Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4

Author Topic: Suggested Freeware  (Read 4634 times)

Duke 2.0

  • Bay Watcher
  • [CONQUISTADOR:BIRD]
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #15 on: April 12, 2010, 07:18:54 am »

 Let us not forget the defragmenters out there, like Defraggler. Good for keeping your computer running quickly.
Logged
Buck up friendo, we're all on the level here.
I would bet money Andrew has edited things retroactively, except I can't prove anything because it was edited retroactively.
MIERDO MILLAS DE VIBORAS FURIOSAS PARA ESTRANGULARTE MUERTO

qwertyuiopas

  • Bay Watcher
  • Photoshop is for elves who cannot use MSPaint.
    • View Profile
    • uristqwerty.ca, my current (barren) site.
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #16 on: April 12, 2010, 06:32:25 pm »

Reminder: defragmenting a USB device, despite almost certainly being far smaller than your main drive, may actualy be much *slower* since your main drive has a far better connection.

On the other hand, it is only the transfer rate, so I doubt that doing anything not involving the USB would slow it down or impede it.
Logged
Eh?
Eh!

psyn

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #17 on: April 12, 2010, 07:22:29 pm »

What in the hell is a USB device? That's like saying an HDMI TV, or Ethernet device. Did you mean a flash drive? In which case, flash/SSD drives should not be defragmented, ever.
Logged

Blacken

  • Bay Watcher
  • Orange Polar Bear
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #18 on: April 13, 2010, 10:56:00 am »

Sigh. I was trying to be nice about "hey, maybe that's not such a good idea," but apparently the dude wants to flail at me. I shall oblige.


I'm skipping over the "hurr what if you magically need a compiler on a system somewhere else," because the use of such in a legitimate context is such a supercorner case that it's not even worth discussing. Not even a GenTool needs to compile software on the fly that often. It can wait until you get to a computer you have legitimate administrator access to in all but the rarest case--and let's be honest with ourselves, you don't do anything that falls into that case.

Quote
XCOPY deployment is the essence of flexibility and elegance.
Oh, so we learned a new term and have to shoehorn it in, huh?

This nonsense was barely desirable in 1996, because there were active problems with the standard install process. They don't exist today--complaints about the registry are largely a joke, because the complainers cannot elucidate how the registry works let alone the potential problems with it--and, uh, let's be honest--your toy programs don't work for shit compared to well-integrated software.

I mean, let's use your example. You crow about being able to compile code. That's great--if you're willing to throw out everything else that goes along with compiling software. I can attach my effectively integrated Visual Studio to my compiled software--trivially, not with the clusterfrag that is GDB--and find out exactly what is going on. And even when VS isn't running, when something crashes, the Visual Studio integration lets me go look at what caused it and actually see what's going on.

You can bawwww (and boy, do you) all you like about how big and how oh god it has an installer all you like, but you get more when you integrate with the system. This is not particularly arguable.

(And, to tie it back to the topic: the Microsoft toolchain is entirely free to use, thank you VS Express. If you're a programmer, it is full-stop the best freeware development toolkit you will find anywhere on any platform.)


Quote
Also, since you seem to care so much, look at the security model of linux, and likely many other computers: Even on an administrator account, you don't get administrator priveleges without specifically requesting them, as it prevents the spread of viruses to system-critical files.
Are you really presuming to lecture me on this? Oh, that's good. That's great!

Wait. No. It's not.


You are factually incorrect regarding the Unix security model. If you have "an administrator account" (a root bit), you have no checks whatsoever on your behavior. There is no "specific request" involved. If you have root bits, you are God on that system. You can blow away any fine you like or rewrite absolutely anything (barring some hardcoded limits--rm -rf / is blocked on most systems, and anything with chattr +i will not let you modify it until you remove +i). Root always has all permissions to everything.

Now, you have sudo--which, by the way,is a giant gaping security hole, there's one on SecurityFocus that was only very recently patched--but that's not "an administrative account." A competent administrator can use sudo to run programs as users that do not have root access. Even under the default configuration on, like, Ubuntu, it doesn't work the way you think it does. Sudo will setuid your processes to the root user by default, which doesn't give them "requested" permissions. It gives them all permissions to the system. It lacks something like Windows's mechanism for gradated permissioning (Group Policy and Active Directory).

Maybe you are the one who should be looking at "the linux security model," not me. I seem to already understand it.

Quote
In fact, how can you possibly encourage the use of any version of internet explorer at all, if it only runs on systems with an inherent security hole whereby an administrator can run anything they want without excessive authorization to ensure that, yes, you *do* want to adjust advanced security settings or upgrade software.
Completely incorrect. Vista and Windows 7 both use UAC, a mechanism that acts similarly to sudo (though without the same gaping failures--it's better engineered), which performs similar functions (although, again, with the benefit of things like Group Policy, which allow it to act like--you know--a modern operating system).

Furthermore, Internet Explorer 7 and 8 are the only browsers other than Google Chrome to leverage Mandatory Integrity Control; the Internet Explorer "Isolated Mode" defaults it to a low IL and prevents it from interacting with processes at Medium or higher IL and from interacting with system-level objects.


You can admit you don't quite get what you're talking about, dude. I'm honestly not trying to pile on--but boy is it self-evident.
Logged
"There's vermin fish, which fisherdwarves catch, and animal fish, which catch fisherdwarves." - Flame11235

Blacken

  • Bay Watcher
  • Orange Polar Bear
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #19 on: April 13, 2010, 10:56:25 am »

What in the hell is a USB device? That's like saying an HDMI TV, or Ethernet device. Did you mean a flash drive? In which case, flash/SSD drives should not be defragmented, ever.
Plus plus plus plus plus. All it does is lower their lifespan.
Logged
"There's vermin fish, which fisherdwarves catch, and animal fish, which catch fisherdwarves." - Flame11235

psyn

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #20 on: April 13, 2010, 11:23:06 am »

Heh. You now owe us your free application list.

Maybe he runs SELinux.
Logged

Blacken

  • Bay Watcher
  • Orange Polar Bear
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #21 on: April 13, 2010, 12:20:55 pm »

SELinux--ancient Indian word for "hates actually working"

Free applications? I don't really have any "favorites," but what I've got currently installed on this machine (and may somebody mail you anthrax if you hurp that OH MY GOD THEY'RE NOT STALLMAN FREE):


Carrier (a fork of Pidgin, with less douchetastic developers)
VMWare Server
Eclipse
NetBeans
SQL Server Express
Notepad++ (I prefer etexteditor, but that's not free)
Audacity
REAPER (for when I can't swear at Ableton anymore)
PuTTYCM (slurps up PuTTY sessions into a tabbed environment)
Google Chrome (only thing I bother with except for testing)
Firefox
Opera
VLC
Unity Indie 2.6.1
SequoiaView
Logged
"There's vermin fish, which fisherdwarves catch, and animal fish, which catch fisherdwarves." - Flame11235

psyn

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #22 on: April 13, 2010, 01:10:51 pm »

SequoiaView is immensely awesome, thanks. Reminds me of Jurassic Park. "Hey! I know this! UNIX!" *zooms through 3D filesystem*
Logged

ClaySpider

  • Bay Watcher
  • Legends of the lost clay is forever in the scripts
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #23 on: April 13, 2010, 01:46:15 pm »

Here is my list:
Zsnes find some roms and get playing snes games on compy!

-list end-
Logged

Blacken

  • Bay Watcher
  • Orange Polar Bear
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #24 on: April 13, 2010, 03:37:01 pm »

Pirated ROMs are not freeware. And neither is the PROM ripper necessary to generate legal, format-shifted ROMs.
Logged
"There's vermin fish, which fisherdwarves catch, and animal fish, which catch fisherdwarves." - Flame11235

shengii

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #25 on: April 13, 2010, 08:49:09 pm »

Note: Some programs listed below are only usable on Windows
Notepad++ (good text editor for programming)
CCleaner & Defraggler (speed up computer, clean up errors)
DTaskManager (improved Task Manager)
Dropbox (fancy synchronized file transfer)
TClock Light (show date, day, and time on the date/time area in the bottom right)
Audacity (audio manipulation)
Paint.NET (image manipulation)
Project Sikuli (GUI macro programming, ex: see that download bar is full, do <actions>)
MinGW (compiler)
Logged

Renault

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #26 on: April 13, 2010, 09:06:19 pm »

Pirated ROMs are not freeware. And neither is the PROM ripper necessary to generate legal, format-shifted ROMs.

Wait.
So Pirated Roms are illegal. the PROM ripper is illegal. But the ROMS generated by it are legal? That doesn't seem...right.
Logged

Blacken

  • Bay Watcher
  • Orange Polar Bear
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #27 on: April 13, 2010, 10:16:51 pm »

Pirated ROMs are not freeware. And neither is the PROM ripper necessary to generate legal, format-shifted ROMs.

Wait.
So Pirated Roms are illegal. the PROM ripper is illegal. But the ROMS generated by it are legal? That doesn't seem...right.
It is 100% legal to format-shift cartridges you own. It's the same as burning a backup disc of something you buy--it's distributing them that is copyright violation (hence, copyright).
Logged
"There's vermin fish, which fisherdwarves catch, and animal fish, which catch fisherdwarves." - Flame11235

qwertyuiopas

  • Bay Watcher
  • Photoshop is for elves who cannot use MSPaint.
    • View Profile
    • uristqwerty.ca, my current (barren) site.
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #28 on: April 13, 2010, 10:53:09 pm »

You are factually incorrect regarding the Unix security model. If you have "an administrator account" (a root bit), you have no checks whatsoever on your behavior. There is no "specific request" involved. If you have root bits, you are God on that system. You can blow away any fine you like or rewrite absolutely anything (barring some hardcoded limits--rm -rf / is blocked on most systems, and anything with chattr +i will not let you modify it until you remove +i). Root always has all permissions to everything.

Now, you have sudo--which, by the way,is a giant gaping security hole, there's one on SecurityFocus that was only very recently patched--but that's not "an administrative account." A competent administrator can use sudo to run programs as users that do not have root access. Even under the default configuration on, like, Ubuntu, it doesn't work the way you think it does. Sudo will setuid your processes to the root user by default, which doesn't give them "requested" permissions. It gives them all permissions to the system. It lacks something like Windows's mechanism for gradated permissioning (Group Policy and Active Directory).

Maybe you are the one who should be looking at "the linux security model," not me. I seem to already understand it.

Actually, you need to reread, and comprehend that administrator == root is not nessecarily true.

Additionally, integrating into windows requires a larger file, and adds clutter to the system, so is great when you plan on using that system for a long time, but a hassle when moving systems(example that could happen: main computer fails, use a borrowed laptop for a week while system is repaired).

Yes, you surely get more when you integrate with the system: More RAM usage, more files, more startup time, more OS-alterations, more potential security flaws(because a debugger surely needs root-level permissions, so thats one more program where a security hole may exist), more product lock-in, more potential for upgrade incompatibilities...

Oh, and don't forget that you won't be developing for othr OSes anytime soon if that is your compiler.

Quote
You can admit you don't quite get what you're talking about, dude. I'm honestly not trying to pile on--but boy is it self-evident.

Same to you, since you seem to be 87% wall-of-text, and only 5% fact, with the rest as propaganda and nonsense.

The only thing you say that I fully agree with, is that windows 7 has better security for situations where you are not the top-level administrator where there are multiple computers on one network, all following a policy.


Now, to keep this on topic, freeware:
BYOND is fairly decent for what it does, as a multiplayer game environment with well-integrated(to the program, not the system, all it needs from the system is associated file extensions) game creation capabilities.
Audacity is, as already mentioned, a good audio manipulator.
Logged
Eh?
Eh!

Blacken

  • Bay Watcher
  • Orange Polar Bear
    • View Profile
Re: Suggested Freeware
« Reply #29 on: April 13, 2010, 11:21:16 pm »

Thank you for your concession.
Logged
"There's vermin fish, which fisherdwarves catch, and animal fish, which catch fisherdwarves." - Flame11235
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4