Heap of random thoughts

Burning multi-session disc: Mac vs Windows

2010-01-12T20:05:00.001-08:00

I didn’t know burning multi-session disc in Mac OS is still so stone age. Even Snow Leopard doesn’t make is any easier. In Windows, you only need to select the files to burn and press the burn button. A dialog will appear in which the default settings do exactly what you want. In Mac OS X… you search the web and you come across this: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/11.5/en/7074.html. What it describes doesn’t quite match the Disk Utility in Snow Leopard. But the page doesn’t say which version of Mac OS X it’s for. So it should be the current version, right? I decided to follow it anyway. The Disk Utility presented me with 4 different disc image formats to choose from. Which one do I choose? Should I toss a coin (two times) or try to make an educated guess? The description of the image formats doesn’t really help at all. The first try didn’t work: the option I chose would not create a multi-session disc. Good thing, I realized it before actually burning the disc. The second try… didn’t succeed either! What the hell does the Disk Utility want from me?

Every attempt costs me 10 minutes to create the disc image before I can burn it. Should I try two other options and spend another 20 minutes or is there an easier solution? I give up. I guess I’ll just wait till the size of my folder grows to match the size of the blank DVD, so I can burn it in one shot.

Update: finally I found this page: http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/4836/os-x-how-to-burn-a-multisession-cd-or-dvd/. It describes exactly what I was doing. Except, I didn’t get the choice to check the “Leave disc appendable” box. It was always grayed out. Is the problem that I was trying to burn a double layer DVD? Is it not supported for multi-session burning?

Good free Mac OS X blogging tools?

2010-01-10T19:18:00.001-08:00

Recently I wanted to find a good blogging tool for Mac. Since I have a Mac I want to do all I can without resorting to other operating systems. So I spent some time looking around for a good tool and I found some. But all of them are buy-only. On Windows I use Live Writer (still not renamed to Bing Writer?) I couldn’t find anything as good a Live Writer and free for Mac. They all wanted me to pay from 25 to 50 bucks depending on the program. Oh well, I’m just going to use Live Writer from the virtual machine.

Where are KDE 4 wallpapers?

2009-04-11T23:13:00.001-07:00

Good luck searching for KDE 4 Air wallpaper on Google. I spent an hour trying to find it. Finally a post on some obscure message board led me to the KDE SVN repository. So here’s the link to all KDE wallpapers: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/wallpapers/

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

2009-04-07T20:25:00.001-07:00

What? I was trying to access my bank’s web page but instead of the page I was presented with this message. Is the web site down? Nope, doesn’t seem to be. It pings with no problem. I’m firing up the Firefox, and voila – the web page appears before my eyes. Is something wrong with the IE? Did I unknowingly install a rogue browser extension, spyware or adware? The fact that it’s a bank’s site made me suspicious.

Or is it just IE8? I’m trying compatibility mode – nope, the same result. Trying IE8 from another machine. Works like a charm! This is starting to look very troubling. OK, it’s time for serious investigation.

Perhaps Autoruns can tell me what’s going on? It’s a Sysinternals tool. I’m looking through IE BHO’s, Winsock providers, other stuff that’s in there. Nothing stands out. Everything looks normal.

Perhaps it’s the anti-virus? Or Vmware network services? Shutting everything down. Still nothing.

OK, let’s take a look at what happens at the network level. Launching the Wireshark. Capturing some network packets and what am I seeing? IE8 sends a DNS query for the bank’s site. The query resolves OK. Then it establishes the connection: SYN, SYN+ACK, ACK – so far so good. Then it sends HTTP GET. And the very next packet it receives from the site is RST. No wonder it can’t display the web page! The site just drops the connection.

I’m relieved. At least it’s not a spyware.

But why the hell it drops the connection on IE8 whereas Firefox works just fine? It must be something with the User Agent string. I’m looking at the string and I can’t believe how long it is. There’s all sorts of crap in there:

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Origami Experience 1.1; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; Zune 3.0; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3

In fact, it’s so long the IE doesn’t even send the whole string.

Time to fix it. I quickly find the user agent in the registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]

Delete everything leaving just a single entry for CLR 2 and CLR 3. Restart the IE. And… Tada! The web page displays correctly.

So the user agent string was too long for the web server to handle. Maybe it thought I was trying to DoS it? Or better yet, it was running into a buffer overflow. I don’t know. But it certainly looks like a bad piece of software that site runs on.

Collaborate over the Internet with OneNote and Office Live : Matt Ranlett's SharePoint and Office blog

2009-01-27T00:43:00.001-08:00

As a OneNote enthusiast I always wanted to know if it’s possible to collaborate and share your notes over the internet. OneNote requires a SharePoint web site for shared notebooks which is usually a hassle to setup. But it turns out there is an easy way to do it with the Office Live Small Business account. Check out the following blog entry for details:

Collaborate over the Internet with OneNote and Office Live : Matt Ranlett's SharePoint and Office blog

Bookmarks are becoming a thing of the past

2009-01-20T23:13:00.001-08:00

I collected my web bookmarks for 8 years or so. I cherished them and carefully transfered them from one computer to another. But I rarely bothered to look what I actually collected. Random bookmark folders and various links of temporary importance dominated in my bookmarks. Today I decided to sort them out, because it was clearly started to become just a huge mess. It turned out I didn’t really need many of them. Many bookmarks were just useless because I can find the same information in Google faster than in my bookmark folders. I went from more than 700 bookmarks down to about 250, restoring some order in my favorites. After this excercise, it became clear to me that if I need to find something I would first search Google than again… search Google and only then search my bookmarks. The need to use bookmarks is significantly reduced. I decided that I will collect only rare information of a special meaning to me, the information that I had a hard time finding on the internet.

Vista performance score of Lenovo S10

2008-12-24T22:28:00.001-08:00

I bought this little nice netbook for Christmas. It came with Windows XP and loaded with a lot of OEM installed craplets. When I booted it, it wasn’t super fast, but it was OK. There are some reviews that say Vista will run like molasses on these kind of machines. I wanted to check if it’s true, so I installed Vista. It turns out Vista is actually pretty fast on S10. I got the performance score of 2.7 which is limitted by “gaming graphics.” This is not surprising. Next is Intel Atom processor with the score of 3.0 and the rest are actually above 4.0 which is pretty good. In fact Vista doesn’t need a fast processor so much as it needs memory and a fast disk.

Here is the whole picture (click for larger view):

Interactive Collective Quiz

2008-09-02T01:05:00.001-07:00

This is pretty darn funny. Try to guess which collectivist said what. Among the collectivists are: Hilary Clinton, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Barack Obama and many more. The quotes are strikingly similar. It's hard to get it right the first time. And soon you'll love to get it wrong. Want to know why? Just try the quiz.

http://thepeoplescube.com/QuoteQuiz/index.php

Constantly changing explorer views in Vista

2008-08-31T22:36:00.001-07:00

This is a very annoying problem in Vista. Vista Explorer adapts its folder views depending on the type of files it finds there. For example, if it finds a picture it changes the folder view to iconic although you might have another files there and you don't want the iconic view, but rather detailed view. Here is a solution to this problem that fixes folder views once and for all.

Solution

* Delete these registry keys:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU]

* Create a new key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell]

* Create a new string value:

FolderType="NotSpecified"

* Open folder options in Explorer and click "Apply to all folders" button.

* Done!

Army Strong

2008-07-30T02:36:00.001-07:00

This ad is breathtaking. I never served in the army. I'm not even an American. But it somehow makes me proud of this country.

Living in Issaquah

2008-07-28T22:10:00.001-07:00

It's nice to live practically within a walking distance of the Tiger Mountain in Issaquah. You don't need much convincing to do to grab a camera and go on a hike. Fresh air and nice trails always welcome you. Here's a picture of the Tiger Mountain Trail (click for larger view):

Tony Snow dies

2008-07-14T19:39:00.001-07:00

This is sad. Tony Snow died on Saturday April 12 from cancer. I first learned about him as a radio talk host. He actually got me hooked up on the talk shows. He also appeared frequently on Fox News which I regularly watch. When he became a White House spokesman it was both great news (because this is a position to be proud of) and not so great (because it meant no more talk shows with him any time soon). But I knew that Snow took this position because he wanted and could make a difference. I heard that he took a significant pay cut when he left his job in the media. He battled with cancer since 2005, but he still continued to do his job despite of it. He never whined about it, and he didn't become bitter. He was truly a great man that America should be proud of. In fact, Cincinnati should name a street or a park after him or something like that as a gesture of recognition. This is the least they can do.

and on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Snow

It's 2008 and Linux is still not ready for the desktop

2008-06-08T13:07:00.001-07:00

Otherwise how can you explain that Fedora 8 can't perform two of the most basic desktop tasks: configure dual monitor desktop and set the correct resolution on my SyncMaster 2043BWX monitor which is 1680x1050? Do I need to explain what it takes to perform these tasks in Windows? Hope not. Even a 7 year old XP can do it. And half year old Fedora 8 can't. Pathetic.

Dinner and a movie: Fahrenhype 9/11

2008-06-08T02:50:00.001-07:00

I was trying to decide what to watch while I was having a dinner at home and my glance fell on the movie "Fahrenhype 9/11" and I thought why not. I have had for quite some time - after all it was released in 2004 - and I vaguely remembered what it was about. But as I was re-watching the movie I knew it was a right choice. Nowadays people tend to have a short memory. This movie does a very good job refreshing the memory on the subject of terrorism, 9/11, war in Afghanistan, etc. Its primary purpose is the rebuttal of the well known propaganda movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" - and it does rebut it very effectively - but it also has a viewing value on its own. It reminds that we're living in a difficult time and facing challenges that can be no longer ignored.

Ubuntu 8.04

2008-04-28T00:47:00.001-07:00

Hardy Heron or just Hardy if you will. This is the best Linux release this far. I was using Fedora 8 before because it was more cutting edge than Ubuntu Gutsy. In many ways Fedora and Ubuntu are very similar in spirit. Built on different foundations both try to be on the cutting edge, both are experimental and a little unstable. But Hardy was released ahead of Fedora 9 and so my choice was made in favor of Ubuntu.

Compared to the previous version, Gutsy, Hardy has much better hardware support. I have Dell D630 laptop which I bought last year in June. Gutsy couldn't be easily installed on it. It had problems with the graphics card (and I'm sure other problems as well, I just didn't go beyond that). Hardy on the other hand recognized and supported all D630 components: graphics, sound, monitor brightness, suspend, hibernate - everything appears to work just fine.

Although Hardy installed without a hitch, post-installation configuration wasn't that smooth. The first thing that always annoys me in any Linux distribution is the fact that X server tries to read and use Edid monitor configuration which is nice except that it completely screws the resolution of fonts and key UI elements. Usually they become much larger that they should be. The resolution of my monitor is identified as 121dpi. Normal resolution is 96dpi and my first task was to reset it to normal. The way to do it is through xorg.conf file. I've done it before, however this time I made a mistake and added configuration options to a wrong section in xorg.conf file. After ctrl-alt-backspace and logging in X server locked up in a blank screen. Mouse pointer was moving, but I couldn't do anything else. I couldn't even go to the console with ctrl-alt-f1 to fix the mistake. I had to shut down the machine and boot it in a single user mode. I had to modify xorg.conf several times since then and once in a while I ended up with an incorrect configuration which required a reboot into the single user mode again. Is it a bug in Xorg? Don't know, but it sure is annoying.

Next thing I always do is fixing fonts. To be continued...

Good Code vs Bad Code

2008-02-06T02:40:00.001-08:00

Does it sound familiar? It certainly does to me.

Gordon House

2008-02-06T01:55:00.001-08:00

Seriously cool stuff:

If you look at this picture and go "what?" follow these two links: Who is Gordon Freeman? Who is Gregory House?

Skype account management mess

2007-12-31T00:57:00.001-08:00

Why is it so hard for the Skype folks to understand that a simple and consistent account management system is much better than a confusing, everchanging, "full of surprises" one? Every time I log on to my Skype account (which I don't do very often, frankly) I find myself learning a new account management system. Everything is not like it was the last time I logged on. Everything's changed, reshuffled. I only need to do a single simple thing: add some money to the family group account I manage. And every time I wonder: where did they stick the group account this time around? How did they call it this time around? I consider myself lucky if I find what I want within the first ten minutes. But sometimes I don't. It's a mess. A frustrating mess.

People, stop changing things! Don't you understand that you might be losing customers because of this? Keep it simple, stupid!

This is the university I graduated from

2007-12-19T00:57:00.001-08:00

View Larger Map

Mac type 1 fonts in a web page

2007-12-16T17:27:00.001-08:00

Lucida Grande

Lucida Grande Thick

Lucida Grande Bold

Lucida Grande size 10

Lucida Grande size 12

Lucida Grande size 14

PCLinuxOS 2007

2007-12-01T19:26:00.000-08:00

I wanted to try this OS on my computer over the weekend. So I downloaded and burned a CD and shoveled it into the CD drive hoping for a quick and easy install.

I was wrong. The installation was anything but quick and easy. For starters it couldn't mount the CD drive. So I was required to specify the following boot options: all-generic-ide irqpoll. It was a typical problem with all linux disttors about a year ago on the Intel P965 chipset that I use. But recent linux distributions finally managed to work around this problem. Except for PCLinuxOS as it turns out.

Anyway, even with those boot options all the PCLinuxOS livecd could do is boot into a command prompt. It couldn't start the X server. I logged in with the root/root combination and examined the Xorg.0.log file, where I didn't find anything suspicious, only an innocently looking "fatal server error: cannot run in the framebuffer mode" message which I can't decipher (why does it want to use the framebuffer? who knows).

Ironically the PCLinuxOS livecd splash screen says: "radically simple." Nice joke IMO.

Naturally, I couldn't spend any more time with this OS. Time to move on and try something more worthwhile. PCBSD maybe? The only thing I can't understand is how this OS keeps the first position in the distrowatch.org list of OS'es.

How to speedup Vista shutdown

2007-12-01T18:53:00.001-08:00

Set the following registry value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control]
WaitToKillServiceTimeout = 1000

This will force all services to quit within 1 second (the default value is 20000 which means 20 seconds). And if there is a service that can't do it, it will be killed, which is OK for a typical desktop system.

I also found a good article that describes this trick and a couple of more: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/10/31/fast-shutdown-faster-windows-2000-windows-xp-windows-2003-and-windows-vista/

My old calculator I had in high school

2007-11-22T18:33:00.001-08:00

I've been trying to find out which calculator model I used in school. But I couldn't remember it. After looking through pictures of hundreds old calculators I finally found it. Citizen SRP-175. It was a nice little device. It's primarily a scientific calculator. It's also possible to enter and execute small programs on it. But I didn't use its programmability, because computers were available at that time.

Resolve Windows Update problems on Vista

2007-06-25T02:07:00.001-07:00

Some of Windows Update errors on Vista can be solved by resetting the state of the Windows Update service on the machine. The state is saved in the %SystemRoot%\SoftwareDistribution directory. So all that needs to be done is deleting the contents of that directory. When the update service is started next time, it will recreate this directory contents by downloading the data from the online update server. Just follow these easy steps:

Stop the "Windows Update" service.
Delete %SystemRoot%\SoftwareDistribution directory.
Restart the "Windows Update" service.

10 Ways to Make Laziness Work for You

2007-06-15T22:13:00.001-07:00

This is the best self-improvement advice I've ever read. And the only one that doesn't go against human nature.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

2007-05-01T19:30:00.001-07:00

Get the key.

Looking for perfect Linux distro: Mandriva 2007.1

2007-04-19T21:52:00.003-07:00

I've been trying different Linux distros since I installed my first Linux in 1997. My quest for the perfect Linux distro continues. Today I tried Mandriva 2007.1. It was release just recently. 2007.1 (aka 2007 Spring edition) is apparently an update for the 2007 version of Mandriva distro. I had 2007 installed at some point. It was OK, but had some problems with my hardware. The hardware was pretty new for that time (late 2006). I have Intel DP965LT motherboard and Core2Duo processor. Back at that time surprisingly many Linux distros failed to install on this motherboard. It generally required kernel 2.6.19 or later to work.

I read about Mandriva 2007.1 on slashdot. Many people left favourable comments. So I decided to give it another try. I downloaded a free edition DVD, burned it, and started the installation.

The installer launched from the DVD and the installation generally went smoothly. The installer informed me that it failed to load pata_marvell driver, but it didn't seem to have caused any problems. The installation proceeded.

Mandriva partition manager is very good. It was quite easy to choose a partition to install linux on. By default it created an extended partition on my hard drive, so I had to switch into "expert mode" and force it to create a primary partition instead. Then I proceeded to format and copy packages to the installation partition.

Mandriva gives you a choice to copy the whole content of the DVD to the hard drive first and then install from the hard drive. I chose that option. But I'm not sure whether it sped up the installation. Just copying the DVD to the hard drive took at least 20 minutes.

Then goes the hardware configuration. Mandriva detected most of my hardware correctly. I have two sound cards, one onboard is Intel HD and another is SB Audigy. It suggested driver modules for both sound cards. I was mainly interested in the SB Audigy card, so I had to choose between snd_emu10k1 and some audigy driver. I chose snd_emu10k1, since this was a driver I encountered before. I turned out to be a bad choice. The sound from the speakers was very noisy. The installer doesn't offer to test the driver so I had no idea how it would work.

Then goes a video card. My machine has a PCIE card, ATI Radeon X700. The installer detected it as ATI card and suggested the ati driver. There is an option to test the X server with that driver. I tried it and the X server couldn't start for some reason. Thinking that it will be resolved after the installation is complete I proceeded with that driver anyway. Again, it was another mistake as I learned later.

Then it was the time to configure the wireless card. I have a Ralink based PCI card. The installer suggested two options: the native rt61 driver and the ndiswrapper over Windows driver. I wanted to go with the rt61 driver, but it wasn't available in the free edition. I got the error message, saying that the driver needs a firmware which is only provided in the paid edition. Too bad. Especially considering that the firmware is essentially free (maybe not GPL'ed though). Now I had to install the ndiswrapper. The installer asked for a CD with the Windows driver. Unfortunately the CD drive was locked, because I had the Mandrive DVD disk in it. There was no obvious way to unlock it, so I gave up on the wireless and opted for the wired connection.

The rest went smoothly. But on the first boot X server didn't start. Having checked the log file I found that it tries to find a PCI card which doesn't exist. My video card is PCIE. Alrighty then. I've searched the internet using a text browser named lynx and found some mentioning of fglrx driver. Unfortunately this driver didn't exist on the system. Perhaps it's also availabe in the paid edition only. Which I thought was a pity, because it severly limits my options.

At the end I checked the kernel version that comes with this distro. It was 2.6.17-13mdv. Quite a disappointment. Why does Mandriva stay with that old kernel when others have kernel 2.6.20 already? I have no idea.

After two hours of my experience with Mandriva I already had multiple problems to resolve. This definitely wasn't something I was looking for. Besides, another popular distro was just released - Ubuntu 7.04. So I decided to erase Mandriva and try Ubuntu instead. Hope it gives me less problems.

Blogging with Microsoft Live Writer

2006-11-04T02:34:00.000-08:00

It's easier than I thought. Surprisingly, the Writer detected blogger.com settings and configured everything automatically. I even have my layout profile imported into Writer. So what I see when I enter text into the Writer is what I actually going to get when the blog entry is published on the blogger.com. Much better than typical web-based blogging tools in which you have to from edit to preview mode to see how your text will look in the blog.

Next time I'm going to try the Writer with the spaces.com. The Writer is supposedly optimized for working with spaces more than with any other blogging service. We'll see if that's actually true.

Nicer fonts for your Linux

2006-03-25T22:46:00.000-08:00

As I recently discovered there is a reason why fonts look so bad on Linux. Apart from general lack of good Truetype fonts, some of the algorithms of used in the font rendering are patented by Apple. So on Linux you can't render fonts quite correctly even if they are good. I had such a feeling that something is wrong when I installed my Windows fonts on Linux. They still looked worse than on Windows platform (though better than default Linux fonts).

But fear not my friends, as the font rendering engine in Linux, Freetype, has those patented algorithms in there, only disabled in most distributions. Since it's all about Open Source on Linux, you can enable them by recompiling a certain source code. Search the web for specific instructions for your distribution. On Fedora Core it's seems to be quite easy.

WG21 rejects proposal on the new allocator model

2006-02-12T00:47:00.000-08:00

Yes. According to this post on the comp.std.c++ newsgroup and WG21 meeting notes the proposal on a new allocator model has been rejected.

I've seen a talk on this model on the C++ Connections conference in Las Vegas. Back then in November I didn't like the model because it didn't work with copy-constructors, (N)RVO and yet to be added move-contructors. However Bjarne Stroustrup was a strong supporter of it. That got me worried. But I assumed that the committee would do a right thing (either make it work or punt it). And it did.

C/C++ Users Journal goes defunct

2006-01-08T02:06:00.000-08:00

Sad news. I received my last issue of CUJ. The first page contains a note from the publisher that explains everything:

Dear C/C++ Users Joungal Reader,

For nearly 30 years, the C/C++ Users Journal has provided resources and information to serve the constantly evolving community of C and C++ developers. More recently, however, we at CMP Media LLC have come to the difficult realization that the best way to serve this community in the future is to focus on new web sites, magazines, and events. What this means is that you are holding in your hands the last issue of the C/C++ Users Journal. As a result, Dr. Dobb's Journal, which has published C and C++ articles ranging from the days of Small-C to C++, will expand its coverange of these important programming languages even more.

We are going to transfer your subscription to C/C++ Users Journal to Dr. Dobb's Journal, and you will be served the number of copies of Dr. Dobb's Journal that remain in your C/C++ Users Jounal subscription.

If this offer is not acceptable to you just write us at the address below and we will send you a refund.

[address]

CMP Media will continue to engage the community with our existing products, which in addition to Dr. Dobb's Journal and Software Development, also include the CMP Developer Network of sites and the Software Development conferences. We sincerely appreciate your support of C/C++ Users Journal in the past, and we look forward to the opportunity to serve you in the future with timely and useful information about software development.

Sincerely,

Michael Goodman
Publisher
C/C++ Users Journal and Dr. Dobb's Journal

What this means is pretty clear. CUJ is R.I.P. Their intention to expand coverange of C++ on the pages of Dr. Dobb's is a typical bullshit. Let me remind you that CUJ was a "Advanced Solutions for Professional Developers" jounal. Dr. Dobb's is crap. It doesn't even deserve to be called Journal. It's a magazine at best. I receive Dr. Dobb's for free and I don't even read it. Get this: CMP sends out Dr. Dobb's for free. I've never got an offer to receive CUJ for free. People don't find Dr. Dobb's valuable enough to subscribe.

What this mean for professional C++ developers? We're left without a printed periodic media to cover advanced C++ topics, period. Since the death of C++ Report there wasn't any journal covering C++ as well as CUJ. And even though CUJ wasn't perfect, it was the only one. Other magazines are crap. I'm sure something else will rise from the ashes of CUJ sooner or later. But CMP is definitely losing it.

integer overflow in operator new[]

2005-10-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

Does it come as a surprise that array allocation can cause an integer overflow? Not really. My tests with GCC 4 on Linux show that many array allocation operations are affected:


size_t large_n
   = std::numeric_limits<size_t>::max()
         / 0x10 + 2;
struct A { int a, b, c, d; };  // 0x10 bytes

void test() {
   {
      A * arr = new A[large_n];

      // succeeds, but what does it mean?
      arr[5000].a = 10;
   }

   {
      // a clear overflow
      A * arr = (A*) malloc(large_n * sizeof(A));
   }

   {
      A * arr = (A*) calloc(large_n, sizeof(A));

      // SEGFAULT
      arr[5000].a = 10;
   }

   {
      // bad_alloc - correct behavior
      vector<a> arr(large_n);
   }
}

Notice, that vector<> behaves as expected. Again C++ standard library shows its superiority to the conventional "do it yourself" methods. This is just another reason to use vector<> everywhere where an array is needed.

Disable hibernation from the command line

2005-09-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

Power configuration dialog got somewhat tricky in Vista. I never needed hibernation but I couldn't figure out how to disable it to save some disk space. Here is a better method:

powercfg -h off

This util has many other useful options as well.

Moon is just a huge orange.

2005-09-19T02:27:00.000-07:00

I never believed myself. Today I saw it with my own eyes.

Russian ship in Tacoma WA

2005-07-11T00:04:00.000-07:00

A magnificent ship show was held in Tacoma WA on July 4'th. A russian ship "Pallada" was exibited among many fine ships. Here are some pictures:

I just installed Fedora Core 3. Now what?

2005-06-11T00:16:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, don't know what's next, take a look at this link.

How to make ipw2100 module work with suspend/resume

2005-06-03T23:35:00.000-07:00

ipw2100 module needs to be removed from the kernel before suspending. Otherwise it won't be operational on resume. To accomplish that something like this needs to be added to /etc/acpi/actions/sleep file:


#!/bin/bash
if grep -q closed /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state
    then
        /sbin/modprobe -r ipw2100
        echo -n "mem" > /sys/power/state
        /sbin/modprobe ipw2100
        /sbin/ifup eth1
fi

Michael Waller and his views on world politics

2005-03-01T00:57:00.000-08:00

I discovered this guy recently. He gave an interview on the “O’Reilly Factor” on Putin. It was immediately clear that he gives very valuable insights into Russian politics. It turns out he wrote a number of papers about Putin, KGB and Russia. I read some of them. A good, solid material. He also maintains a blog. Very recommended.

Links:
Blog
The Institue of World Politics
Waller's page at the Institute of World Politics

Who's nerdier?

2005-02-07T20:05:00.000-08:00

Where the spam comes from

2005-02-04T01:23:00.000-08:00

Recently I found that some e-mail from Russia doesn't reach my Verizon e-mail account. From other sources I heard that Verizon blocks e-mail coming from certain countries because a large ammount of spam originates there. Or so Verizon thinks. To test their assumptions I conducted a small experiment. I collected statistics for the country of origin of spam e-mail for my Hotmail account. Of course I didn't take my Verizon account because the statistics would be skewed. So here are the results:

USA	27	57%
Korea	5	11%
China	4	9%
Hong Kong	2	4%
Canada	2	4%
Thailand	2	4%
Japan	1	2%
Uruguay	1	2%
Wales	1	2%
Qatar	1	2%
Total	47

So now you know. Keep in mind that the result from Hotmail can also be skewed. Hotmail is free to block e-mail too. But I haven't notice it doing anything like that. On the contrary with Verizon it's obvious. And yes, I turned Verizon spam filter off. POP3 and Verizon filter just don't play along.

For spam coming from the USA, the distribution along the major network providers looks like this:

AOL	8	30%
Comcast	4	15%
Qwest	2	7%
Verizon	1	4%
Other	12	44%

Linux on Tablet PCs

2005-02-01T01:05:00.000-08:00

Here are some links I collected:

BTW, I myselft have FC2 on Toshiba M200. I'm planning to write about my advanture of installing it. Of course it runs side-by-side with WinXP.

Election in Iraq succeeded and this is a Good Thing.

2005-01-31T02:53:00.000-08:00

It was a truely great day for Iraqi people. The day the history was being made.

Win32 GUI Generics library rocks!

2005-01-31T02:44:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen this library from John Torjo, you definitely ought to. It represents the Win32 GUI programming at its best. The template stuff is used a lot. And the result is a powerful yet easy to use and understand library.

Here are a couple of links: the library, articles. Also check John's articles in the CUJ. They explain quite a few things of the library design.

(PS: I just understood how the library handles event binding internally. It made me think good about myself :). It's nothing difficult, but kind of indirect.)

C/C++ User Journal content is now available online

2005-01-11T01:57:00.000-08:00

What a surprise! If you noticed the CUJ site has changed. And this is a good change. Now you can log in and access all articles of the journal online. I've been waiting for this feature for a long long time. You need to be a subscriber to use this feature. I am and I've created my online account today, because I needed to access one article published two years back. Couple of minutes spent on filling a registration form, and here you go I got it.

The other thing is that it comes with access to two other journals: DDJ and Perl Journal. For free, if you are already subscribed to CUJ. And I thought it couldn't get any better!

Notable new C++ books to be (or already) published this fall

2004-10-16T23:18:00.000-07:00

This season is pleasantly surprising for the variety of good quality C++ books coming out of print. Take a look for yourself. Four books in a row containing very solid material are guaranteed to boost your professional interest (if you are into C++ of course, which I am). It hasn't happened for a while. At least I don't remember myself being as excited about it as I am now. So here you go:

Exceptonal C++ Style (link)
I won't even bother telling you who the author of this book is :). If you don't know him, too bad for you. Anyway I already bought it and I can tell you it's definitely worth the money I spent. Nice addition to the well known series.

C++ Coding Standards (link), Herb Sutter, Andrei Alexandrescu
It supposed to be a collection of recommendations for a C++ programmer to keep in mind. There are so many facets of C++ programming that it's impractical to remember all this information. It'd be great to have a collection of short articles to remind you about various C++ techniques. I strongly believe that this is what this book is going to be about.

Imperfect C++ (link), Matthew Wilson
Matthew published a number of interesting articles in CUJ lately. I liked one about string shims quite a lot. He has a lot of experience in practical C++ applications he'll share with us in this book.

C++ Template Metaprogramming (link), David Abrahams, Aleksey Gurtovoy
What can I say? Those who liked "C++ Templates" want more!

Hello blog World!

2004-10-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! Blogging from Seattle, it's Saturday night!