorer pane sucks - there's so many problems with it.

8252

Best E-mail Client / Re: I wish I could punch the idiots that made TheBat!

« Last post by f0dder on September 14, 2006, 03:00 AM »

Carol, that scenario doesn't necessarily test the robustness of iTunes... I'd guess it stores a database of your music collection somewhere, probably in %USERPROFILE% somewhere. You'd have to fill up *that* partition and try again

That said, programs really ought to save files "safely". Using a decent ACID database, or "save-to-tempfile-then-rename-tempfile-when-saved-properly" scheme, so a failed save will not destroy the old saved file (something that's not in fSekrit yet, but is a high priority for v1.3).

8253

Best E-mail Client / Re: I wish I could punch the idiots that made TheBat!

« Last post by f0dder on September 13, 2006, 05:02 PM »

Nasty :/

It's one of those bugs that usually won't be found and fixed before something like this happens, though >_<

For instance, when you download your mail you MUST click on at least one in order to delete anything. So, if you get 10 messages, and they all have viruses, you would HAVE to click on (AKA open) at least one virus laiden message in order to delete the rest.

To be fair, TheBat isn't vulnerable. Even if you have HTML mails turned on, since it uses it's own HTML rendering engine.

8254

fSekrit / Re: Beta: fSekrit 1.2 needs bashing!

« Last post by f0dder on September 13, 2006, 04:43 PM »

ep: oops, thanks for pointing that out. The underscore'd names are the variable names I use in the code, forgot the registry names didn't have underscores. Thanks for pointing out, history.txt updated. flork vs. flork.dk was a stupid slip-up as well.

allen: registry was the easiest way, considering I don't (currently) have a font GUI picker. Also, I use a font not present on most machines (Jibz' wonderful Dina font, so for me it was logical to keep it as a registry setting. No, I will not support embedded fonts, too much code for what fSekrit is.

But I'm considering a GUI font picker, and might embed the font settings.

8255

fSekrit / Re: Beta: fSekrit 1.2 needs bashing!

« Last post by f0dder on September 13, 2006, 10:03 AM »

Beta2 uploaded... final should hopefully be ready for the 15th as promised

8256

fSekrit / Re: Beta: fSekrit 1.2 needs bashing!

« Last post by f0dder on September 13, 2006, 06:10 AM »

Okay, so far...

Seems that some people have forgot to read the accompanying text files , the current file->import and file->export always import from / export to c:\stream.txt - pick-a-file dialog boxes will be added before release.

A bug has been identified, you will always be asked if you want to save modfications, even if file hasn't been modified.

Both issues fixed in beta2

8257

General Software Discussion / Re: Data recovery software suggestions?

« Last post by f0dder on September 13, 2006, 05:42 AM »

runtime's GetDataBack for NTFS has saved me a couple of times.

8258

Living Room / Re: Unprotected Wireless Lans?

« Last post by f0dder on September 12, 2006, 05:01 PM »

Nasty! - and not at all fair. Some access points cannot be secured, others only have WEP (which is basically insecure), and many people don't have the tech skills required to secure the access point... bad court, bad!

8259

fSekrit / Beta: fSekrit 1.2 needs bashing!

« Last post by f0dder on September 12, 2006, 09:24 AM »

Updated: beta 2

For those interested, here's a beta of v1.2. I'd like you to bash this in every possible way, and if you can make it crash please do tell me. Do *anything* you can to play tricks on the executable.

This is a pretty good indication of what 1.2 will bring. The text import and export aren't finished yet though, in the beta they both work on c:\stream.txt - final version will of course have a the usual pick-a-file dialog.

Post any findings, suggestions, and hate mails here.

PS: I haven't had any problems on my own box, but this is *BETA* - don't do do anything without backups.

8260

Living Room / Re: What slows Windows down? See for yourself....

« Last post by f0dder on September 12, 2006, 04:30 AM »

Hm, might be worth a try setting the vmware services to manual - you can always set them back to whatever again if it doesn't work. A bit silly that it's not loaded on-demand anyway.

VirtualPC is okay, but somewhat slower than vmware... at least last time I played with it.

8261

Living Room / Re: What slows Windows down? See for yourself....

« Last post by f0dder on September 12, 2006, 02:17 AM »

If you can avoid them, don't install an antivirus program (especially not Norton). That's not perfect advice for everyone, but if you've got an oodle of web-smarts, you should be able to spot what's bad and what's ok.

better to be safe than sorry. this is a universal fact.. haha, even experts make mistakes.. so I take this as stupid advice.

-mitzevo (September 12, 2006, 02:15 AM)

Especially since a trojan dropper could hide in an ad banner - either because the ad service doesn't check, or because an affiliate was hacked. And those sneaky bastards constantly find new ways of fooling ad blockers...

8262

Living Room / Re: What slows Windows down? See for yourself....

« Last post by f0dder on September 12, 2006, 01:32 AM »

LOL - another shot in the arm for Norton

Quite surprised by VMWare though.

-Carol Haynes (September 11, 2006, 05:48 PM)

vmware runs a bunch of stuff on system startup, like the license service, NAT service, and some mount stuff...

8263

General Software Discussion / Re: What's the Greatest Software Ever Written?

« Last post by f0dder on September 11, 2006, 05:29 PM »

VIM is pretty interesting, I'm trying to "get into it". It's a pain to start with, but I can see how (if you make it past the initial "ugh" barrier) a lot of editing tasks could be pretty speedy with it.

For development, visual studio still has advantages over it though - the stuff you can do with a "browse database" is really nifty, and the debugger is classy too. But when you don't need those features, VIM does seem handy. And a lot more fun to run on a laptop - vs.net *is* pretty damn heavy

8264

Living Room / Re: STICKMAN SAM 4: Fantastically Good Flash Platform Game

« Last post by f0dder on September 09, 2006, 06:33 AM »

Looks nice, I'll give it a shot.

8265

Living Room / Re: Morals, free market, and what you can expect when you pay for software

« Last post by f0dder on September 08, 2006, 05:19 PM »

I don't feel that bad about having purchased a *shareware* app and finding some free thing that does it better. If I've purchased something, it's because I like it and want to support the author. Which, in the case of shareware/donationware, is important IMHO.

For a big commercial product... things are different

8266

Living Room / Re: Cody's coins - made from what?

« Last post by f0dder on September 08, 2006, 05:14 PM »

Just like Cody's height, I don't think the coins have a fixed substance...

Personally I tend to think of them as chocolate coins with gold speckles and great ideas in them. Dunno why, but it makes sense to me

8267

General Software Discussion / Re: keeping/saving cloned files

« Last post by f0dder on September 08, 2006, 05:12 PM »

Jeremy Collake also wrote some stuff that you might want to check ou: http://www.bitsum.com/shjunc.asp

8268

General Software Discussion / Re: What to you think of RealPlayer?

« Last post by f0dder on September 08, 2006, 05:09 PM »

I hate(d) realplayer with a passion - but it's been years since I had it installed, so I've sorta forgot why. It was pretty bad, though.

The format might be technically good, but since only RealPlayer (and the hax0r alternative) support it, I hate that as well

8269

Living Room / Re: Cool Gadget: USB Phonograph for Converting Records to Digital

« Last post by f0dder on September 08, 2006, 05:07 PM »

I wonder if the device is particularly good, but it's a pretty cute idea

8270

Living Room / Re: Looking to get a job at Microsoft? This site MIGHT help you get ready.

« Last post by f0dder on September 08, 2006, 05:49 AM »

Eek

8271

Developer's Corner / Re: Computer Programming Algorithms Directory

« Last post by f0dder on September 07, 2006, 04:59 PM »

Let's hope it's expanded.

NIST also has some form of algorithm thingy... many of the entries seem a bit short and stuff, though.

8272

fSekrit / Re: Brute Force hacking possible?

« Last post by f0dder on September 07, 2006, 04:54 PM »

That wasn't four years - it was... well, "3.671 years with 57 zeroes behind", I dunno what such a quantity is called . But yes, you're right that it could take 4min by chance. Not very likely, though.

If people use weak passwords, they shouldn't really be dealing with cryptography anyway. I'm sorry if that sounds elitist, but it's similar to putting a $5000 lock on your door and hiding the key under your doormat.

Not putting in an artificial limit is *not* a security hole in fSekrit.

8273

fSekrit / Re: Brute Force hacking possible?

« Last post by f0dder on September 07, 2006, 09:58 AM »

fSekrit uses 256-bit keys. Even if you could test one trillion (10^12, or 1,000,000,000,000) keys per second, it could still take some 3,6717e57 years to find the password (read up on http://en.wikipedia..../Scientific_notation if you wonder what that 'e' is doing there, or think that "4 years is not enough" ).

That's for a dumb bruteforce attack, though - somebody *might* come up with a smarter attack against AES/Rijndael, or the government *might* have supah sekrit machines in Area 51, made by aliens, to decrypt faster...

or you might use a weak password from a dictionary

8274

fSekrit / Re: Read only password support?

« Last post by f0dder on September 07, 2006, 07:44 AM »

But what is to stop somebody from copy/paste to a new note,
then overwrite the original exe file with that?

-f0dder (September 07, 2006, 07:11 AM)

Hmm     
Yes, that's right. If they have access to an original fSekrit exe ...
Hmm BTW: will there be a fSekrit version without About-box and fSekrit in the title? 
If no one knows where this secret little exe comes from....

-AbteriX (September 07, 2006, 07:32 AM)

*grin* - security through obscurity

No, I don't plan on such a version. But if your friends aren't going to respect a read-only copy, perhaps you shouldn't give them a copy in the first place 

8275

fSekrit / Re: Read only password support?

« Last post by f0dder on September 07, 2006, 07:11 AM »

Thing is, a user could still copy the text and paste it into a new document.

Yes, that's OK. But than i can still reffer to the original exe and say "Use this!"
If the can modify the original exe, no one can say what is the correct one after a short time.

-AbteriX (September 07, 2006, 07:07 AM)

But what is to stop somebody from copy/paste to a new note, then overwrite the original exe file with that? Read-only mode is not a very effective "control" thing... but it's still one the todo since it might be useful for other stuff