Favorite Files

1. 7-Zip (32-bit)
2. Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro (32-bit)
3. Clean Messenger
4. DAEMON Tools
5. FileZilla v3 for Windows
6. Inno Setup
7. Locate
8. Messenger Plus! Live
9. Mozilla Firefox for Windows (v3)
10. Nokia PC Suite
11. NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System)
12. OpenOffice.org for Windows
13. phpMyAdmin
14. QuickTime Alternative (QT7)
15. Real Alternative Regular
16. RemoveWGA
17. Sysinternals Suite
18. The GIMP
19. UltraEdit
20. Winamp 5 Full
21. WinMerge
22. XnView for Windows
23. YamiPod for Windows
24. µTorrent for Windows

Recent Posts

1. 
   Review - Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro (32-bit)

   4.0.1007.7323 (591) (Mar 28, 2007)

   A good firewall.
   
   No BSOD for me, never had any for ages, so i guess it's not the fault of outpost.
   
   I think a software firewall like Outpost is indeed useful, since hardware firewalls can't filter trafic according to applicative rules, which can be very useful to intercept spyware or virus activities.
   That happened to me once. I got infected by a virus through IE that Norton AV didn't detect, and only Outpost blocked it when it tried to contact a rogue server through HTTP.
   (Since then, I've stopped using ie and norton, and i'm safe so far...)

2. 
   Review - Jetico Personal Firewall

   1.0.1.61 (May 20, 2006)

   I've just had a very painful experience with that firewall.
   
   I installed it, and when I rebooted and connected to the internet, it kept on asking me about programs accessing the Internet. That's ok for me, that's the classic Firewall learning mode.
   But, the popup window proposed options that were kind of hard to understand intuitively, and i did some wrong choices.
   So, I then tried to modify the options directly in the GUI, but it crashed, and the firewall service crashed too...
   Then it wouldn't even want to uninstall until i rebooted again...
   
   Too bad, it really looks promising and powerful...

3. 
   Review - MySQL for Windows

   5.1.6 Alpha (Feb 15, 2006)

   Mark, you're forgetting to mention that BDB and InnoDB are only two of the many storages engines provided with MySQL (MyISAM, Memory, MERGE, NDB, ISAM...).
   Thanks to MySQL's modular design, it will always possible to design alternative storage engines.
   
   By the way, it's highly doubtful Oracle wants to shut down MySQL, since they don't really aim at the same audience.

4. 
   Review - Paint.NET

   2.6 Beta 2 (Jan 18, 2006)

   Good and serious replacement to MS Paint, but not quite the GIMP or Photoshop yet.
   
   The GUI is very clean, and having transparent dialogs is a very good idea.
   
   One thing I don't like is the installation process... it's extremely slow and uses two different engines (NSIS and MSI... that's really contrived)

5. 
   Review - Winamp Deskband

   1.0 RC3 (Jan 17, 2006)

   This desk band is a good and featureful soft, even though I think the resizing of the taskbar is a bit of a problem...
   
   if you're looking for a simpler alternative to this plugin, check the Winamp Desk Band I've made: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=82271
   
   Please note that since my plugin has been first released in 2001, I'm not responsible for the names similarity.
   The author of Winamp deskband promised me he would change it when it would be complete...

6. Comment - US sale of Microsoft Word threatened by court injunction

   1.0 RC3 (Aug 13, 2009 - 4:14 AM)

   How funny. i4i sells a product as a Word add-on : http://www.i4i.com/x4o.htm
   
   Do they want to hurt their own sales, or is their product so bad that they think they'll earn more from a court than from sales ?

7. Comment - Future of open Web video may change with Google acquisition of On2

   1.0 RC3 (Aug 5, 2009 - 2:53 PM)

   I don't think the point of it all is VP3.
   What Google will get there is mainly VP6 and VP8. Which means, if what the community speculates reveals true, that the associated technology and patents could be made available royalty-free, and maybe even open-source, with a clean intellectual property situation.
   Therefore, we might then get the awaited "suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship" as VP8 which is supposedly superior to H.264.
   On a related point, Adobe also licenses On2 VP6, which would make that company depend on Google for their Media Servers product range, as well as Flash itself.

8. Comment - No surprise: 'Windows 7' will be Windows 7

   1.0 RC3 (Oct 14, 2008 - 8:35 AM)

   That doesn't take into account hardware created for specific needs, like in a scientific or industrial context, where the driver will never be redistributed, only for in-house use. That's a quite common situation.
   
   But it must be understood that driver certification and driver signing is NOT the same thing.
   The WHQL program is used to ensure that drivers are of sufficient quality by testing whether the driver is compatible with the "Windows Logo" guidelines, whereas the so-called 'Authenticode' program is used to sign the driver for public or private use, without any certification from MS.

9. Comment - Microsoft shares early videos, screenshots of Visual Studio 2010

   1.0 RC3 (Sep 29, 2008 - 6:05 PM)

   Yet many people still use Visual Studio 6, because it's the only way to link with good ol' msvcrt.dll...

10. Comment - Fake Vuittons cost eBay real money

    1.0 RC3 (Jul 2, 2008 - 4:46 AM)

    That was one of the most elegant posts ever made here...