Messages

101

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Congratulations on meeting (or nearly meeting) your fund raising goal

« on: April 14, 2012, 10:45 AM »

If there is a real slim shady, do please stand up, lol. Love the way you put that .

Freaking guy just knocked at my door, setting off my wife's insane little dog.. naturally, an invitation to church. ARGH!

102

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Congratulations on meeting (or nearly meeting) your fund raising goal

« on: April 14, 2012, 10:39 AM »

Yes, I was updating my post as you were posting, darned it ;p. I finally got your meaning, lol.

Of course, there is the issue of concurrent donations.

103

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Congratulations on meeting (or nearly meeting) your fund raising goal

« on: April 14, 2012, 10:37 AM »

Oh, I see... Sure, I noticed the chart, and can certainly divide .. but that doesn't really tell me anything significant, as I'd guess 95% of registered users are not even active (with most registering, or being involved for a short period, then not returning).

EDIT: I guess I could poll the page and attempt to determine the average donation amount based on updates to the chart, lol. However, I don't care THAT much, hehe. I was just curious if there were any ... wealthy contributors. Let's put it that way.

104

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Congratulations on meeting (or nearly meeting) your fund raising goal

« on: April 14, 2012, 10:20 AM »

Ah, yes, what was I thinking.. of course we can transfer credits from one person to another. People have sent me credits in the past, and I've sent credits to other members, forgot all about that ;p. <SLAP> I musta tripped back 10 years ago in my mind, as I remember discussing this way back when. NOW I understand why people were telling me to release that early RegMerge alpha as a NANY submission.. I didn't see the point. Now I do.

I am not sure I understand fully #3 ...

3. Meanwhile, the "donation spread" isn't 100% private - this is the age of the internet gang, and before you jump all over me for being Captain Obvious, what the internet does best is Long Tails. So follow me here - we just had this giant bar telling us how much money came in... are you telling me that not one of DC's 100,000 members made a chart? "Gentle Obscurity" is a Pre-Internet notion! : )

Is this a solicitation to make such a chart (not showing member names, but donation amounts, and average donation amounts) ... or am I missing something else obvious? ;p

105

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Congratulations on meeting (or nearly meeting) your fund raising goal

« on: April 14, 2012, 09:59 AM »

Interesting TaoPhoenix, thanks for explaining what makes the difference for you - and likely most everyone else. I'm not sure how many other active developers there really are here besides Mouser, but I know there are a few willing to pick up odd jobs. That's been one of the goals DC hasn't accomplished, to be honest -- in that attracting other developers would require some sort of donation distribution system. Or has this been tackled via direct donations to specific developers?

As you say, the Forum content and community is a good one. Troll control is indeed *very* important too.. they can kill an entire forum very easily.

@nosh - I suspect we're not the only ones with such an affliction ;p.

106

Living Room / Re: Is Google Now Evil? Ask the Engineer!

« on: April 14, 2012, 09:21 AM »

To those concerned about Google Analytics, which is indeed on about every web site you visit. There is a plug-in, authored BY GOOGLE, to opt-out of it you know, right? Was this mentioned? Compatible with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera ...

http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on (BETA)
To provide website visitors more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics, we have developed the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics.
If you want to opt-out, download and install the add-on for your current web browser. The Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on is available for Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera.

There is also a separate plug-in to opt-out from their personalized ads.

107

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Congratulations on meeting (or nearly meeting) your fund raising goal

« on: April 14, 2012, 09:15 AM »

Congratulations on meeting (or nearly meeting) your fund raising goal!

I must admit that I am surprised by the generosity shown to DonationCoder. My experiences in the F/OSS world have shown me that a simple 'Donate' button doesn't do it. To get donations you must be truly engaged with those people in a pretty intimate way. I would be curious to know the frequency of 'large' donations, vs a bunch of small donations, but I know that's private info . It just amazes me.  It's contradictory to this mucked up capitalist world, and I have to give you credit for pulling it off and not compromising on your principles. Of course, I haven't compromised on my principles either, but I have had to charge a modest fee for extended capabilities of my software rather than solicit donations. I am not sure I would survive if I tried your approach - too few people like me on a 'personal' level ;p. The few who do like me I tend to drive away at some point or another.

Anyway, congratulations ... That's not a small number, at least not to me. It's an amazing number.

108

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: FreshMem

« on: April 14, 2012, 09:04 AM »

I do not mean to be disparaging. Indeed virtual memory management is more complex than I've even laid out here, and is often misunderstood by developers and end users.

I would like to add one thing, a 'visual' screenshot of the Windows Resource Monitor's 'Memory' tab. Notice it shows 'Hard Faults/sec' as an important metric. That is because it represents, as I tried to write above (like I said, I write terrible), that ideally the fewer hard page faults your system incurs, the better. These are page-in operations. If you run your tool every 15 seconds, you should see this metric shoot up as a bunch of pages are pulled back into memory as they are referenced. The *only* thing that may mitigate it some is that a few page faults (page-in operations) may be in the active disk cache, and thus be a soft page fault. These are not shown here (though you can see them elsewhere).

How does this mechanism even work? Well, it's actually pretty cool ...

1. A page of virtual memory not already in RAM is accessed by a process ..
2. BOOM -- a page fault is generated
3. This page fault triggers the virtual memory manager to get that page into memory
4. The access to the virtual memory continues

That is how processes can run without the virtual memory manager needing to know before-hand what virtual memory *must* remain in RAM and what can stay paged out. Like I said, the virtual memory manager then keeps a 'reference count' for each page of virtual memory and *tries* to tune the system so that commonly referenced virtual memory is kept in RAM, and seldom referenced virtual memory gets paged out.

109

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: FreshMem

« on: April 13, 2012, 02:05 PM »

Ok, final edits made . Now, back to doing my taxes

110

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: FreshMem

« on: April 13, 2012, 01:14 PM »

Here were my summation points, since I write terrible:

<ul>
<li>Virtual memory is a powerful abstraction layer. Many people think of virtual memory as only that memory that is paged out. NO, all memory is virtual memory, whether it is in RAM or the page file (or swap partition).</li>
<li>RAM is the fastest storage medium you have. The more data in it, the better.</li>
<li>Forcing virtual memory to be paged out causes it to be paged back in again when it is referenced.</li>
<li>Seldom referenced virtual memory is automatically paged out by the virtual memory manager as needed.</li>
<li>Defragmentation of RAM is absurd, as there is no seek time.</li>
<li>Defragmentation of RAM can not help you if your 32-bit application is out of a contiguous virtual memory address space large enough for its needed allocation.</li>
<li>There is no 'leftover junk' from terminated processes, as the virtual memory space of a process is completely cleaned up once it terminates.</li>
<li>In Vista+, <a href="http://en.wikipedia....hnologies#SuperFetch">SuperFetch</a> tries to keep the most commonly used 'stuff' in RAM, based on your behavior. It is essentially a 'smart cache'.. and it does a surprisingly good job. Are you sure you want to force it outta RAM?</li>
</ul>

<b>Other rules to live by</b>
<ul>
<li>Is your RAM NOT completely and fully utilized already? If not, you're good. (see the Windows Resource Monitor, or subtract the 'cached' RAM from the 'free' RAM in the Windows Task Manager)</li>
<li>Is your disk/file cache so big that surely it doesn't help to page more applications out? If so, you're good.</li>
<li>In some cases, you may see a benefit if you page out applications you *know* you won't be accessing for a while, or that have memory leaks. However, you may eventually pay a penalty for this if they are referenced again.</li>
<li>HOWEVER, if it works for YOU - then go for it. PCs are incredibly complex software environments, so if you do see a difference by doing this -- have at it.
Whatever works for YOU. I like to call the combination of software, hardware, and user behavior the 'executive environment'. Each one is different, thus perhaps
in some cases these tools do offer some aid, and perhaps penalties later paid are insignificant. Just make sure the tool at least does it *right*.
What is *right*? Right is using the appropriate Windows API to force a page out of a process, not doing something insane like allocating all available memory to force
everything else out (which I've actually seen some do ;o).</li>
<li>I've always been critical, and you should be too. However, check the above criteria, and determine for yourself if it really makes a difference.</p>
</ul>

111

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: FreshMem

« on: April 13, 2012, 01:08 PM »

Of course that screenshot changes the moment you switch back to that Chrome instance (tab) and begin using it ... as most of that paged out virtual memory is reloaded into RAM.

In contrast, the virtual memory manager will automatically page out seldom referenced pages of memory as needed. It keeps track of what pages of memory are referenced, and tries to keep your RAM full of stuff that is referenced often, and pages out stuff not referenced if RAM is needed for something else (or for use as the disk/file cache.. which is what your 'free' RAM is used for).

For a thorough and in-depth analysis of this type of operation (clearing the working set of all processes), the penalties involved, and potential (unlikely) benefits in some situations, you can read this page: http://bitsum.com/winmemboost.htm ..

There are a gazillion other tools to do this too.. I even threw it in Process Lasso as an always free feature (to periodically trim virtual memory, or trim on demand, or on trigger), because so many people wanted it, despite my hesitance to add such a feature.

I believe CleanMem is the most popular these days.

As for trimming all active process memory every 15 seconds ... WELL, if that makes you feel better, whatever works, BUT I'm glad you didn't default to that . That would force continual hard page faults (a page fault is when memory is paged in from the page file because it is not already in RAM, not a crash .. though, yes, there are some types of crashes also called page faults).

112

MEWLO Web Framework / Re: OLD - Unfinished Web project: YUMPS

« on: April 11, 2012, 05:20 PM »

Ah, very good and necessary precaution. I didn't know if it was some new organizational splice of DonationCoder or what.

113

MEWLO Web Framework / Re: OLD - Unfinished Web project: YUMPS

« on: April 11, 2012, 04:58 PM »

Congrats on YUMPS. Was the question of what is DCISV asked?

114

Developer's Corner / Re: The tricky issue of structuring a database log table for your web service

« on: April 11, 2012, 04:55 PM »

Looks like a good solution for YUMPS. Maybe overkill for me, but very robust. I will likely stick with my simplified logging unless and until I need something more robust. I was just curious what you discovered on the proper way do this. While I'm no stranger to SQL by any means, I am also no expert in the field. That's one class I slept through in college, lol. Seeing some of these SQL injection attacks reminds me just how complex SQL can be. If I ever grow to a size where I need a more robust solution, it might be YUMPS I call upon!

115

Developer's Corner / Re: The tricky issue of structuring a database log table for your web service

« on: April 11, 2012, 03:06 PM »

Did you ever find your perfect solution? I do my own logging of all sorts of my web server events (to an SQL DB), and if there's a better way - I'd adopt it.

116

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Install Tip: When windows wants to reboot, I suggest you let it

« on: April 10, 2012, 07:22 PM »

+1

117

General Software Discussion / Re: html alternative

« on: April 07, 2012, 07:32 PM »

php/ASP.NET ...  Both very nice to use...

-Stephen66515 (April 07, 2012, 05:56 PM)

Not for this guy I don't think, since I doubt he can handle a scripting language (that world normally output HTML) if he can't even code HTML.

118

Coding Snack Guidelines / Re: IDEA: files contents in folder to contents of a file- keep the same name

« on: April 07, 2012, 05:55 PM »

But to copy a file to every folder could be easily done in BATCH or any scripting language ... To answer the question.

119

Coding Snack Guidelines / Re: IDEA: files contents in folder to contents of a file- keep the same name

« on: April 07, 2012, 05:52 PM »

And after re-reading (I originally thought you were talking about bookmarks saved in your browser, and maybe you are, I don't know for sure)...

If Apache is your web server you could use a mod_rewrite rule to redirect all accesses to the web server to a new location. The rule(s) would be placed in .htaccess. Google it for info.

120

General Software Discussion / Re: html alternative

« on: April 07, 2012, 05:50 PM »

There is only HTML for doing what HTML does. There are other things to do different chores, but your only real choice if HTML is too hard is to use something that generates HTML for you, such as a CMS like WordPress or Joomla... or a WYSIWYG HTML editor.

121

General Software Discussion / Re: SMF v1.0 - END OF LIFE ANNOUNCEMENT

« on: April 03, 2012, 02:42 PM »

Yes, SMF has made their update system into 'patches' that can be more easily applied, even *with* modifications (so long as they aren't that extensive). Still, it may sometimes require custom tweaking. Honestly, if I had a board as customized as this, I'd be paranoid as could be about exploits. Fortunately the code is closed (though legally you may have to reveal it if anyone asked, depending on the SMF license?), so it can't be evaluated for breach points, but it takes only the slightest of mistakes to create a breach point. That's why I *prefer* running a forum (or any third-party code) in an isolated user context.

122

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater reports incorrect version of installed app

« on: April 03, 2012, 02:28 PM »

That's a nice updater. I never noticed it before, somehow

123

General Software Discussion / Re: SMF v1.0 - END OF LIFE ANNOUNCEMENT

« on: April 03, 2012, 09:43 AM »

Yes, v1.0 is very old... but there are probably sites using it. Just like you got 'bound' to 1.1 with your custom mods, others may have gotten 'bound' to v1.0. Anyway, I wouldn't expect them to EOL 1.1 anytime in the near future, there are hundreds of thousands of sites using it (wild guess).

124

General Software Discussion / SMF v1.0 - END OF LIFE ANNOUNCEMENT

« on: April 03, 2012, 06:18 AM »

News, today.

SMF v1.0 is finally being EOL'd. That means no more security patches. See: http://www.simplemac...topic=472913.new#new

SMF v1.1 is ok.
SMF v2 is of course ok.

There have been multiple critical exploits in SMF over the years, so anyone using SMF v1.0 needs to work on upgrading immediately. Also, be sure to keep an eye out for SMF exploits. 0-day or unpatched exploits on forum and CMS software is perhaps the #1 way sites get breached (well, one of the top mechanisms anyway).

125

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer and Process Lasso

« on: April 01, 2012, 03:29 PM »

And we could go back and forth all day. It would turn into some sort of hateful stuff. Screw a bunch of hate. I hope Process Tamer is just what the writer was looking for.