Help EasyBCD Learn Your Language!

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
27

New EasyBCD LogoLadies and gentlemen, EasyBCD is working very hard trying to learn your language. If you speak a verbal (no sign language) and internationally recognized (no Klingon) that is not part of a conspiracy to collectively rob humanity of its intelligence (so no Newspeak and definitely no Valley Girl), then EasyBCD would really appreciate if you could take an hour or two to help it learn to communicate in your wonderful language.

We’ve been hard at work for the past couple of months developing a new and ridiculously easy to use translation toolkit (that we’ve decided to open source) which will power the upcoming EasyBCD 2.2 release, giving it the superior intellect required to speak dozens of languages fluently… with your help.

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Open Letter to CNet (Updated)

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
25

It has recently come to our attention (original story, HN discussion) that the recently updated EasyBCD listing on CNet/Download.com no longer links directly to an official setup package but rather to an “CNet EasyBCD Installer” which bundles certain 3rd party products and viralware (others are referring to it as malware, we will refrain from doing so) and attempts to pass it on to our end users as part of the EasyBCD experience.

Unlike some of the affected open source software that is listed on CNet, EasyBCD does not use a copyleft license that lets companies and individuals do whatever they want with EasyBCD and repackage it in whichever manner they choose. In fact, in the past whenever we were asked why one of the most popular freeware products available online was not open source, we have repeatedly insisted that the ability to maintain control over the distribution and packing of EasyBCD to ensure an ongoing comfortable and friendly user experience has been our number one reason.

CNet is of course not the only download site using these so-called “downloaders” to bundle unwanted software that unsuspecting users would normally not install. They are, however, one of the largest and prior to this, also one of the more respected download entities. As of today, we shall be contacting any and all companies and sites that use custom “installers” to download/install EasyBCD as this is in direct violation of the EasyBCD license.

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The New Windows 8 Metro Bootmenu/Bootloader

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
38

Windows 8 scribbleThis is a post that should probably have been made a little earlier, but we’ve been rather busy cranking out new EasyBCD versions and working on some exciting new developments. We’ve had a lot of questions regarding EasyBCD‘s compatibility with Windows 8, and what our findings are regarding the new Windows “touch-enabled” bootloader screen. In this post, we’ll cover the new bootloader and what works and doesn’t with EasyBCD.

The New Windows 8 Bootloader

Literally the very first thing you notice when installing and testing Windows 8 Developer Preview is the new boot screen. I personally find it to be very cluttered and unorganized, and generally aesthetically unappealing. However, compared to the decades of text-based boot selection menus that people are accustomed to, reviewers are seeing this as a dramatic improvement.

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EasyBCD 2.1.2: Fedora 16 GRUB2 support and bugfixes

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
20

EasyBCD LogoHello everyone! We have a new EasyBCD build with relatively minor changes. In keeping with our promise to release more often, we’re releasing this small EasyBCD updated that brings brings exactly one update, one new feature, and one bugfix to the table.

EasyBCD 2.1.2 supports the recently-released Fedora 16, which is the first Fedora Linux version to feature the usage of GRUB2 (instead of the old Legacy GRUB). EasyBCD has supported GRUB2 for years now, but it required the addition of a new profile with the names and paths that Fedora 16 uses. EasyBCD also has a new homepage at http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ which is both prettier and easier to remember.

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Malware Warning

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
6

It’s our unfortunate duty to inform our readers and users that for a period of several hours some resources on the neosmart.net domain were compromised by one or more attackers unknown. By means of a vulnerability that we were not able to track in one of the scripts on our site, attackers were able to inject malicious JavaScript into resources on our site, leading to visitors to our domain being redirected to a webpage elsewhere online that instructed them to download and install a malicious plugin.

The malware has been purged from our site and resources and there is no longer any threat to our visitors. We’re still working on getting more information, but the malware in question is labeled as JS/BlacoleRef.J and JS/Blacole.A by Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s important to note that visitors to our site could not be infected without their knowledge. The malicious JavaScript in question triggered the browser to display a “do you want to install this plugin” dialog (the exact text differs by web browser make and model), and some browsers were not susceptible to the redirect attack. Users with antivirus software should also not have been at risk, as the malware in question has been blacklisted by the various companies for several weeks now.

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Gallery Updated, Windows 8 Backgrounds Added

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
1

Just a quick and friendly note to all our users: we’ve been working on the NeoSmart Technologies image gallery and have pushed out a number of updates that should make it both easier on the eyes and easier to navigate.

Some of the changes include nicer icons for all the albums (verses a mosaic of contents), links to full-size images on our extensive collection of tech-related wallpapers, fixing of overall alignment, and a few other cosmetic issues. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or feedback, please do share because we’re (as always) all ears.

For lovers of beautiful backgrounds, we have two “new” collections to share: the official Windows 8 wallpapers to date, and the OS X Lion wallpapers bundle. We’ll be updating the Windows 8 backgrounds with each released build, so check back often! Some samples after the jump.

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EasyBCD 2.1.1 and Digital Signatures for All!

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
6

Hello, everybody! EasyBCD 2.1.1 is here with the usual roundup of minor bugfixes, small improvements, and various enhancements that come with the regular point releases. The initial EasyBCD 2.1 release has proved to be a very solid and stable build, with no major issues and only a few minor quirks needing adjustment; but more on all that later. When we released EasyBCD 2.1 we also announced a new paid licensing scheme for commercial use – and today, you the community, our beloved users of EasyBCD get to reap that reward!

EasyBCD 2.1.1 is the first of our products to be digitally signed! This is fairly exciting news as it was one of the very last finishing touches that EasyBCD (and the rest of our products, for that matter) has lacked over the years. Today, all this changes as we have finally obtained a digital certificate with which we shall be signing all future releases. No more ugly orange warnings when trying to install a NeoSmart product or a nasty red bar when downloading our software with Internet Explorer 9, we can now prove what you’ve all known for years: our products are top-notch quality and absolutely safe and malware-free.

digitally signed!

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WaitForMultipleObjects and WIN32 events for Linux/OS X/*nix and Read-Write Locks for Windows

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
11

As every programmer worth his salt knows, synchronization primitives form the very building blocks of multithreaded programming. Without them, the world as we know it would cease to exist and chaos would reign free and unchecked.

All joking aside, synchronization objects such as mutexes and semaphores are essential to safe multithreading and are found on just about any platform under the sun. Mutexes and semaphores alike have one purpose: to keep different threads from messing around with bits and bytes at the same time another thread is, keeping your code free of segfaults and memory access violations alike. But that’s about where the similarities between the synchronization primitives on different platforms end.

POSIX-compliant operating systems with pthreads offer additional really neat synchronization primitives not found on Windows, such as condition variables and read-write locks (the latter is now available on Windows Vista+). And Windows programmers have at their disposal automatic and manual reset events, which make designing certain types of multithreaded software incredibly easy, abstracting away much of the hard-core synchronization logic that lies beneath the hood.

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My Thoughts on Sutter’s “C++ and Beyond 2011”

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
5

Around a month ago, Herb Sutter gave a talk on why C++ is once more gaining relevance in the world of programming, and how after a decade of neglect and abandonment, it is set to pave the way into the future. I downloaded it a while ago and finally had a chance to watch it last night; the talk itself is most-excellent and is around 40 minutes long, you can stream it online or download it in a higher-resolution format on Channel 9. Or click below to watch:

As someone that’s been using both C/C++ and .NET extensively over the past years, I found there was one very important point that Sutter glanced on, danced around, and did everything short of actually naming in his talk and it’s that if you’re doing anything remotely intricate or complicated, leaky abstractions in managed languages will bite you in the ass, and end up lowering your productivity, some times (and if what you’re working on is truly complicated, often times) to a point where you’d have been more productive using C or C++ in the first place.

The concept of leaky abstractions isn’t anything new and I’m hardly the first to point out how it can turn a knight in shining armor into a harbinger of doom and destruction. It’s the number one problem fundamentally present in almost any framework, but even more so in managed languages where the framework is all you have, and you’re not allowed to side-step it and build your own foundations to work with (p/invoke and interop aside). But lately it’s becoming more and more of a problem as the “push” for innovation that Sutter speaks of has become a fundamental requirement in just about all corners of the industry.

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Google Chrome Form QuickSubmit

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
4

As a long time user of Google Chrome (since the very first day of its release, as a matter of fact), I’ve quickly grown accustomed to some of the Chrome way of doing things. Before Google Chrome, I used Opera and before that Firefox and Firebird – and only before those, Internet Explorer.

While each of these fine web browsers has its own way doing things, ranging from keyboard shortcuts to tab management and process handling, they all more or less pull these off a bit nicer than Internet Explorer ever code. But the one Internet Explorer feature I can honestly say I miss when using Google Chrome is the ability to submit the form being currently modified/filled-in with a keyboard shortcut, especially if it works even if there are multiple forms on the screen.

Searching about for a cross-platform solution to this problem, perhaps a previously unknown keyboard shortcut or else some method of assigning a keyboard shortcut that would let Google Chrome intelligently submit the current form via a keyboard shortcut on both Mac and Windows, it became clear that this feature just doesn’t exist for Chrome. Well, as of yesterday, at any rate…

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