Recent Posts

951

Living Room / Re: A software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is...

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 14, 2010, 06:20 PM »

I think the key is the word 'required'.  That implies that if any one of the parts fails, the whole system fails.

The Internet was explicitly designed so that a failure in one (or even more) part(s) wouldn't result in the whole network failing.

But, I think this still makes a point counter to the article:  the article's premise is that complex legislation (or whatever) is almost by definition prone to failure due to its complexity. However, one could make the argument that even a failure in one more components of a piece of complex legislation doesn't necessarily render the entire thing a failure.

952

Living Room / Re: Slashdot Question: How to Recover Stolen Laptop if you Know Thief's IP Address?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 13, 2010, 01:40 PM »

He should let the authorities know that it's a stolen next-gen prototype Apple "iLapPhone".  That should get some doors knocked down.

do you guys have any promising leads?

- the Dude

Leads? Yeah sure, I'll just check with the boys down at the crime lab. They've got four more detectives working on the case...

-cop

953

General Software Discussion / Re: Request: How did DonationCoder take off? (Slightly NSFW)

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 03, 2010, 08:18 PM »

Umm - more importantly, where's the NSFW material?

954

Living Room / Re: 20 years later, the movie "Total Recall" still kicks butt

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 03, 2010, 01:36 AM »

The Whisperer in the Darkness[/i] is one of Lovecraft's better stories and the  H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's newest adaptation also looks good.

-40hz (July 02, 2010, 11:58 PM)

Thanks for the heads up - I hadn't heard about this.

I also agree that "In the Mouth of Madness" is a pretty good Lovecraftian-themed film.  I also liked "From Beyond" - but that's definitely **not** even close to being a PG-13 flick.

955

Living Room / Re: 20 years later, the movie "Total Recall" still kicks butt

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 03, 2010, 01:27 AM »

When referring to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, are you referring to the remake (2005) or the original (1920)?

-Deozaan (July 02, 2010, 09:42 PM)

The 1920 original - I haven't seen the remake.

956

Living Room / Re: Apple/ATT sued over iPhone 4 Antenna issues

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 02, 2010, 06:55 PM »

the only problem is with software that calculates how many bars should be showing. And the software hasn't worked properly since the original iPhone was released three years ago.

I think the problem is that the existing code looks something like:

[Select]

   showbars = some_complex_determination_of_signal_strength();

and the fix is:

[Select]

   showbars = 5;

957

Living Room / Re: Dell knowingly shipped millions of defective computers?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 02, 2010, 02:31 AM »

Yup, not cool.  I got bit by that problem on a couple of Dell 400SC machines: http://www.interslic...400sc/capacitors.htm

Aside from how Dell handled the problem (or rather, didn't), one of the worst aspects about the failures was that the symptoms were intermittent. As I mention on the above page, I spent a significant amount of time thinking that I had malware of some sort or a goofed up configuration causing the problems.

One interesting thing is that both my 400SC's had the problem with the capacitors but only one showed any instability. Surprisingly, the one that had capacitors that actually burst was the one that remained stable.  The machine that behaved poorly had caps that "only" bulged, but didn't actually burst.

958

Living Room / Re: 20 years later, the movie "Total Recall" still kicks butt

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 02, 2010, 01:49 AM »

Speaking of which, is that movie (1984) any good? Or are there any good film adaptations of the book?

-Deozaan (July 02, 2010, 01:13 AM)

I recently watched the John Hurt version of the movie, "Nineteen Eighty-Four", and I think it's good (depressing, but then again so is the source material).  I think that it follows the book pretty faithfully, but it's been a long time since i read the book, so I might be off base there. It is quite bleak. Note that (since you mentioned PG-13 later in your post), the movie does have R-rated nudity and sex.

The only other movie version of 1984 that I'm aware of is one made in 1956 starring Edmond O'Brien (http://en.wikipedia....wiki/1984_(1956_film)).  I watched it many many years ago in college, and don't remember too much about it.  For some reason it's not readily available on DVD, but you can search around for bootlegs.

While I'm at it, are there any good movies based on the Cthulhu mythos that are also relatively clean?

-Deozaan (July 02, 2010, 01:13 AM)

There's a really good DVD called "Call of Cthulhu".  It was made by a more-or-less amateur group of Lovecraft fanatics (I don't mean amateur in an insulting way, but they're not Hollywood pros - which I think was an advantage in this case).

Note: it's a silent film! I think they did this both for artistic value and atmosphere with probably some budget/technical reasons as well. Anyway - it works really well to give it a Lovecraftian feel.

I think it's a fantastic film - I think the encounter on Cthulhu's island is nicely staged to give it a feel of 'unworldly dimensions'.  If you've seen "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and liked what was done there with the angles and perspectives of the sets you might have an idea of what I mean.

It's not rated, but the closest to anything racy in the movie is a dance ritual by a bunch of cultists wearing loincloths.

No idea if it's on Netflix's Instant Watch.

959

General Software Discussion / Re: Thinstall MS Word 2003 only 17.6 MB?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 01, 2010, 10:39 AM »

But what I want to know is how those portable apps are made. I might be able to manually do the task

-electronixtar (July 01, 2010, 05:41 AM)

How 'application virtualization' systems like Softricity works (and I think that Thinstall is similar) is by monitoring all file and registry access made by an application during a 'packaging' run.  The information is recorded, and when the application is run virtualized, those accesses are also monitored, but instead of recording the data, the virtualization layer provides it from what was recorded before.

Obviously there are a lot of details glossed over in that description - for example, not all file/registry accesses should be virtualized (like the file that you might open for editing when you're performing the packaging step).  I'd guess that the most difficult part of what those systems have to deal with are the exceptions to the rule.

However, one inexpensive piece of software that uses very similar technology and techniques is Sandboxie - I could see the author of that package possibly spinning off a thin-packager if he decided he wanted to branch off from his current market.  It might even be possible to take a sandbox and use it as some sort of 'thin' installation, but I don't think that Sandboxie itself is a portable app, so you'd just be pushing the portable aspect of the problem a little upstream.

960

General Software Discussion / Re: Win 8 design documents leaked, plus Icaza comments on them

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 30, 2010, 06:40 PM »

Ooh la la! I like the Push Button Reset feature. Not really sure what anybody is going to buy from the Microsoft App store, though. . .

-Deozaan (June 29, 2010, 02:11 AM)

I also think the Push Button Reset looks like a good idea.  I can see a Microsoft App Store being successful if MS opens it up to 3rd parties in a way that they actually take advantage of it.  People seem to really like the way iPhone's App Store or Android's Marketplace work - you buy the app and no matter what you do to the device you can get your apps back and get updates easily.  If MS can pull that off, I think it'll be a very nice thing. But I'm a bit skeptical that they'll be able to pull it off.

961

Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 29, 2010, 01:19 PM »

it had the least annoyances for me compared to the rest

-J-Mac (June 29, 2010, 12:22 PM)

It's too bad that that has to be the deciding factor. This is how I ended up with my bank and the place I bought my car from as well.

962

General Software Discussion / Re: Truecrypt defeats FBI

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 29, 2010, 01:16 PM »

The salt isn't added to the password, otherwise the same password would have numerous key associated with it and you couldn't decrypt anything. The salt is added to the data to be encrypted. That way the same key and same data look different after encryption. When you decrypt the cipher you simply ignore the salt bits.

-Eóin (June 29, 2010, 12:23 PM)

That's one way to do it, another way is to add the salt to the password before hashing it and to store the salt in some sort of header (or somewhere else retrievable) so the operation can be reproduced when it's time to decrypt. The salt is just random bits and is not considered a secret, so storing it doesn't detract from the security of the cipher.  I know that this is the way that password authentication schemes generally work, but truecrypt and other data encryption schemes might very well handle the salt as you described.

963

General Software Discussion / Re: Truecrypt defeats FBI

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 29, 2010, 11:45 AM »

What if there were an encryption package that took a relatively easy to remember password and used that as a seed to produce a very complex, very long password that got used to do the actual encryption?

-40hz (June 29, 2010, 01:17 AM)

I believe that most crypto packages do something along these lines by running your password through a hash algorithm (like SHA or MD5 or similar) and use the hash as the key to the cipher.  Serious crypto packages will combine the password with a random 'salt' value before performing the hash so that the same password being used for different objects or sessions will generate a different set of key bits for the cipher.

None of this helps with 'guessable' passwords, but it does help map the entropy of the password to the number of bits used in a cipher's key and the salt value helps prevent detecting that a password is being used more than once (for example, if a file is encrypted with the same password, but using different salt values, the resulting encrypted files will be completely different).

I'm certain that truecrypt performs the hash operation, and I believe that it also salts the password, but there are probably modes or configurations where it doesn't or can't because the salt has to be stored somewhere so it can retrieve it and use it to recreate the hash when you type in the password to decrypt a volume. There might be situations where that's not acceptable for some reason.

964

General Software Discussion / Re: Truecrypt defeats FBI

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 28, 2010, 04:46 PM »

And any encryption system that utilizes a properly implemented One-Time Pad technique is still completely unbreakable using analytic methods.

-40hz (June 28, 2010, 02:29 PM)

The problem is that there are very few properly implemented one time pad systems, and certainly none for general purpose desktop use. To properly implement it you need a random key that's as long as what you're encrypting, and you can use the key only once (that's what it's a "one time" pad). And a computer's pseudo-random number generator isn't really good enough to generate the keys.

The advantage of the one time pad is that it's provable secure (if you adhere to the requirements) - any output message is just as likely as any other, so there's no way for an attacker to know if they've 'cracked' the right message.

The problem with one time pad is key management - storing the key securely is as much a problem as storing the data you want secured. Add to that the problem of creating the key properly.  When used incorrectly (if you don't produce, secure and use the key properly), the one-time pad is probably about the easiest encryption scheme to break.

So one time pads are generally only useful for short messages between 2 parties, no so much for storing data securely (since you have to store the key securely as well).

So anyone looking at encryption software that claims to use one-time pad would be wise to steer clear.

965

Living Room / Re: A software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is...

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 23, 2010, 02:14 PM »

In what world is 0.9550 == 8%?

-Deozaan (June 23, 2010, 01:58 PM)

The formatting might be messed up in some browsers - the number isn't 0.9550, it's 0.95 raised to the 50th power (expressed in some programming languages as "0.95^50" or "0.95**50" or "pow(0.95, 50)").

966

Living Room / Re: A software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is...

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 23, 2010, 12:03 PM »

I probably shouldn't be diving into a political-based thread, but here's a few thoughts anyway...

Even if certain mathematical and physical science concepts prove that much can come from simple things, that doesn't mean that all things in society can be simple.  Don't forget - there are even some very complex things in mathematics and physics.

And I'm not even sure what the following has to do with 'keeping things simple':

Even the government’s response to the tragically ongoing BP oil spill has been one of triangulation and determined-complexity.   Get some supertankers to siphon off the leaking oil?   Nope.   Help Louisiana Gov. Jindal to build some temporary barrier islands along parts of the coastline?  No sir.  Keep a boot on the throat of BP — hey, that’s a killer sound bite!  Let’s go with that!

Would these 'simple' solutions even really work? It seems that so far no solutions - simple or complex - have worked yet.  Given that the overall tone of the article is that government is making things too complex, let's take the government out of the picture. What's preventing BP from implementing something to fix the leak?  Forget fixing the leak - what about dealing with the damage?  BP's operation has caused extensive damage, physical and economic.  In the world of simple regulations like, “You are free to fail; proceed at your own risk”, I suppose that BP's failure would be the limit of liability for BP.  But what if that wasn't even close enough to make the people damaged by BP's failure whole?  I guess those people would just be out of luck. Property and livelihood damaged or destroyed by a company running an operation miles away - essentially invisible to many of the people directly affected. I guess BP just isn't following the unwritten rule of common courtesy.  Oh well, too bad for those communities with oil on their shores.

And could a world of super-simple regulation even include corporations (at least as legal entities with rights)?  I'd guess not - that very concept is rather complex.

And, while a software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is the code that is never called, what does that get you? It's also code that doesn't do anything. If that's what you need, then great. But the real trick (at least in software engineering) is coming up with software that does something useful, while making it run correctly, quickly, and keeping it structured so it can be maintained (for fixing or adding new utility).  Some of these goals conflict with each other.  Which is why writing software can be a very complex endeavor.

967

Living Room / Re: Help! Really strange WiFi problem.

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 22, 2010, 02:38 PM »

Just as an FYI - my windows box here at work also resolves www.yahoo.com to any-fp.wa1.b.yahoo.com, but with a slightly different IP address:

Code: Text [Select]

1. Z:\temp>ping www.yahoo.com
2.  
3. Pinging any-fp.wa1.b.yahoo.com [67.195.145.137] with 32 bytes of data:
4.  
5. ...

I'm not having any problems - I think this is just a part of how Yahoo performs load balancing (a request sent to the hostname www.yahoo.com might be sent to one of several actual machines).

My suggestion would be to power down the PC, then power down the router, then restart both (router first, then PC) if you haven't tried something like this already. Doesn't really help determine what the cause of the problem is, but often hard resets do help clean things up.

968

General Software Discussion / Re: InfoHesiveEP from 2BrightSparks now free

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 21, 2010, 12:40 PM »

Is this something that compares with Surfulater or UltraRecall in any way?  Does it let you clip from the web?

Or is it actually something different?

969

Living Room / Re: Interesting Side-Step of Copyright; Also Porn

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 20, 2010, 08:11 PM »

One thing I can guarantee you - Hustler would absolutely *love* some sort of lawsuit trying to block the "It Ain't(tm) Avatar" movie.  You can buy that kind of advertising.

I must say though, I'm much more impressed by the punny titles that they often come up with for these movies:

• A Bustfull of Dollars
• Shaving Ryan's Privates
• Star Whores
• For Your Thighs Only
• Lust in Space
• A Star is Porn
• Edward Penishands
• Romancing the Bone
• Pulp Friction

And Seattle had a peep show club that recently shut it doors that had an impressive marquee that would post things like:

• Clash of the Tight Buns
• The Skirt Locker
• All Clothing 100% Off

It was fun to read the marquee, even if you would never think to go in.

970

Living Room / Re: Cryp.sr Host-Proof Keyboard-Friendly List Manager

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 17, 2010, 03:04 PM »

I haven't read all the details (I'm just going by the snippet you posted in your message), but the idea of a 'host-proof' application where don't have to trust the host seems fundamentally flawed.

The thing is that the application is provided by the host, so if you don't trust the host, you can't trust the application.

971

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: DAEMON Tools Pro Standard at GAOTD (June 17, 2010)

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 17, 2010, 10:30 AM »

i'm not sure why there are both - Pro & Standard tag.

-lanux128 (June 17, 2010, 02:25 AM)

The "Pro" version has both an Advanced and Standard variant: http://www.daemon-to...eng/products/compare

I think the main difference is that Advanced supports 'IDE drive emulation' which apparently is able to hide from copy protection schemes a bit better than the more usual SCSI drive emulation (I don't really know - I'm not a gamer and only very rarely have to deal with any kind of disc-based protection).

972

Living Room / Re: 20 years later, the movie "Total Recall" still kicks butt

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 14, 2010, 02:10 PM »

By the way, i can do a spectacular imitation of this that floors people.

-superboyac (June 14, 2010, 11:49 AM)

Sounds like you have the makings of a 10 Million+ hit viral video.

Get the 15 minutes of fame that's your birthright - upload that baby!

973

Living Room / Re: 20 years later, the movie "Total Recall" still kicks butt

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 14, 2010, 03:01 AM »

They Live (1988)

-zridling (June 14, 2010, 01:31 AM)

One of my faves - has the best 'buddy fight' in all filmdom.  Made all the more enjoyable by South Park's hit-for-hit remake in the "Cripple Fight" episode.

974

General Software Discussion / Re: Can i upgrade to MS-DOS v6 or v6.22

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 08, 2010, 12:50 PM »

I think the 16-bit command.com is still there because there are a few differences between how command.com and cmd.exe process batch files and there are probably some companies that still use batch files that may rely on that behavior.  If there's not reason (for example, security issues or that the system won't support the program - like Win64), then there's really no reason for MS to remove the program.

And for what it's worth, here's my recollection of the level of support of MS-DOS in the various versions of Windows:

  - the Win9x series didn't so much run on top of DOS as used it as a boot loader - once the Windows VMM took over, DOS was pretty much out of the picture unless you had a DOS device driver the system depended on, in which case the VMM would still make calls to it. But by 1998 that was a pretty rare situation (and I think that WinME might have stopped supporting that option).  Running a DOS box did run an actual copy of MS-DOS in a virtual machine.

  - the WinNT series (including WinXP and later) didn't incorporate an actual MS-DOS system, and it relied on it's own boot loader instead of DOS.  However, the MS-DOS compatibility support provided by WinNT was built from source code taken from MS-DOS (version 3.3, I think), so the level of compatibility was pretty high. I'm not sure if code from MS-DOS 5 and later was pulled into the NT supporting code. If my memory serves, most of what was added to MS-DOS 5 and later was support for various disk compression and memory management schemes that wasn't necessary for the NT VM anyway.

975

General Software Discussion / Re: PikyBasket replaced by Copywhiz

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 03, 2010, 07:04 PM »

Can anyone here compare CopyWhiz to TeraCopy? I have a lifetime license for TeraCopy and it works pretty well on my 64 bit system, but I'm curious how Copywhiz compares.

-Darwin (June 03, 2010, 05:24 PM)

I can't say anything too intelligent since I haven't used PikyBasket or Copywhiz (though I've considered looking at PikyBasket in the past), but my understanding is that Copywhiz and TeraCopy address 2 different use cases: TeraCopy is intended to perform high speed file copies in the background, while PikyBasket/Copywhiz is intended to let you 'gather together' items from different sources to  paste elsewhere in a single shot (the destination might not be folder).