Complete .NET Portability with Wine & Mono?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Mono is the open-source version of Microsoft’s .NET Framework. It implements most of the backend framework features, but unfortunately, falls flat on its pretty little face when attempting to display the user interface – which is what desktop apps are all about.

Wine on the other-hand, is a Linux port of (major parts of) Microsoft’s Win32 library – the core dependencies of the Windows development libraries, and more importantly, the win32 interface elements. With Wine, you can run many traditional C++ win32 executables on Linux, with certain limitations.

Mono’s biggest stumbling block is the GUI and .NET programs that use P/Invoke to call native non-managed win32 dlls – Mono is a pure .NET environment, and can’t handle them. But from the description above, that’s exactly what WINE excel at… So can’t we use WINE + Mono to make just about any .NET program run on Linux fresh out of the .NET compiler?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Back when the Mono project was first starting out, the Mono development team considered using WINE to implement the System.Windows.Forms namespace of the .NET Framework (which is practically 100% native C++ unmanaged win32 code in .NET wrappers). But they made the right choice in deciding to not take the easy way and go that route, leaving the integrity of the Mono project intact and focusing on true cross-platform user interface libraries instead (the GTK# is now the UI Library of choice for cross-platform .NET applications).

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XCache and eAccelerator Plugins for WordPress

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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In this episode of “The Never-Ending Quest for Better Server Performance,” we follow our heroes’ journey through the dangerous and murky woods of PHP opcode caching engines, where they aren’t content with just installing an opcode caching engine, but <gasp> becoming one with it too!

Yep, you heard that right. We’ve just released two new plugins for the WordPress users out there, that take opcode caching to the next level. If you haven’t already installed an opcode caching engine like XCache (our favorite!), eAccelerator, Turck MMcache, Memcached, APC, or PHPA then you really need to do that right now before even continuing this article. Really, what were you waiting for!?

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eAccelerator PHP Extension Isn’t Thread-Safe…

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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For all the Windows-bound PHP users out there, consider yourselves warned: even if you’re running the (supposedly) thread-safe PHP Win32 binary redistribution, you’re still susceptible to PHP Access Violation Errors, race problems, heap corruption, and much worse if you use the popular eAccelerator opcode-caching extension.

We did our testing with the binaries compiled by SiteBuddy using the latest versions of both PHP and eAccelerator. Almost immediately after initiating a stress test on our test servers we experienced the dreaded “PHP Access Violation” error – which brings down the entire IIS Worker Process to its heels.

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Implanted Identification Microchips that Cause Cancer? Say it ain’t so!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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VeriChip, maker of implantable RFID-powered identification microchips, are being accused of withholding information from the public with regards to the dark side of their “lifesaving” chips. Don’t say you haven’t been warned: the signs have been there for a decade, available for all to see. No, you needn’t be a doctor, radiologist, or nano-technician to have seen them and heeded their warning, you just had to watch a couple of episodes of one of the 90s most popular hit TV shows ever: The X-Files.

Apparently Chris Carter’s insanely-popular X-Files (and its cult following) had more than just the plot lines down right, it seems that The Truth really is out there after all! A startling article on on MSNBC today reveals that implanted “medical” microchips used for the purpose of the identification of cats, dogs, horses, and the elderly really can cause cancer after all, just like their TV counterparts.

 For those of you not yet enlightened by Chris Carter’s science-ficitional work of art, here’s the gist of what happened (which is, by no means whatsoever, to be considered a substitute to actually watching the X-Files!). In the X-Files TV series, FBI Special Agent Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson) was kidnapped by “aliens” who had a unique identification microchip implanted in the base of her neck. Seasons later, Agent Scully discovers the microchip and has it removed, triggering a malignant nasopharengeal tumor to develop (in her nasal cavity). Later on in the storyline, Agent Scully’s cancer is healed by finding a replacement microchip (and we later discover that the microchip can cure cancer and most other bodily illnesses).

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The (Biased) US Dept. of Justice…

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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The United States Department of Justice. Dedicated to enforcing the law and defend the interests of the United States. Especially when Corporate America is at stake. Why else would the DoJ not only allow a biased and wholly non-neutral, two-tier internet, but also encourage the creation of a status-based online status/priority queue.

We’re not going to waste any more breath (or keystrokes, they do run out you know!) on begging people to see otherwise but rather get right to the point and list the real reasons why a two-tier internet is a very bad thing.

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EasyBCD 1.7 Released & Up for Download!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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 Go and grab yourself a fresh, hot, right-out-of-the-compiler copy of EasyBCD 1.7 before your old bootloader realizes what hit it! Another release of EasyBCD is now available after months of beta testing and – in true NeoSmart fashion – brings dozens of new features and innovative ideas to the table; this time with even more versatility than ever.

Yes, there was a name change. Those of you keeping track of our beta builds are almost certainly wondering what happened to EasyBCD 1.61. To be totally honest here, it was supposed to be released 4 months ago – soon after the 1.6 release back in May. But we got caught up adding a couple of tiny features here and there, and before we knew it, we had a full-blown new version at our hands and not knowing what to do with it – so it’s just shipped as EasyBCD 1.7.

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EasyBCD 1.61 RC2 Uploaded

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Just a quick post: for those of you that were not aware, in our Support Forums (support for all NeoSmart software, Windows Vista & co., Linux, and more), there is a thread dedicated to beta builds of EasyBCD (and other software betas soon to come).

We’ve just uploaded EasyBCD 1.61 RC2 and highly encourage all our EasyBCD fans out there to grab it and test it as much as possible; it has a bunch of awesome new features we’re itching to get out there in a final release ASAP, so don’t hesitate to rip it to shreds. If all goes well, the next final (stable & fully supported) version of EasyBCD will be released in a timely fashion.

How-To: Changing the Windows Vista Startup Sound

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Of the many controversies surrounding Windows Vista, probably the most infamous (and pathetic) issues brought to the table is the Windows Vista Startup sound – and how to get rid of it. If  you were anywhere but under a rock during the beta, it’s impossible to have missed the posts going back and forth by haters and supporters of Windows Vista’s new startup sound – which, like almost everything else in Windows Vista, doesn’t even always work.

This sound isn’t the one you get on startup (which is still there, just like in previous versions of Windows), but rather the one that plays right when Windows finishes loading – and you can’t do a thing about it. In our opinion, it’s a quite nice sound, but unfortunately you don’t get to hear it (most of the time) if you have a analog/digital sound card with analog being the default. At any rate, for those of you that don’t like it, chin up: it can be changed!

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Vista SP1 (Beta) and ATi Drivers: Not a Great Mix

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Continuing our line of Vista SP1 stories, we’ve been testing the leaked version of Windows Vista SP1 and have some interesting results with regards to the WDDM layer.

Since Vista RTM, one of the biggest sources of consternation and BSODs on Windows has been the graphics drivers. From ATi to nVidia, hardware manufacturers were very late in the game, not producing final drivers until January and February (3-4 months after the official release); and even then, their quality was definitely sub-par with what we’d come to expect with Windows Vista.

Perhaps we’re being unduly harsh here – after all, Windows NT driver developers had had over a decade of testing and real-world experience with the NT graphics driver subsystem, and here they were, required to learn anew everything from writing the drivers to getting them to work with Vista’s new (and stringent) driver protocols and more. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that driver-development teams at both nVidia and ATi just weren’t up to scratch.

Since then, bug reports have diminished as the list of issues and incompatibilities slowly were slowly vanquished, one by one – with nVidia undeniably in the lead. nVidia’s lead in driver reliability has grown even further with SP1: the same ATi drivers that were working just fine under RTM with the same hardware (and running the same games) are now BSODing under Windows Vista SP1.

Obviously no one is to blame here – not yet, anyway. Windows Vista SP1 isn’t even in beta yet (though it certainly isn’t alpha!), and ATi’s drivers weren’t intended for use with anything other than Vista RTM and its immediate updates. It’s quite simple, actually: if you’re a gamer using ATi and interested in checking out SP1, think twice before you act. And remember, forewarned is forearmed.

Thoughts on Windows Vista SP1

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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As we’ve previously covered, a pre-beta build of Windows Vista SP1 has been leaked to the internet recently, and we’ve been busy checking it out. You’ll be glad to hear that, so far, we like what we see.

Rather than mucking through paragraphs of text and observations, here are some quick and to-the-point tidbits about what seems to have been improved so far:

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