I succeeded in turning off swap entirely on XP Home (SP1) on my last computer, which had 1 GB of RAM. It lets you do it, and it DOESN'T make the whole computer crash. When I ran out of memory, the allocate functions simply failed. Most apps pop up a simple "Out of memory" error, a few crash.
The downside is that you can't open tons of apps or huge files (unless a program uses MapViewOfFile like it really should, but few do).
The other downside is that it doesn't actually help performance very much.
However, I DO suggest turning swap off on WinXP if you run fullscreen stuff alot and have enough RAM. Windows seems to see the Start menu, taskbar and system tray stuff as not-recently-used, and swaps them out; hence the big freakout when you leave fullscreen mode. (The real WTF is that the primary UI stuff isn't marked as sticky!)
Windows already has most of your suggestions implemented, the problem is that third-party developers generally ignore it.
Microsoft often ignore it too, partly because:
-so far as I can tell, the "error reporter" thing is triggered when an app dies, and always reports to Microsoft, not $APPDEVELOPER
-The error console is a good bit harder to write to than, say, MessageBox("Unexpected error "+errornumber+" has occurred!"). Using it also makes it a harder to make your app compatible with old Windows versions.
-The "tray notifications" are nice, but it's quite annoying that there's no way to turn off generally useless ones ("Hiding your notification icons") while keeping more worthwhile ones ("It is now safe to remove $HARDWARE"). Also, I've seen those bubbles sit there through a whole class lecture without anybody noticing. Something more customizable would be nice...
As for the OS-only window type: Simply reserve a specific type of window border for OS errors. Yes, apps could fake it, but most of what's making fake error boxes is web ads. An app that could fake the border could do whatever it wanted to without asking the user. The ones that need the user's help are the ones that are just an image -- you have to click it before it has a chance to do anything nasty.
With a simple "error" border, the best an ad could do is copy the special border, with the browser's border around it. A bit more obvious, maybe enough to keep a few people from clicking it...
I have to agree, the current Linksys routers are LOUSY. I have a WRT54GS v6 that came with VxWorks and I've installed DD-WRT micro on. In both OSes it was crap -- Wi-Fi randomly dropping out, occasional crashes. It was especially bad on hot days and during heavy network traffic.
Apparently the Broadcom chip inside it was overheating. I ticky-tackied a PC fan to the table next to the router and powered it with a GameCube power brick (12v DC). The problem went away almost entirely, leaving me with a reliable but somewhat noisy router.
Later, I opened the router and placed an old heatsink off a Pentium on the offending chip (run it a while, see which one is hot), and used a piece of plastic wedged into the router's shell to press the heatsink down on the chip. The heatsink had some of that heat-conductive foam glue stuff some OEMs stick it to the CPU with on the bottom. Now (almost a year later) I have no fan next to it and it hasn't crashed or dropped the network yet.
I'm still stuck in the wimpy v6 flash and RAM though...
I've had a very similar recurring BSOD on XP from my last wireless adapter, a D-Link DWL-G122 USB dongle. It got so it would pretty reliably crash the system whenever I'd remove the adapter. It didn't matter how I removed it -- "safely remove hardware", disable it first, or just yank it.
The really irritating thing was that sometimes it would lose the signal but keep saying it was connected. Zero traffic could get through until I opened the ugly D-Link utility and told it to reconnect. Then sometimes it would simply refuse to reconnect, and just stay "connected" to the dead signal. The only real way to make it work was to unplug it and try again, but then it crashes Windows.
That's the one piece of hardware I was actually happy when it finally broke. (The USB plug broke off from one too many unplug/replugs.) I'm now very happy with a Hawking "Hi-Gain" dish adapter. Connects from way farther than the crummy D-Link plus home-made antenna. And the best part is, in the rare cases when it does lose the signal (suburban interference), it detects it and automatically disconnects and reconnects within a minute!
I've bought a few CDs that I didn't know were copy protected until AFTER I ripped them. I simply chuck them in my computer with the Shift key down (to prevent AutoPlay/AutoRun) and then rip to MP3 with CDex with "Paranoia Full." (Strangely on my drive, CDex actually extracts faster on "Paranoia Full" than with its own routines. Paranoia also painlesly extracts from most copy protection types.) I only found out it was copy protected when I tried to play it in my MP3-compatible CD player. How good is this copy protection if I can rip it without even knowing it's protected, but can't play it in a valid CD player?
"It Just Barely Works" (and only now and then, at that)
(Note: I'm mad at Microsoft right now. Explorer keeps dying without notice in XP Home when I'm using My Computer or Explorer.)
I have an old 1992 Sharp 6-CD changer boombox that started skipping a lot. At first I thought it was dust, and I tried everything -- cleaner discs and canned air. I recently took it apart and it was perfectly clean inside. What I did find is three potentiometers, unfortunately unlabeled. Through experimentation and guesswork, I think they're tracking speed, laser power and focus. Messing with each one produces a different problem, and turning them too far produces the dreaded "ErDisc" message on the screen. I think something in the laser assembly wears out over time, probably the springs. (Yes, springs. There're some sort of wire springs that hold the laser, at least in the ancient CD-ROM drive I took apart years ago.) No matter how I adjust the pots, I can't get it to play through a whole disc without skipping. I don't know if I'm just not capable of that much precision/patience or if it really is fatal.
I seriously doubt that off-balance discs have any effect at all. I just don't see how shaking the motor a bit screws up the laser any worse than putting the whole mess in a truck and driving around a bit. Besides, my CD Walkman's taken a ton of abuse and the only thing that's ever gone wrong (aside from damage to the finish and that crack in the screen cover) is a broken laser mount. (The hook that holds it on the track. It still worked when held upside-down. I fixed it with some Krazy Glue.)
Coincidentally, many GameCubes suffer from read errors after about a year of use. It's an alignment problem in the drive mechanism, and it can be fixed (temporarily) by messing with a potentiometer.
I kind of doubt it. If it works at all, it will be really faint.
However, I think something like DiscT@2 might be possible to do with non-Yamaha drives. With some measurements of CD speed, track length, etc. and a bit of programming, one should be able to produce an ISO image that's formulated to produce low concentrations of 1's in some places and higher in others.
It could be even simpler than that: How raw is "raw" mode? I recall a feature in CloneCD where it could either re-calculate the error-correction data or KEEP THE OLD, POSSIBLY BAD VALUES. This would suggest that the burners are capable of being sent this data. If this is possible, one should be able to make data and error correction blocks that, when the drive's XOR operation is applied, will result in either all 0's or all 1's being burned. If you can control the data, error correction and subchannel, there shouldn't be too much disturbance of the desired pattern added by the drive.
Exactly. It sounds like the "advertisers" are flooding the networks with ad images labelled as porn. And yet, when their junk torrents get deleted from the trackers or their IPs make it into the K-Lite Bad IP Blocker, their spam will slowly disappear from the networks as people notice it's an ad and delete it. Their only chance is to make it funny so people will *want* to look at it.
P2p's illegal, they say? When did this happen? Just recently a judge ruled that it's legal. Last thing I downloaded on BitTorrent was Slackware 10. And before that, Linspire. Both of those are legal torrents supplied by the creators of the files, to reduce the load on their servers. P2p is legal and will remain legal as long as the Betamax decision's precedent stands.
True, but the rest of us have to suck it up and accept any losses we cause ourselves when we have a bad day. If I have a bad day and forget to come out to feed the parking meter after a couple hours, I still have to pay the ticket. They admit they made a mistake and that it was their fault. They should have to pay Linux Australia for the time wasted reading and responding to the empty legal threat.
In legal matters, saying "oops, my bad" doesn't help. You still gotta pay.
What I was thinking of was one of various types of PSX-to-PC controller adaptors. Those work great to use PSX and PS2 controllers on a PC. Those controllers seem to be more readily availiable and cheaper than PC controllers, besides most of them have two rumble motors. I consider myself lucky to find a PC controller with that many buttons, and REALLY lucky to find one with even one rumble motor. Now I've stocked up on RatShack PSX-to-USB adaptors and PSX/PS2 controllers. I've also got a home-made N64 controller that plugs into a PS2.
Over the summer I took two N64 controllers and two PS2 controllers and used the parts to make two N64 controllers that hook up to a PS2. Now, I don't have a PS2 but I do have four PSX-to-USB adaptors from RatShack ($11.50 each). This way I can play emulated N64 games with real N64 controllers. Also good for GameBoy, SNES and NES emulation. I'm planning on writing a how-to webpage. (Note: There'll be no "kit." I don't use any custom parts other than what you get in the N64 and PS2 controllers.)
(Correct me if I'm wrong.) I believe the light gun determines its position by focussing on a spot on the TV screen and waiting for the scan beam to come by. It then reports this to the PS, which asks its video subsystem where the beam is, and that's the gun's position. I have not read anything confirming this, but I inferred it from the notice on the light gun package that it won't work with plasma and LCD TVs.
This will obviously not work with a computer without TONS of special drivers to accomodate for the PSX-to-USB adaptor's not knowing what the video card's doing, and for multiple refresh rates. Even so, you'd lose horizontal resolution because the gun is designed to work with TVs, which refresh horizontally at 22 kHz. Very few multiscan monitors (and no VGA cards) can do it this slow. (And if they did, it would flicker like heck. Computer phosphors stop glowing faster than TV ones, and the TV phosphors are overdriven.) My home CRT has a horizontal refresh of 78 kHz and 85 Hz vertical, at 1024x768.
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I succeeded in turning off swap entirely on XP Home (SP1) on my last computer, which had 1 GB of RAM. It lets you do it, and it DOESN'T make the whole computer crash. When I ran out of memory, the allocate functions simply failed. Most apps pop up a simple "Out of memory" error, a few crash. The downside is that you can't open tons of apps or huge files (unless a program uses MapViewOfFile like it really should, but few do). The other downside is that it doesn't actually help performance very much. However, I DO suggest turning swap off on WinXP if you run fullscreen stuff alot and have enough RAM. Windows seems to see the Start menu, taskbar and system tray stuff as not-recently-used, and swaps them out; hence the big freakout when you leave fullscreen mode. (The real WTF is that the primary UI stuff isn't marked as sticky!)
Windows already has most of your suggestions implemented, the problem is that third-party developers generally ignore it.
Microsoft often ignore it too, partly because: -so far as I can tell, the "error reporter" thing is triggered when an app dies, and always reports to Microsoft, not $APPDEVELOPER -The error console is a good bit harder to write to than, say, MessageBox("Unexpected error "+errornumber+" has occurred!"). Using it also makes it a harder to make your app compatible with old Windows versions. -The "tray notifications" are nice, but it's quite annoying that there's no way to turn off generally useless ones ("Hiding your notification icons") while keeping more worthwhile ones ("It is now safe to remove $HARDWARE"). Also, I've seen those bubbles sit there through a whole class lecture without anybody noticing. Something more customizable would be nice... As for the OS-only window type: Simply reserve a specific type of window border for OS errors. Yes, apps could fake it, but most of what's making fake error boxes is web ads. An app that could fake the border could do whatever it wanted to without asking the user. The ones that need the user's help are the ones that are just an image -- you have to click it before it has a chance to do anything nasty. With a simple "error" border, the best an ad could do is copy the special border, with the browser's border around it. A bit more obvious, maybe enough to keep a few people from clicking it...
That's true of many porn and hentai message boards. Seems to be in the default TOS that comes with a lot of forum software.
I have to agree, the current Linksys routers are LOUSY. I have a WRT54GS v6 that came with VxWorks and I've installed DD-WRT micro on. In both OSes it was crap -- Wi-Fi randomly dropping out, occasional crashes. It was especially bad on hot days and during heavy network traffic.
Apparently the Broadcom chip inside it was overheating. I ticky-tackied a PC fan to the table next to the router and powered it with a GameCube power brick (12v DC). The problem went away almost entirely, leaving me with a reliable but somewhat noisy router.
Later, I opened the router and placed an old heatsink off a Pentium on the offending chip (run it a while, see which one is hot), and used a piece of plastic wedged into the router's shell to press the heatsink down on the chip. The heatsink had some of that heat-conductive foam glue stuff some OEMs stick it to the CPU with on the bottom. Now (almost a year later) I have no fan next to it and it hasn't crashed or dropped the network yet.
I'm still stuck in the wimpy v6 flash and RAM though...
But there have even been studies that show that Kansas not only exists but is, in fact, flatter than a pancake.
I've had a very similar recurring BSOD on XP from my last wireless adapter, a D-Link DWL-G122 USB dongle. It got so it would pretty reliably crash the system whenever I'd remove the adapter. It didn't matter how I removed it -- "safely remove hardware", disable it first, or just yank it.
The really irritating thing was that sometimes it would lose the signal but keep saying it was connected. Zero traffic could get through until I opened the ugly D-Link utility and told it to reconnect. Then sometimes it would simply refuse to reconnect, and just stay "connected" to the dead signal. The only real way to make it work was to unplug it and try again, but then it crashes Windows.
That's the one piece of hardware I was actually happy when it finally broke. (The USB plug broke off from one too many unplug/replugs.) I'm now very happy with a Hawking "Hi-Gain" dish adapter. Connects from way farther than the crummy D-Link plus home-made antenna. And the best part is, in the rare cases when it does lose the signal (suburban interference), it detects it and automatically disconnects and reconnects within a minute!
I've bought a few CDs that I didn't know were copy protected until AFTER I ripped them. I simply chuck them in my computer with the Shift key down (to prevent AutoPlay/AutoRun) and then rip to MP3 with CDex with "Paranoia Full."
(Strangely on my drive, CDex actually extracts faster on "Paranoia Full" than with its own routines. Paranoia also painlesly extracts from most copy protection types.)
I only found out it was copy protected when I tried to play it in my MP3-compatible CD player.
How good is this copy protection if I can rip it without even knowing it's protected, but can't play it in a valid CD player?
"It Just Barely Works" (and only now and then, at that) (Note: I'm mad at Microsoft right now. Explorer keeps dying without notice in XP Home when I'm using My Computer or Explorer.)
I have an old 1992 Sharp 6-CD changer boombox that started skipping a lot. At first I thought it was dust, and I tried everything -- cleaner discs and canned air. I recently took it apart and it was perfectly clean inside. What I did find is three potentiometers, unfortunately unlabeled. Through experimentation and guesswork, I think they're tracking speed, laser power and focus. Messing with each one produces a different problem, and turning them too far produces the dreaded "ErDisc" message on the screen. I think something in the laser assembly wears out over time, probably the springs. (Yes, springs. There're some sort of wire springs that hold the laser, at least in the ancient CD-ROM drive I took apart years ago.) No matter how I adjust the pots, I can't get it to play through a whole disc without skipping. I don't know if I'm just not capable of that much precision/patience or if it really is fatal. I seriously doubt that off-balance discs have any effect at all. I just don't see how shaking the motor a bit screws up the laser any worse than putting the whole mess in a truck and driving around a bit. Besides, my CD Walkman's taken a ton of abuse and the only thing that's ever gone wrong (aside from damage to the finish and that crack in the screen cover) is a broken laser mount. (The hook that holds it on the track. It still worked when held upside-down. I fixed it with some Krazy Glue.) Coincidentally, many GameCubes suffer from read errors after about a year of use. It's an alignment problem in the drive mechanism, and it can be fixed (temporarily) by messing with a potentiometer.
I kind of doubt it. If it works at all, it will be really faint.
However, I think something like DiscT@2 might be possible to do with non-Yamaha drives. With some measurements of CD speed, track length, etc. and a bit of programming, one should be able to produce an ISO image that's formulated to produce low concentrations of 1's in some places and higher in others.
It could be even simpler than that: How raw is "raw" mode? I recall a feature in CloneCD where it could either re-calculate the error-correction data or KEEP THE OLD, POSSIBLY BAD VALUES. This would suggest that the burners are capable of being sent this data. If this is possible, one should be able to make data and error correction blocks that, when the drive's XOR operation is applied, will result in either all 0's or all 1's being burned. If you can control the data, error correction and subchannel, there shouldn't be too much disturbance of the desired pattern added by the drive.
Exactly. It sounds like the "advertisers" are flooding the networks with ad images labelled as porn. And yet, when their junk torrents get deleted from the trackers or their IPs make it into the K-Lite Bad IP Blocker, their spam will slowly disappear from the networks as people notice it's an ad and delete it. Their only chance is to make it funny so people will *want* to look at it.
P2p's illegal, they say? When did this happen? Just recently a judge ruled that it's legal. Last thing I downloaded on BitTorrent was Slackware 10. And before that, Linspire. Both of those are legal torrents supplied by the creators of the files, to reduce the load on their servers. P2p is legal and will remain legal as long as the Betamax decision's precedent stands.
"Everyone has a bad day."
True, but the rest of us have to suck it up and accept any losses we cause ourselves when we have a bad day. If I have a bad day and forget to come out to feed the parking meter after a couple hours, I still have to pay the ticket. They admit they made a mistake and that it was their fault. They should have to pay Linux Australia for the time wasted reading and responding to the empty legal threat.
In legal matters, saying "oops, my bad" doesn't help. You still gotta pay.
Cool! I didn't know anybody made PC light guns.
What I was thinking of was one of various types of PSX-to-PC controller adaptors. Those work great to use PSX and PS2 controllers on a PC. Those controllers seem to be more readily availiable and cheaper than PC controllers, besides most of them have two rumble motors. I consider myself lucky to find a PC controller with that many buttons, and REALLY lucky to find one with even one rumble motor. Now I've stocked up on RatShack PSX-to-USB adaptors and PSX/PS2 controllers. I've also got a home-made N64 controller that plugs into a PS2.
Over the summer I took two N64 controllers and two PS2 controllers and used the parts to make two N64 controllers that hook up to a PS2. Now, I don't have a PS2 but I do have four PSX-to-USB adaptors from RatShack ($11.50 each). This way I can play emulated N64 games with real N64 controllers. Also good for GameBoy, SNES and NES emulation. I'm planning on writing a how-to webpage. (Note: There'll be no "kit." I don't use any custom parts other than what you get in the N64 and PS2 controllers.)
(Correct me if I'm wrong.) I believe the light gun determines its position by focussing on a spot on the TV screen and waiting for the scan beam to come by. It then reports this to the PS, which asks its video subsystem where the beam is, and that's the gun's position. I have not read anything confirming this, but I inferred it from the notice on the light gun package that it won't work with plasma and LCD TVs.
This will obviously not work with a computer without TONS of special drivers to accomodate for the PSX-to-USB adaptor's not knowing what the video card's doing, and for multiple refresh rates. Even so, you'd lose horizontal resolution because the gun is designed to work with TVs, which refresh horizontally at 22 kHz. Very few multiscan monitors (and no VGA cards) can do it this slow. (And if they did, it would flicker like heck. Computer phosphors stop glowing faster than TV ones, and the TV phosphors are overdriven.) My home CRT has a horizontal refresh of 78 kHz and 85 Hz vertical, at 1024x768.