Samsung monitor driver software


  • BINNED

    I've got a 24" Samsung monitor. It's good quality and was comparatively cheap, so I'm satisfied with it so far.
    I just randomly discovered there's a "Samsung" folder located directly in my root partition. I don't remember installing any drivers for it. Did I even put in the CD? Probably was hoping it would come with a color profile. (It doesn't)

    So what's in that folder? 4 JS files totaling 72 Bytes:

    @inch.js said:

    inch='24A300';
    @language.js said:
    lang='ger';
    @model.js said:
    model='S24A300B';
    @program.js said:
    program='mmrnd'; lunchnum='0';

    Nothing else. I can't even imagine the WTFery of a design that would require a folder of Javascript one-liners to store data. It probably includes a lot of enterprisyness, a buggy interpreter, and some security vulnerabilities.
    And apparently no lunch. Poor hungry developers.



  • Change lunchnum to '1' if you want your monitor to make you Spaghetti Bolognese. '2' is a vegetarian option, and '3' is a kosher/halal meal.



  • Samsung's software is always TRWTF. They make fantastic hardware - I won't buy panels for monitor or TV usage off anyone else (repeated bad experiences with all other brands, from an LG that took a 75mm VESA mount but could not be used on a 100 or 200mm unit that had 75mm holes - as they'd cover the HDMI and power ports that were facing directly out of the back below the VESA holes; through to Sony units with surreal issues) at this stage, but their software leaves a lot to be desired

    One product that was sold as a monitor w/TV functionality rather than TV w/monitor did not present any modes over EDID that actually filled the entire screen. No amount of adjustment on the panel could make it work; and most of the modes it offered were stretchyvision 4:3 covering nearly all the 16:9 panel. Eventually found a .inf for Windows that makes it work, but I don't use Windows often and can't be bothered trying to figure out the modeline from it. So its just a TV now.

    Also have a laptop of theirs that came with a useless "software updater" that apparently gets the latest drivers/BIOS from Samsung - it doesn't. It does, however, repeatedly offer to downgrade Skype to a version slightly newer than when it was imaged in late 2009; despite Skype having updated itself to the latest since...



  • @Cian said:

    [...] but their software leaves a lot to be desired

    And what hardware company makes good software? Honest question. Nvidia? Intel? Definitely not HP or ASUS.

    Hell, not even [i]software[/i] companies manage to consistently get software right.



  • I expect a certain well-known forum dweller to come forward and mention Microsoft.



  • @spamcourt said:

    And what hardware company makes good software?

    Nintendo.

    Though you could argue they are a software company that makes bad hardware.



  •  I've got this canon scanner software that's pretty good.



  • @Zecc said:

    I expect a certain well-known forum dweller to come forward and mention Microsoft.
    Oh, right. Microsoft isn't a "hardware company". They're a software company that sometimes makes hardware.



  • @derula said:

    @spamcourt said:
    And what hardware company makes good software?

    Nintendo.

    Though you could argue they are a software company that makes bad hardware.

    Nintendo probably has Sony beat (not a tall hurdle), but have you ever played an Xbox? Japan's nowhere close.



  • @derula said:

    Nintendo.
    You obviously haven't tried migrating your Wii data to WiiU.



  • @ender said:

    @derula said:
    Nintendo.
    You obviously haven't tried migrating your Wii data to WiiU.

    A console that stores data? You're out of our mind.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @ender said:
    @derula said:
    Nintendo.
    You obviously haven't tried migrating your Wii data to WiiU.
    A console that stores data? You're out of our mind.

    Speaking of the Wii U how about the huge update it downloads when you first get it.  Lord help you if you turn the console off during update, you will end up bricking it.


  • @Anketam said:

    Speaking of the Wii U how about the huge update it downloads when you first get it.  Lord help you if you turn the console off during update, you will end up bricking it.

    Why do people still think they can just turn off consoles whenever they want? Are they still stuck in the days of the SNES? People as far as I know have learned they just can't hard power-off PC whenever they feel like it. (The only "don't unplug your devoce" messages in PC games I've ever seen were in really bad console ports (including for whatever reason Portal 2).)



  • Why shouldn't you be able to turn it off whenever? For PCs or consoles. It works with laptops, phones, and tablets.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    People as far as I know have learned they just can't hard power-off PC whenever they feel like it.
    If you unplug your PC, you'll maybe lose the last thing you worked on. It's extremely unlikely that you'll make your PC unusable (you know those Windows "Installing update 3 out of 581. Do not turn off or unplug your pc..." messages on shutdown? Even if you unplug then, you'll just have to wait a while longer the next time you turn it back on, while Windows uninstalls the half-installed updates and reboots itself a few times).
    It's not acceptable that losing power while updating turns your device into a brick - after all, blackouts do happen, even if they're rare (then again, this is Nintendo we're talking about, where certain Wii updates could brick the console even if you did nothing wrong).



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Why shouldn't you be able to turn it off whenever? For PCs or consoles. It works with laptops, phones, and tablets.

    Laptops, phones, and tablets are stood by, not turned off. Unless you physically hold the power button for 10 seconds on your laptop or yank the battery from your phone, it's not the same thing.

    Maybe if turning off the console was a soft shutdown, whereas it would wait for all IO to complete, showing a please wait message. Console manufacturers still seem to be stuck in 1992 though, putting hard resets and power switches when they could easily do what laptops, phones, and tablets do and have them become soft power buttons. Microsoft may get this right, but from fear of the warnings I haven't tried, and it seems powering off an Xbox 360 mid-save is still as corrupting as it is on the Wii. (Btw, IIRC the Wii doesn't even have an operating system.)



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    Laptops, phones, and tablets are stood by, not turned off.

    Who gives a shit?

    You hit the button (or close the lid) and they go off. Whether that's "turned off" or "standby" or "alien rape-o-matic" is an implementation detail nobody gives a fuck about.

    When you turn off your TV, it goes into standby so it can read the TV remote to see if you want to turn it back on. When you're at a friends house, and he said, "turn off the TV", do you come back with, "well actually when you hit the power button on the remote the TV doesn't really turn off it goes into standby mode yadda yadda" and then they punch you in the mouth? Because I'd punch you in the mouth.

    Why are programmers always such pedantic dickweeds? Fucking shit it's annoying as fuck.

    @MiffTheFox said:

    Maybe if turning off the console was a soft shutdown, whereas it would wait for all IO to complete, showing a please wait message.

    That's exactly what the Xbox does. (Well, not quite-- it doesn't show a "please wait" message, what would be the point of that? It just blacks-out the screen.) Which is exactly why we're talking about how Microsoft is the only gaming console maker who can write decent software.

    @MiffTheFox said:

    Microsoft may get this right, but from fear of the warnings I haven't tried, and it seems powering off an Xbox 360 mid-save is still as corrupting as it is on the Wii.

    My understanding is that the warning is obsolete, and only present because: 1) it's in the "approval process" checklist for Xbox games, and 2) because there's a 1-in-a-million chance the game might encounter an Xbox 360 with the very first firmware that powered off without software intervention.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    You hit the button (or close the lid) and they go off. Whether that's "turned off" or "standby" or "alien rape-o-matic" is an implementation detail nobody gives a fuck about.

    I knew I should have fired a preemptive strike and said "yes, it should stand by like phones. it's an implementation detail that should be implemented differently."


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    or "alien rape-o-matic" is an implementation detail nobody gives a fuck about.

    This sounds like the kind of implementation detail about which a lot of fuck will be given.



  • The problem here is that the Japanese have no sense of usability at all. Not that most American companies are any good at it, but at least we've had the Apple of the 90s, the BeOS guys, the iOS guys, and the current Microsoft (at least the bits of Microsoft that make Xbox and phone software). The Japanese have had... Sony? Ugh.

    The only Sony product I've used with a half-decent UI is Vegas, and that's only because Sony bought it from someone else and hasn't fucked it up yet.

    What's more frustrating is that Sony and Nintendo can just BUY a Xbox 360 and copy the fucking thing-- and somehow they've still managed to fuck it up. JUST COPY IT! THE TEMPLATE IS RIGHT THERE! What is this "friend code" bullshit when Microsoft told you exactly how to do it!



  • @Zecc said:

    Oh, right. Microsoft isn't a "hardware company". They're a software company that sometimes makes hardware.

    But then, Microsoft supplies Intellimouse software for their mice that fucks up the wheel scrolling in some Microsoft applications. And this problem has been unfixed in 3 or 4 major version numbers of Intellimouse.


  • @Cian said:

    One product that was sold as a monitor w/TV functionality rather than TV w/monitor did not present any modes over EDID that actually filled the entire screen.

    I have a Samsung monitor which assumes that its HDMI input comes from a BR player and it HAS TO HAVE SHARPENING APPLIED. No way to disable that. Though you can tell it that the HDMI comes from PC. Then it gets the levels totally wrong, so it's unusable.

     I gave up on Samsung now.



  • @Zecc said:

    @Zecc said:

    I expect a certain well-known forum dweller to come forward and mention Microsoft.
    Oh, right. Microsoft isn't a "hardware company". They're a software company that sometimes makes hardware.

    I maintain that the best Microsoft product I've ever used, was a Serial Mouse 2.0. Which, IMHO, says quite a lot about a company whose main product is software.



  • @alegr said:

    But then, Microsoft supplies Intellimouse software for their mice that fucks up the wheel scrolling in some Microsoft applications. And this problem has been unfixed in 3 or 4 major version numbers of Intellimouse.
    I have nothing but good things to say about the MS mice I've used. But then again, I dno't think I've ever installed the accompanying software.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    because there's a 1-in-a-million chance the game might encounter an Xbox 360 with the very first firmware that powered off without software intervention.
    Hey, at least the game runs. On WiiU you have to update the firmware before some games will run - and the update isn't included on game discs (it has to be downloaded from servers that seem to be hosted on ISDN connection, given how slow the update downloads).



  • @ender said:

    Hey, at least the game runs.

    Which is exactly why we're talking about how Microsoft is the only gaming console maker who can write decent software.



  •  

    @blakeyrat said:

    @ender said:
    Hey, at least the game runs.

    Which is exactly why we're talking about how Microsoft is the only
    gaming console maker who can write decent software.

    Man, I used
    to love Nintendo.

    Getting a Gameboy Advance SP that could play all
    my old gameboy games, then getting a DS/DS Lite that could play all GBA
    games (Though for some reason, not GB/GBC games). Hell, even the Wii
    could play Gamecube games and had native support for the Gamecube
    controller.

    Now the DSI and onwards ignores backwards
    compatibility and the Wii U is only compatible with Wii games, which for
    the most part are "Meh" at best. I know it shouldn't be a feature to
    die for, but it was something that made Nintendo stand out for.

    I'm told the PS3 backwards compatibility features are nice, but I didn't own a PS2, so I don't know for sure...



  • The 3DS plays DS games just fine, though. And the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS all have Virtual Console...



  •  

    @ekolis said:

    The 3DS plays DS games just fine, though. And the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS all have Virtual Console...
    Sidenote: 3DS games are region locked, DS games are not. This is confusing and has cost a close friend of mine more then a hundred dollars. I feel that this sort of change is just being dishonest to your customers, and that's not something I would accuse Nintendo of. As an Australian, region-locked anything causes problems, since US normally gets most games before we do, and sells items for a lot cheaper then Aussie stores...

    To be fair, the virtual console is amazing. I would (And have) gladly buy games twice if I feel it was worth it, and "My Life as a King" on WiiWare is one of my favourite games played in the last 5 or so years. I have a DS Lite, so I can play my GBA games, but I didn't know the 3DS had Virtual Console.

    I also didn't think of the 3DS onwards as a new platform. However, if you think of it as a new platform, everything fits nicely :/. Thanks for correcting me.



  • @ender said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    People as far as I know have learned they just can't hard power-off PC whenever they feel like it.
    If you unplug your PC, you'll maybe lose the last thing you worked on. It's extremely unlikely that you'll make your PC unusable (you know those Windows "Installing update 3 out of 581. Do not turn off or unplug your pc..." messages on shutdown? Even if you unplug then, you'll just have to wait a while longer the next time you turn it back on, while Windows uninstalls the half-installed updates and reboots itself a few times).

    Most modern hard drives will have native command queuing (NCQ) enabled by default, in which case a spontaneous power loss can introduce file system corruption when anything is still residing in the drive's queue. File systems can be hardened against this problem and indeed most journaling file systems can still handle it. NTFS however; not quite. There are still edge cases where your MFT or USN journal may go belly up.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    Maybe if turning off the console was a soft shutdown, whereas it would wait for all IO to complete, showing a please wait message.

    That's exactly what the Xbox does. (Well, not quite-- it doesn't show a "please wait" message, what would be the point of that? It just blacks-out the screen.) Which is exactly why we're talking about how Microsoft is the only gaming console maker who can write decent software.

    FYI; Sony's PS3 does this as well. If you press the power button it gives the system ~10 seconds to complete any pending I/O operations before a forced shutdown occurs. (It does this so you can still use the power button to shut down a game that froze up the system.)



  • @Ragnax said:

    Most modern hard drives will have native command queuing (NCQ) enabled by default, in which case a spontaneous power loss can introduce file system corruption when anything is still residing in the drive's queue.

    This is 100% unrelated to NCQ. NCQ simply allows the disk to execute commands in the queue in a different order from which they came in. I think every HD uses on a PC has a read/write queue. If it didn't the HD would have to be faster than the bus (ATA, SATA etc.) while on every interface I know it is the other way around to prevent the bus from begin the HD's bottleneck. (the exception being some fast drives at the end the time where PATA was still in use)

    @Ragnax said:

    File systems can be hardened against this problem and indeed most journaling file systems can still handle it.

    In fact, journalling was invented because of this. AFAIK it has no other purpose.


  • BINNED

    @alegr said:

    But then, Microsoft supplies Intellimouse software for their mice that fucks up the wheel scrolling in some Microsoft applications. And this problem has been unfixed in 3 or 4 major version numbers of Intellimouse.
    I have a Microsoft mouse that I use with my laptop running Ubuntu. It works fine, but that may just be because I don't have their software.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    What is this "friend code" bullshit when Microsoft told you exactly how to do it!

     It took Nintendo two handhelds (DS and 3DS) and one console (Wii), but reports are that the WiiU finally ditched friend codes in favor of "Nintendo Network" accounts.

     



  • @dtech said:

    NCQ simply allows the disk to execute commands in the queue in a different order from which they came in.

    Yes. And exactly this is what has the potential to mess with journaling file systems. (For instance, the disk re-ordering write instructions to update the journal entries before the actual data has been written...)



  • @Ragnax said:

    Yes. And exactly this is what has the potential to mess with journaling file systems. (For instance, the disk re-ordering write instructions to update the journal entries before the actual data has been written...)
    Which is why you have barriers with which you can define the order of disk writes to prevent this from happening.


  • BINNED

    @blakeyrat said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    Laptops, phones, and tablets are stood by, not turned off.

    Who gives a shit?

    You hit the button (or close the lid) and they go off. Whether that's "turned off" or "standby" or "alien rape-o-matic" is an implementation detail nobody gives a fuck about.

    When you turn off your TV, it goes into standby so it can read the TV remote to see if you want to turn it back on.[...]
    Why are programmers always such pedantic dickweeds?


    It's only an implementation detail if you never, ever have to worry about it working correctly.
    Phones, tables? Check.
    Laptops?
    I once closed the lid of my Thinkpad and put it in the bag immediately. Had always worked that far. Well, about 45 minutes later I noticed it's still running. Whatever the fuck prevented it from going to standby and Windows didn't do anything to force it.

    When something like that happens without you noticing, it will either drain the battery or overheat and shut off. BAM, possible data loss. Nice implementation detail. My TV on the other hand never does that.

     



  • @Ragnax said:

    Most modern hard drives will have native command queuing (NCQ) enabled by default, in which case a spontaneous power loss can introduce file system corruption when anything is still residing in the drive's queue. File systems can be hardened against this problem and indeed most journaling file systems can still handle it. NTFS however; not quite. There are still edge cases where your MFT or USN journal may go belly up.

    Or, for that matter, HFS+. Losing power at the wrong time (or, for that matter, shutting down normally at the wrong time) can result in the b-tree catalog becoming corrupted, which is apparently the only thing that the journal cannot recover from. Result of which is that your Mac will turn off during the boot sequence unless you boot into single user mode (read: tty console), run fsck_hfs with undocumented parameters no less than three times (with reboots in between), and then allow it to run fsck itself on the next boot for at lest 20 minutes.



  • @Kyanar said:

    Or, for that matter, HFS+.
    Ugh, I wonder what was Apple thinking when they were making their tools to repair the filesystem. I've had it happen several times that Disk Utility told me to boot the install disc, and repair the filesystem from there. Why can't OS X do it like other OSes during the bootup?



  • @PedanticCurmudgeon said:

    @alegr said:
    But then, Microsoft supplies Intellimouse software for their mice that fucks up the wheel scrolling in some Microsoft applications.
    I have a Microsoft mouse that I use with my laptop running Ubuntu. It works fine, but that may just be because I don't have their software.
     

    Ditto both.

    I had one of their kidney-shaped ball mice with scroll wheel for years - the ball was positioned further forwards under the fingers than under the palm, making sweeping gestures in FPS games a dream. I didn't need any driver software - everything from Win95, Win98, Win2K, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint etc all picked it up happily and scrolled with the wheel.

    Other than some setting in Win98 control panel that determined how many "lines" each wheel click should scroll (the default was fine for me anyway) I can't remember any configuration (or driver software) really being needed.

    I still miss that mouse - the contoured shape and ball placement meant it took a long time before I felt comfortable with optical mice. Not really experienced another mouse as good as that ol MS one.


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