Jump to content

CoffeeFiend

Patron
  • Posts

    4,973
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Donations

    0.00 USD 
  • Country

    Canada

Everything posted by CoffeeFiend

  1. So much effort wasted on trying to help a spambot Topic closed for the sake of everyone's sanity.
  2. It's not just him. Everybody seems to voice a similar-ish opinion. Windows 8 Metro: Microsoft needs to let users opt-out Windows 8 will be 'largely irrelevant' to traditional PC users: IDC Why 'Windows 8' Isn't What I Thought It Would Be Windows 8 is the new Vista -- and that's a good thing etc. Including content you have to signup for like Enterprises are unlikely to jump on Microsoft's Metro: Seemingly they just announced that the Beta (Consumer Preview) will be out on February 29th and yet I don't even care. It's the first time ever I'm not excited at all about a new OS release from MS. Metro is dead on arrival, and a Metro-only Windows is something I will not use. I just want to fast forward 3 years and see what they have in store for Win9, specifically what they've got to replace Metro with. Meanwhile I'll stay on Win7. I don't know if I should laugh or cry at the idea of being able to tell people that Vista is a worthwhile upgrade over Win8. Unless of course you can disable the Metro garbage. In which case it'll be an OS that has very little to offer over Win7 i.e. not really worth upgrading to anyway, unless you're still using an older version of Windows on a new PC, or that you're buying a new computer. Explorer with ribbons, ISO mounting built-in (freeware does this anyway) and a fancier task manager (process explorer is still better). That's more of a Service Pack or "R2" thing rather than a new OS.
  3. I'll make that a $450 budget then (about 340€). The i3 is a fantastic CPU for a lot of basic tasks, but heavy games are starting to make use of more cores. AMD's offerings give you lots of core/$ but their cores are slow and single-threaded perf suffers. So I'd go for an i5, and that should fit in your budget easily. Since I don't know stores around Slovenia, nor do I speak the language, I'll stick to newegg's prices. If I pick: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Almost any 4x4GB kit of decent DDR3. we're at $310 or so. That leaves $140 for a motherboard which is plenty for something quite nice, with a Z68 chipset. There's many boards from different quality manufacturers (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI) that fit in that price range, with more than one PCI-e x16 slot, USB 3, SATA 6Gbps ports and all.
  4. I did consider it. I'm just not sure I can expect Mono to still be around in a decade (or not to lag behind too much), whereas C++ will probably still be widely used on most platforms by the time we'll all be retired. It can also be quite portable. But yeah, I very much prefer C#. Well, he sure seems to be detached from reality. I'll read the whole thing later tonight. I really don't get why people even care for Linux (I basically couldn't really get any work done with it so it's useless to me), but if it works for you then why not
  5. ..but the end result being Windows eliminated within one or two further generations But yeah. That's why I haven't bought a Mac just yet: it seems like Win8 will be the biggest flop ever (as if they need more bad publicity right after Vista). So I'm hoping the shareholders will fire them (Ballmer & Sinofski) and have someone sane make Windows into a product customers actually want again, before it's too late. One can only hope! But if Win9 heads in the same direction (Win8 won't sell? Fine, let's make something even worse!) then it's truly over. That leaves us 3 painful years or so of not knowing what will happen. We'll spend them planning how to get rid of Windows, just in case they leave us no other choice (virtualizing legacy apps with vSphere and Citrix, etc). But even if they end up making things right again with Win9, they're currently sending us a strong message that Windows may eventually die (quicker than we expect), and that writing cross-platform code is a good idea, just in case. And of course this isn't good for MS (users not needing Windows anymore to run the software they need). That's also one more reason NOT to develop for Metro (as if we needed another) which is locked in to Win8 only and might even be short lived. Right now I'm leaning towards using modern C++11 and Qt4 (Boost might also come in handy) for my next apps. Meanwhile, we're good for as long as we can buy Win7 PCs with downgrade rights and have drivers for it. That's long enough to see how Win9 will turn out and to plan a migration if needed.
  6. I don't see it being completely eliminated anytime soon. That's not quite what I meant, but I'm not saying that I'm saying it's not the case either. Its main problem is being fundamentally incompatible with commercial software which does suck for developers. Then again, I couldn't really care less right now if my stuff works on Linux as it basically runs nothing I need or want anyway, and I don't foresee that changing anytime soon either. Without enough quality software, nobody moves to your platform/OS, you have a hard time to keep existing users, and without users nobody develops for it. Now remove the possibility to make money from it (for the most part -- yes, there are a few exceptions but those are few and far between)...
  7. Several factors: -if MS commits suicide by moving to a horrible Metro-only environment, then I'd rather abandon ship sooner than later -why would we waste time developing for a platform that we're all going to abandon? Especially when your software only runs on that one OS no one wants of anymore -why would we waste time developing Win32 software when MS is pushing it aside, while pushing heavily for users to use sandboxed dinky phone-like Metro apps instead? And even ARM devices now (which won't run your apps either) -why would we want to stick with Windows when it's crippling its desktop, pushing aside the software that makes it king (including yours), etc. -MS is forcing on us many technologies we don't really care for, while not supporting the existing stuff well enough (again, WAY too much stuff to list). I'd call this a tragic mistake, much like Metro. If developing for your platform sucks, we will go elsewhere. This is critical. It's the reason many platforms died (OS/2) or that some aren't growing (Linux), while others are seeing tremendous growth (OS X, iOS, Android). etc. I'm just not sure what I'll be using next. There's lots of options (C++, Objective C, Java, etc) but none that's particularly great. Same as now I guess. Not in any menu to be found, browse to it manually with explorer and double click on it. There should be several ways to install software, much like before, and with the online store too -- not that I have any faith in it. Having seen how it works with the Zune (I couldn't even manage to download a free app, even after registering, a real WTF), how they tied in their online services with WMP and so on. Online stuff never seemed to be MS' strong point and I don't think this will be any different.
  8. LOL. There's 2 different discussions about this on Reddit today: here and here. It turns out everyone else also hates Metro. Big surprise there! MS better fix this REAL soon, because they're going to hemorrhage developers or at the very least make them seriously consider making cross-platform apps which greatly reduces lock-in. I'm considering ditching C# and .NET altogether now, after using it since the 1.0 days with VS.NET back in 2002, and it looks like on the C++ side we'll have to replace MFC by something else like Qt. I just don't want to rush things just to see them come out with a Metro-less Win9 a couple years later... MS is forcing a lot of changes on consumers lately (e.g. the Ribbon) and developers too (e.g. XAML), they come out with new technologies then abandon them (e.g. Silverlight), they don't support their dev tools like they should (too many examples), they're pushing for cloud services that nobody seems to want of (Azure), and now killing the desktop for the sake of phone & tablet sales which will most likely still fail. I don't foresee anyone getting a WP phone (never been popular and iPhones/Android are all the rage), and I don't see much of a point to a Win8 tablet either. A Win8 tablet with a good battery life will likely be ARM-based and as such not run "traditional" Win32 Windows apps anyway, and even if it had a x86 CPU, using apps meant for keyboard+mouse+large screen on a small tablet with only touch would suck. Seemingly they expect us to buy Tablets for Metro apps alone and that makes running Windows on it pointless. I'll sooner buy an iPad.
  9. Microsoft did some serious service hardening with Vista and Win7 (XP and before were really lacking there comparatively). They've done a lot of changes like making services run with lesser privileges, using ACLs on services to limit what they can access (by assining SIDs to services), session 0 isolation, much-improved DEP and now ASLR too which are preventing buffer overflows in services, etc. And then on top of that add the better firewall and everything else... TL;DR: There's no need to disable or tweak services to be secure now.
  10. It seemingly doesn't exist yet, so that would be a no. It should be once it's available though. Totally not an option for me (using Linux means giving up on almost every application that makes a computer useful), but if it works for you then why not
  11. That's what we're all wishing for. That would make Win8 a decent OS (being able to disable Metro and keep the start menu). But at this point it seems very unlikely. We'll know for sure when the beta comes out sometime this month. If it goes Metro-only, then we'll be able to pretend it didn't happen and keep running Win7 for a few years, or wait 'till they reverse their decision (hopefully). But tut if it happens, we're going to start having a serious look at porting our apps, and moving legacy stuff to vSphere/Citrix, and starting to buy Macs instead whenever possible.
  12. I'm offended by this. Possibly? Pfft. That's an established FACT. How dare you question this? Seriously, it was fantastic to use in its time (so far ahead of edit, or *shudder* edlin if you want to play the "old enough to remember" game) The only thing I didn't use it for is creating ANSI graphics for BBS'es, in which case something different like TheDraw worked nicely. Exactly. They chose to force a horrible touch-based interface on all desktop/laptop users, making it suck badly for everyone, just so if we end up buying a Windows phone (because those are popular, right?) we'll already be familiar with the interface. If anything, I think it's just going to hurt them. Yeah, you'll buy a phone which has the exact same interface as the one you very much hate that's already on your PC (they might as well try selling phones by saying they have Vista on them). Or perhaps it's supposed to be for tablets (yes, let's make everyone suffer, for tablets' sake) which probably won't run your existing apps (ARM-based tablets won't) which aren't meant for a touch interface anyway, etc -- and as such offers little to no advantage over an iPad or Android tablet. Well, I can't say I exactly agree with the MVP program. These days there's far too many MVPs (over 4000), and many people awarded with it sometimes seem to not be all that knowledgeable -- just that they spent a LOT of time trying to help others, while being on the right forums. Yes, I've seen some great C# MVPs back then on MS' old newsgroups, but most of the "Windows Expert Consumer" MVPs and the like often fail to impress. It's not a really fair system, where many seem to help just for the MSDN sub, and where many genuinely helpful people just don't get anything.
  13. I thought it might have been that you said something a bit extreme but it looks like you're right. They most definitely are censoring comments. Even the calm, non-threatening, level-headed kind. "We're open to comments -- so long as it says what we want to hear". Next they'll claim that they're getting "overwhelmingly positive feedback about Metro" Too bad it won't translate into sales I guess (besides the forced kind, where you have to use downgrade rights to get a sane OS, while still counting in their stats showing it's selling great)
  14. If you know powershell then I don't see much of a point to using batch files in general. As far as I'm concerned, they died when Win2k came out -- along with the other MS-DOS legacy stuff. This is even more true today with x64 OS'es not even having the NTVDM (not being able to run 16 bit apps from the same era or even later). The 80's are over. Yes, there is still some support for batch files for legacy purposes but that's about it. Powershell takes a while to get used to and I wouldn't exactly call it perfect either but it's quite nice compared to the other built-in options (batch and WSH languages). I don't normally make GUIs for scripts myself (much like I never wasted much time creating HTA's from vbscript scripts) as I mostly run them from the command line (or in powershell's case, the ISE), or automated/scheduled. Oh, and if you wanted to do something like this in powershell it's definitely possible too (as you're most likely already aware). You have full access to the System.Security.Cryptography namespace for hashing, etc. But I would personally still rather use C# for such a tool.
  15. That change should be pretty easy to make. Yes, MD5 collisions aren't all that likely, but why settle on such an old algo that's been decertified 14 years ago by NIST? Yes, that was for "secure purposes", but then again, it's so simple to use something more modern (then again, my own file hasher tool optionally does both -- just in case I want to check a "md5sum" which is quite unlikely). Batch files don't have built-in methods for comparing files, or hashing, or anything of the sort. We're talking about early 1980's technology here, a VERY primitive kind of "scripting" language, which was replaced by vbscript & jscript back in the 90's. And now even vbscript/jscript are being quickly replaced (and haven't been meaningfully updated in over a decade) by powershell. You're stuck relying on external tools (often 3rd party) for pretty much everything but very simple loops and copying/moving/deleting files, and there's no way to write replacement for them in batch either. Honestly, even batch files' main replacement (vbscript) isn't so great. I mean, it was pretty nice for its time but it's really showing its lack of being updated. The error handling is laughable, I hope you don't plan on sorting data too often (it's quite a pain), arrays are pretty limited (and forget about fancier data structures), all of your code must be in a single file, etc. Nevermind the VB syntax. But it's still far better than batch files for numerous reasons (namely native access to WMI, Databases, ADSI, COM, FSO, etc, and tons more very basic things batch files can't do, like math, working with dates or strings, etc). I personally moved from batch files to vbscript in the win2k era, and then started moving away from that in the last couple of years. It's a little bit fancier: It'll tell you if the sizes are different, otherwise it'll produce even more text when two files differ (3 whole lines of text per byte, or over 50 bytes of text for one byte that's different), but in some cases it'll stop at the first occurrence. IMO it doesn't change the overall picture all that much. You're still relying on an similar external tool for a basic task (file comparison) which you wouldn't have to do if you were using basically any other language.
  16. In what way is it? I never criticized your batch skills (or other skills either), I'm just saying I don't see what this would be useful for. You seem rather easily offended. There's plenty more reasons NOT to use batch files It's pretty much my dead-last choice for just about anything, except for one particular task: passing a couple arguments to an installer (then again, you can barely call that a "batch" file, it's just one command line). Outside of that task, I can't think of any other language or scripting language that sucks so badly and is so limited. You said that you know perl, I don't see why you don't just use that instead. That's the question we've all been asking What would be the purpose of comparing DVD's or any other files though? It's definitely not clear. Comparing 100 different files between themselves is better done with hashing anyway, and multithreading can barely help here really (it's very much IO-bound, unless you have a fancy SSD). Either ways, batch files don't give you that option. Anyway. Have fun. I don't think I can be of much help with trying to improve on something without seeing the big picture (the end goal/purpose).
  17. I'm well aware of those points SHA1 is getting old indeed, but it's still "good enough" for most file comparison tasks and what's still getting used the most today, even when security is involved. Other hash algos tend to be slower and mainly overkill for this particular job here. MD5 though... I can't think of a reason I'd start on a new program/design using that in 2012.
  18. That. A copyright on something that can be summed up in 2 lines of pseudo-code? This. These checks are fairly important and they're quick to add as well. And you're not kidding when you say several Gb's (or GBs or whatever). fc /b outputs 17 bytes per byte that's different. If you're comparing two full DVD5 images, you'd get a difference file of ~76GB! I have to echo the general feeling of "gosh, I have absolutely NO idea what I would use this for". Modified Windows files? How about running sfc /scannow? That's built in, and meant to fix precisely those kinds of problems (there's system restore too). Or otherwise, why not compare the SHA1 hash of the file with one of the online lists that already exist, or from a known good file on another machine? As for identifying malware by running fc /b on 2 files... Most people have an antivirus which seems like a far better option for that, and there's all the websites where you upload a file and it scans it with multiple AVs too. I for one, cannot identify a threat based on 2 narrow columns of hex numbers flying past at that speed. Also, viruses may hook APIs which may make infected files appear clean (unless you scan offline) i.d. identical (it may even infect your clean file). Basically, the "comparing files" problem has already been solved a number of times by lots of people. There's several cmd line utils just for this (e.g. diff and diff3), there's many GUI tools for this as well (WinMerge is pretty popular), and there's many more tools for generating/comparing hashes. It looks to me like a solution in search of a problem. A simple byte-for-byte comparison would catch that. That's pretty easy to write in any language if it's not already built-in (you said you're using perl which has File::Compare, python has filecmp.cmp, etc). Hashing here only adds CPU load for no reason (and as Jaclaz already pointed out, MD5 is quite old and a bad idea in general, SHA1 is a common replacement for it). It also increases comparison time not only by being CPU bound, but also by forcing you to hash the whole thing, whereas when you're doing a byte-for-byte comparison you can easily quit at the first byte that's dissimilar (and it very well may be the first byte of a file that's hundreds of MBs). Using hashes is mainly useful in different scenarios, like comparing one file to a known hash i.e. when you don't have the other file on hand, or don't want to send/copy it elsewhere to compare it there (and other tasks like for password authentication obviously). Unless you want to compare a large number of files together and identify duplicates (not necessarily comparing against one specific file), in which case hashing indeed works nicely (it saves times by not having to re-read lots of files, lots of times) Multi-threading is of no use here anyway. I'm not sure how you were expecting to use it, or what for. But if you try to read two or more files at once and then hashing them it's going to be quite slower, due to drastically increased seeking (except on SSDs). Unless you plan on having one thread reading the entire file (which might be huge) to RAM, and then while it hashes the other thread loads another file to RAM -- or one thread that queues files to hash in byte arrays in RAM while the other thread does the hashing. That would require TONS of RAM if there is large files (e.g. comparing two DVD9 .iso's would require more than 16GB of free RAM), and the speed gain is rather minimal vs using streams (which uses very little memory). Honestly, it's hard to be really helpful when we have zero idea what you're really trying to do here -- comparing files seemingly, but what for? And what data should be shown (identical or not? which bytes are different? etc) and how (wall-of-text? excel sheet? GUI app?)
  19. a.k.a. gorilla arm syndrome and poor usability, yeah. I'm not even sure why you'd need a fancy study for something that seems fairly obvious. Now if only MS got this... I mean, I never complained too badly about the UI of MS apps in general. Some of it sucked, and some of it was pretty good (e.g. introducing the start menu in Win95, or the new search in it lately). But Metro is a disaster, plain and simple. The only somewhat logical explanation I can think of it that they believe we're only going to be using tablets and phones starting this year. There's no way they thought anyone would want to use this on a desktop or laptop.
  20. @vinifera: exactly my thoughts Who cares if the users have the best, fantastic "Win32" software library for everything, which is what made Windows what it is today? Let's make this (its only advantage) an afterthought by turning it all into "legacy" software, and then putting heavy focus on gimmicky smartphone-like apps, along with a blocky touch UI that isn't meant for for a desktop or laptop, killing the start menu in the process and making the desktop and its Win32 apps a 2nd class citizen? That will go over well... (hopefully I didn't break anyone's sarcasm meter)
  21. Only to call home with a different version of Windows right after (an extra sale of the OS) -- nevermind that they already bought Vista as well, so two sales of an OS for one PC. They should be worried about that? For every person with that opinion, there's like a hundred of the other. I wouldn't ever go back to XP myself (way outdated), and I don't even know anyone who still willingly runs XP. Vista and Win7 were both FAR better in a lot of ways! That was already proven wrong, but also: a piece of mobile hardware is outselling an OS (software) for a different kind of device? That's like saying planes are outselling boats (disregarding that it isn't even the case) and then predicting the future (the demise of boats, of course!) based on that. They have a vast range of products companies are buying (and are basically locked into, so they will keep buying), almost every PC sold comes with Windows, their stock is doing great (up by 10% this month, from $26.53 to $29.34) and they have huge cash reserves. Yes, they're clearly doomed! Even with Win8 being worse than Vista and WinME (Metro-only) they'll certainly survive -- plenty of time to turn around. Just like every major tech company does every once in a while a.k.a. trim the fat (and then they hire some more). And that was back in 2009, the same year Apple laid off 1600 people in retail alone, and even Google laid off a couple hundred people in that same year. HP, Cisco, Adobe, Dell, AMD, etc all had layoffs in that time frame. So yes, doomsday for sure, and sooner than later. The sky is clearly falling, and there would be no easy solutions to this simple problem either.
  22. and you get to use unpopular tools to create such apps i.e. XAML (read: a crippled version of WPF or Silverlight, both of which aren't exactly popular in the first place). Or you can use HTML/JS which seems completely pointless: why not just make a website then? That was probably to attract web developers but the vast majority of them despise IE, and don't think too highly of MS either. Then again, MS is making every single app we've ever written a 2nd class citizen now, giving the finger to all devs. And pushing for more technologies that nobody wants of (e.g. Azure) while abandoning/deprecating many others which we've all been using and relying on for years. MS is sending a strong message: abandon ship!
  23. Win 8 = Windows Vista ME

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. xpclient

      xpclient

      It should be called Windows Me Tro.

    3. UltimateSilence

      UltimateSilence

      I like Windows Me R2, CoffeeFiend.

    4. MagicAndre1981

      MagicAndre1981

      and because of it you no longer here? Are you now Apple user?

  24. Well, those who don't need that kind of software can get just fine by with a Mac or anything else that doesn't have the Metro disaster on it. My kids could certainly use a Mac as a "facebook computer". It would also work great for playing some music (finally a platform itunes works decently on?) and movies. Add to that the Adobe suite (and proper color/font management too), MS Office for macs (altough MS may Metro-ize MS Office too -- that would complete the suicide process), iWork, iLife, Aperture, ZBrush, Lightroom, Capture One Pro, Capture NX, Bibble, Photomatix, ACDSee, iPhoto, Corel Painter, AutoCAD, Final Cut, VMWare Fusion, Quickbooks, Ableton, Native Instruments, Logic Studio, XCode, etc (and more as time goes on) so it's still possible to get a lot of work done. They even got Steam now... Windows used to be the OS that let you run the very best software for the job. Now it's actively getting in the way of using that same software by making the desktop a 2nd class citizen Desktops and laptops is all MS had left (Apple and Android essentially has everything else), and now with Metro they're killing that too, by pretending your desktop is like a phone or mp3 player with a 4" touchscreen. Nevermind that Windows Phone and the Zune have been coloassal failures -- now let's make desktops just like those! Windows gave up on what it was good at, and MS is betting the farm on it.
  25. I disagree here too. I don't care all that much if a portable device doesn't run most software -- most software isn't built for such an interface and mostly sucks. And I wouldn't want to do most tasks on one (typing text on a touch screen, painting, CAD work, coding, etc). Something like an iPad or an Android tablet (like my Archos) with apps designed for how you use it are far better IMO. And the iPad has such a head start (years, and a 40 million devices lead too, not counting the 70M iPhones sold last year alone) and a large library of decent quality inexpensive apps that I think Windows doesn't stand a chance there. I have zero interest in a Windows tablet myself -- and that's coming from what most people would have called a "Rabid M$ fanboy" until Win8 WDP came out. Edit: nevermind that a large portion of tablets with Win8 would probably have ARM CPUs too, so no advantages there either. Even using Citrix or remote desktop from a tablet to an instance of a traditional Windows session is a better option in a lot of scenarios.
×
×
  • Create New...