Entries for Tom Servo

Can we have the same thing in Word 13? [Can we have the same thing in Word 13?]

Tom Servo — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:45:54 GMT

OneNote's nice and all, but having it this way would be nicer.

http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archive/2008/01/07/word-notebook-layout-view.aspx

in reply to Can we have the same thing in Word 13?

Windows Mobile just isn't cool enough. [Windows Mobile just isn't cool enough.]

Tom Servo — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:25:44 GMT

How isn't this cool?

servo@bigmclargehuge:~ > ssh -l root -c arcfour 192.168.1.4
root@192.168.1.4's password:
Last login: Wed Nov 21 18:00:54 2007 from 192.168.1.18
# uname -a
Darwin Servo's iPod 9.0.0d1 Darwin Kernel Version 9.0.0d1: Thu Sep 20 00:27:53 PDT 2007; root:xnu-933.0.0.203.obj~24/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8900XRB iPod1,1 Darwin
# ssh -l servo -c arcfour 192.168.1.18
Password:
Last login: Wed Nov 21 18:01:09 2007 from 192.168.1.4
Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.11 snv_76 October 2007
servo@bigmclargehuge:~ >

Courtesy my frickin' iPod Touch.

Now someone just needs to implement an X server for this thing.

in reply to Windows Mobile just isn't cool enough.

Solaris 10 / OpenSolaris? [Solaris 10 / OpenSolaris?]

Tom Servo — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:04:17 GMT

It's summer time, which also means OS ADD time for me. I've been screwing around with FreeBSD 6.2 and 7 again, scheming my graceful drop out of the Windows world the day Microsoft will screw Windows up for good (i.e. having it handhold retards).

All this playing with the new ZFS code in FreeBSD-CURRENT makes me consider trying out Solaris. Especially after finding out that there's support for my Nvidia graphics card aswell as sound support.

What does everyone think about this operating system? How does it perform for desktopish tasks?

in reply to Solaris 10 / OpenSolaris?

What I want to see: Google/Live Personal Finance [What I want to see: Google/Live Personal Finance]

Tom Servo — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:03:20 GMT

Since I need a mobile personal finance solution, that's kind of guaranteed to exist for quite some time, and since Google's about covering all bases, here's an idea for them: Implement it.

The only other solution I've run into would be indybudget.com, but since it's no big-co, it's longevity is in question.

If Microsoft would consider implementing something like this: WITHOUT PAGE FILLING ADS, PLZKTHX. You've already ruined Money as it is.

in reply to What I want to see: Google/Live Personal Finance

WDS: Making it forget stuff that's been deleted? [WDS: Making it forget stuff that's been deleted?]

Tom Servo — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 19:39:17 GMT

After getting WDS to work again, finding out that a power setting make it go stupid, I was trying stuff. How comes that if I delete mails in Outlook, that I still can search for them in the start menu? When does the indexer deem it deleted for real? Outlook's instant search doesn't show them, probably because it uses the search results as index access to the store items, which are conveniently missing already.

in reply to WDS: Making it forget stuff that's been deleted?

ASP.NET Webhost offering Exchange mail? [ASP.NET Webhost offering Exchange mail?]

Tom Servo — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 13:07:37 GMT

I'm looking for a webhost that offers email support via Exchange. Can anyone recommend a hosting service? I've run into Alentus who claims this, but this claim is only made on the frontpage, the plans themselves don't list any Exchange support.

Thanks.

in reply to ASP.NET Webhost offering Exchange mail?

Making chart sheets from old Excel files work in Excel 2007?!? [Making chart sheets from old Excel files work in Excel 2007?!?]

Tom Servo — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:19:52 GMT

Why is it that I can't find any usable information about this? I have a couple of files here from older Excel versions, that use charts on seperate workbook sheets. I can open and see them fine in Excel 2003, but in Excel 2007, I get blank pages, with greyed out ribbons and no chart context ribbon.

What the hell is going on here? Halp!

in reply to Making chart sheets from old Excel files work in Excel 2007?!?

So when will we get a successor to NTFS, anyway? [So when will we get a successor to NTFS, anyway?]

Tom Servo — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 00:46:59 GMT

Since Seagate and Hitachi are both releasing terabyte drives, splitting disks in partitions isn't cool anymore, and considering that NTFS sucks like hell with partitions that size (both performance and memory requirements), wouldn't it be time for an overhauled filesystem?

ZFS seems like a nice idea for such large drives, but Sun would do hell before porting this to Windows. Microsoft would be too proud to license it, anyway, even though all these hollow promises and agreements of cooperation with Sun. And the last thing we'd see is an appropriate high performance file system, since Microsoft still thinks that ol' NTFS is adequate.

Not to mention that filesystems require a fair share of failsafe functionality. Such big drives are annoying to back up. Adequately sized solutions, like tape drives, cost way too much.

in reply to So when will we get a successor to NTFS, anyway?

Here's a wish of mine for C# 3.0 [Here's a wish of mine for C# 3.0]

Tom Servo — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 23:12:49 GMT

A goddamned flags evaluator operator. Seriously, whoever thought this was a great idea drives me nuts right now and should be shot:

if((someEnum & Enum.Value) == Enum.Value) { ... }

Implementing a lot of autogreying controls right now, I'm that short of developer rage.

in reply to Here's a wish of mine for C# 3.0

[WPF] Identifying the calling/instancing window? [[WPF] Identifying the calling/instancing window?]

Tom Servo — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 15:09:48 GMT

I have a helper class aiding in some WPF stuff. The way I want it to work is to instance it in the resource section of the window and automatically know which window instanced it.

Without requiring it to pass any bindings, objects or fire events, how can I identify the window instancing the class? If I would want to use it on the main window only, Application.Current.MainWindow would do fine.

And if there's no way doing this, how can I bind it to the window or give its object in XAML? Something like {StaticResource this}?

in reply to [WPF] Identifying the calling/instancing window?

Windows Early Feedback program... [Windows Early Feedback program...]

Tom Servo — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:11:02 GMT

Let the stupid suggestions come. And they're also already being voted up. There are gems like turning everything into WPF applications or adding the ribbon wherever possible. The best one was probably the one where someone wants to login while the drivers are still loading.

Jesus Christ, I don't want to be the one triaging this crap.

in reply to Windows Early Feedback program...

Implementing scripting in an application? [Implementing scripting in an application?]

Tom Servo — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 21:36:32 GMT

If you were to add some scripting environment into an application, how would you implement this on the application side? I don't mean binding the scripting code in, but the code design. Would you hammer the application design into the right shape to just throw the scripting environment in to operate straight on the application itself, or would you create sort of an independent API for that environment, which then interacts with the application accordingly (sort of an abstraction layer)?

in reply to Implementing scripting in an application?

Enums and hashtables/dictionaries in .NET? [Enums and hashtables/dictionaries in .NET?]

Tom Servo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:00:54 GMT

For my global event sink, I'm unsure yet whether I should just define a class with static members or use an enum based on an int, which would then act as key to a hashtable.

What I don't know is how .NET will handle the enum. Will it internally use the int value assigned, or will it screw around in some unknown way?

Thanks.

in reply to Enums and hashtables/dictionaries in .NET?

Popular Microsoft oriented SourceForge like site? [Popular Microsoft oriented SourceForge like site?]

Tom Servo — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:22:08 GMT

Looking for a place to potentially put up my project as open source, when I deem it fit for it. There's GotDotNet, but everytime I went there, it was slow like hell, so I want to avoid it. Any other?

Google and Firefox? [Google and Firefox?]

Tom Servo — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 18:51:57 GMT

What the hell is going on here? The search textbox refuses to start a search when just hitting ENTER, making me actually click the damn button. To make it actually work, I had to open the DOM Inspector, find the submit button and remove the "return false;" code from the onclick event to make it actually work.

Seriously, what?

Anyone else having that problem?

--edit: Opening the page in IE doesn't even add this retarded JavaScript code.

in reply to Google and Firefox?

EU regulating the crap out of... Video bloggers. [EU regulating the crap out of... Video bloggers.]

Tom Servo — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:09:35 GMT

Well, not only them. But as it seems, they're all about restricting video on websites. Yay.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20411-2407359,00.html

in reply to EU regulating the crap out of... Video bloggers.

New Vista driver from Creative [New Vista driver from Creative]

Tom Servo — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 15:06:32 GMT

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vista&message.id=2174

And they're frickin' signed, too.

--edit: But oh, they still glitch.

Creative posted a hugeass thread on their forums, explaining why their drivers are broken. The reason are changes in the audio engine in Windows, which seem to be well known since damn long time, yet Creative failing to fix that. It does even seem like they're trying to get around writing a WaveRT driver.

Yay for that.

in reply to New Vista driver from Creative

Network cards need cooling now, apparently... [Network cards need cooling now, apparently...]

Tom Servo — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:43:00 GMT

I just got my new gigabit NIC, but the PCIe variant. Having had my share of different gigabit NICs, I'm kind of surprised that this thing needs cooling, though the feature set is more or less the same as my old one. What the hell?

in reply to Network cards need cooling now, apparently...

Data/disk selfdestroying itself? [Data/disk selfdestroying itself?]

Tom Servo — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:45:24 GMT

What are the chances that data just randomly starts getting faulty without ever being written again to, after having been stored once? I'm just wondering, because I'm listening to glitches in MP3 files (non-Vista related glitches) that I could have sworn were fine in the past.

The problem however is that I can't be sure what's factoring into it. Either the disks are slowly amassing errors (unlikely, because Windows doesn't have any issues reading the files), or it might just have happened during the time I still owned that mainboard with that VIA chipset, that didn't play well with the EMU10Kx cards (caused the chipset to create errors in data transfers).

Sadly, there doesn't seem a way to track the integrity of files, short of maybe a RAID-5 (that is if various RAID soft-/hardware actually allows data verification short of losing an actual drive). Maybe I just install Visual Studio and start coding some tool that maintains checksums of all files on disk.

Does anyone else have experience with files exploding into their face at random?

in reply to Data/disk selfdestroying itself?

How do I mark a partition as system partition? [How do I mark a partition as system partition?]

Tom Servo — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:44:12 GMT

I'm trying to get Vista to boot completely off my SATA disk, without relying on having the bootloader code on the existing IDE disks. I can change which partition is active, but that doesn't help a lot, since there's no way to fix the boot environment. The current process in the Vista installer is automated and either fixes my first IDE drive or nothing at all (if I unmarked that IDE partition as active).

The DISKPART tool doesn't help either here.

in reply to How do I mark a partition as system partition?

GPT disks and Vista 32bit? [GPT disks and Vista 32bit?]

Tom Servo — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:05:22 GMT

Can the 32bit Vista read GPT partitioned disks? I've been searching the web and landed on various Microsoft articles, where it's kind of implied by not specifying which architecture they're talking about. The 32bit version of Windows Server 2003 has support for that partitioning format since SP1, Vista is based on it. I'd assume yes, but still can't be sure.

in reply to GPT disks and Vista 32bit?

Vista's dynamic disk not compatible with XP? [Vista's dynamic disk not compatible with XP?]

Tom Servo — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:32:51 GMT

I partitioned and formatted an external disk with Longhorn Server 5600, using the dynamic disk format to transport drive letter assignments across computers. The disk is recognized in Longhorn just fine and works flawlessly, however XP claims unable to find any configuration or volume data, even though it is aware that this is a dynamic disk.

So, am I right or doing something wrong?

Also, what's the point of XP 32bit being able to recognize GPT disks but not use them?!

in reply to Vista's dynamic disk not compatible with XP?

EU investigating MSOffice 2007... [EU investigating MSOffice 2007...]

Tom Servo — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 23:21:10 GMT

Because of PDF saving. Or rather, not PDF saving.

in reply to EU investigating MSOffice 2007...

<3 eSATA [<3 eSATA]

Tom Servo — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:10:55 GMT

Got myself an external harddisk enclosure from Coolermaster. That thing supports both external SATA and USB 2.0. The idea was to have it run on the native SATA bus at home while still being able to reuse that thing elsewhere (otherwise there'd be no point).

Oh boy, I sure don't regret spending the extra dollars. The thing is damn fast in SATA passthrough mode.

Considering that there seems to be quite a market for such enclosures and that there's a specification to route the SATA ports to the outside, I'm surprised that noone's really pushing eSATA, either native SATA versions or PATA adapter versions for people wanting to reuse their old drives. There are tons of models from several manufacturers and only a fraction features SATA ports. Damn shame.

in reply to <3 eSATA

Audio glitching in Vista RC1 [Audio glitching in Vista RC1]

Tom Servo — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 15:24:11 GMT

I guess every Creative user suffers from that one, but does anyone run Vista on a machine with a soundcard that's not from Creative? Do you have glitches in audio?

Right now, creating new tabs in IE7 almost guarantees glitches, loading webpages often enough than not.

I find this quite a bit annoying. This is a RC build, Microsoft intends to have it RTM somewhen in fall, yet this operating system apparently still can't play audio glitchless. There isn't that much time left to get this working perfectly. There's no point in having this new fangled audio subsystem if I have to resort to KS in foobar2000 (to bypass the userland mixer) to get stable audio. I mean, this is a freakin' dual core, there's no reason it should be choked out of necessary CPU power when creating tabs in IE.

in reply to Audio glitching in Vista RC1