Messages

8251

General Software Discussion / Re: Software recommendations for writers

« on: May 17, 2011, 10:23 AM »

@kyrathaba with the fix in place, you might want to edit your filepath out of the previous post.  And indeed, not include a full filepath on your machine in public correspondence.  Maybe I'm just being paranoid... but yeah...

8252

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone using Silverlight?

« on: May 16, 2011, 06:43 PM »

Me.  Dungeons and Dragons site for their utilities.  Also, my work site develops using it.  I think it's mostly intranet use as of now.

8253

Living Room / Re: Need recommendation for wireless adapter

« on: May 16, 2011, 12:32 PM »

^^^Me Too^^^

Also get a short USB cable so you don't get stuck with a metal box (the computer) between the adapter and the router. I've seen that type of thing (metal desk/appliances/old wall with lead paint) sink a deployment once or twice.

-Stoic Joker (May 16, 2011, 11:47 AM)

^ This x100.  It's annoying that I got rid of all of the short USB cables that came with my adapters... and now I have to get USB hubs b/c the adapter blocks out 3 other ports

8254

Living Room / Re: Help with new computer build

« on: May 16, 2011, 09:38 AM »

Well, it turns out that after a while with the new build, this is just *better* not fixed.  So I think I'm going to get a network card for the first time in a long time.  I just don't feel like tweaking this anymore.

So, I was thinking of getting a VisionTek Gaming NIC.  Does anyone here have any experience with these?  I was wondering if I was actually getting anything by going with this over a standard Netgear NIC.  I'd also been thinking about going wireless... but I'm not totally sold on doing that for my main desktop PC.

Any thoughts or advice?

8255

Living Room / Re: Need recommendation for wireless adapter

« on: May 16, 2011, 09:10 AM »

I have 2 or 3 NetGear WG111 v1 and v2, (b/g), and they've never given any problems but this is on XP machines.  Not using them now since I've moved to Powerline adapters.

The N150, N300 and N600 USB adapters are their Wireless-n versions.

Overall, Netgear is one of the most reliable brands I've used but I've never used whatever software came with them other than the basic driver.

Newegg currently have a Recertified N300 available for $25, ($40-55 less than new).

-4wd (January 04, 2011, 05:25 PM)

I could have written that myself.  I've tried other brands, but have found that sticking to one brand for adapters and aps works the best, so I decided on netgear.

8256

General Software Discussion / Re: Software recommendations for writers

« on: May 15, 2011, 01:04 AM »

ZenWriter is on BDJ Today (Sunday, 05/15/2011).  I haven't used it- but of course, I bought it.  It was only $4.95, and from the screenshots, it looked interesting.  

8257

Living Room / Re: need recommendation for an onlne computer store

« on: May 14, 2011, 03:56 PM »

But I do not want to be so busy that I don't have time for the family.  

-techidave (May 14, 2011, 02:13 PM)

Can't help you too much with that one. It's entirely up to you to make that part happen.

But I applaud you for feeling that way. I've made "making time for family" a big priority in my business life. I may not be as materially 'well-off' as I would have been had I arranged my priorities differently. But I seriously doubt I'd be half as happy as I am today had I done otherwise.
 

-40hz (May 14, 2011, 03:10 PM)

Totally agreed.  I used to make a lot more money, but my life was definitely less fulfilling.  The most valuable things in life can't be measured by dollar signs IMO.  

8258

General Software Discussion / Re: functional C# class/component to upload to my DC space via explicit FTP over TLS

« on: May 14, 2011, 09:40 AM »

You could also use encryption, and get it from a file if you want to use FTP.

Code: C# [Select]

1. using System;
2. using System.Security.Cryptography;
3. using System.Text;
4.  
5. namespace Coderz808
6. {
7.     public static class EnDeCrypter
8.     {
9.         // Set this to some personalized crypto key
10.         private const string cryptoKey = "someSortOfCryptoKey";
11.  
12.         // The Initialization Vector for the DES encryption routine (choose 8 personalized bytes)
13.         private static readonly byte[] IV =
14.             new byte[8] { 140, 103, 145, 2, 10, 176, 173, 9 };
15.  
16.         /// <summary>
17.         /// Encrypts provided string parameter
18.         /// </summary>
19.         internal static string Encrypt(string s)
20.         {
21.             if (s == null || s.Length == 0) return string.Empty;
22.  
23.             string result = string.Empty;
24.  
25.             try
26.             {
27.                 byte[] buffer = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(s);
28.  
29.                 TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider des =
30.                     new TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider();
31.  
32.                 MD5CryptoServiceProvider MD5 =
33.                     new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();
34.  
35.                 des.Key =
36.                     MD5.ComputeHash(ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(cryptoKey));
37.  
38.                 des.IV = IV;
39.                 result = Convert.ToBase64String(
40.                     des.CreateEncryptor().TransformFinalBlock(
41.                         buffer, 0, buffer.Length));
42.             }
43.             catch
44.             {
45.                 throw;
46.             }
47.  
48.             return result;
49.         }
50.  
51.         /// <summary>
52.         /// Decrypts provided string parameter
53.         /// </summary>
54.         internal static string Decrypt(string s)
55.         {
56.             if (s == null || s.Length == 0) return string.Empty;
57.  
58.             string result = string.Empty;
59.  
60.             try
61.             {
62.                 byte[] buffer = Convert.FromBase64String(s);
63.  
64.                 TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider des =
65.                     new TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider();
66.  
67.                 MD5CryptoServiceProvider MD5 =
68.                     new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();
69.  
70.                 des.Key =
71.                     MD5.ComputeHash(ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(cryptoKey));
72.  
73.                 des.IV = IV;
74.  
75.                 result = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(
76.                     des.CreateDecryptor().TransformFinalBlock(
77.                     buffer, 0, buffer.Length));
78.             }
79.             catch
80.             {
81.                 throw;
82.             }
83.  
84.             return result;
85.         }
86.     }    
87. }

8259

Living Room / Re: need recommendation for an onlne computer store

« on: May 14, 2011, 09:05 AM »

Looking for some recommendations for a quality place to purchase computers, parts, etc., here in the United States.  I am familiar with Newegg and Tiger Direct, but was looking for other places that have quality products, good sales dept.

-techidave (May 13, 2011, 05:34 PM)

Another vote for Amazon, and I also use Newegg.  The reason for those two is the shipping, which might help you out.  Especially if you get Amazon Prime.  You can get free two day shipping, and upgrade to 1 day for $3.99 a part.  And they pay return shipping if it's their fault (missed shipping date, or defective item), which most other places (including newegg) don't.  Not something to be overlooked when doing this.

I was just thinking about expanding my horizons as a school tech to the public sector and was looking for a good place to get hooked up with.  I realize that on price alone, i probably cannot compete with Walmart but alot of people are telling me they want service more than price.  Sooooo, maybe its time that I jumped on the band wagon!

-techidave (May 13, 2011, 05:34 PM)

Not to discourage you- but to give you an idea of something to watch out for.  I tried something similar to supplement my income at one time, and the two biggest problems I had were:
1. People only meaning "they want service more than price" until they got the invoice, and
2. People expecting way more than anyone would give them for 10x the price
3. People view any additions to the cost of doing business as you trying to jack up the price

My worst case...
I built a computer for a family member who needed something to get on the net and do basic word processing.  Priced a couple of options, laying out the advantages/disadvantages of each- and they picked the lowest cost options- just wanted a computer to get on the net.  First complaint- it won't play my son's games!  Second complaint was that it was getting slower and slower.  So I went over to check it out, and they had a pretty bad virus infection- multiple viruses, botted, you name it it was there.  I checked the AV, and it wasn't running... I thought a virus might have disabled it, but I asked anyway, and they said they had to turn it off to install a game, and had forgotten to re-enable it.  I told them it was a virus, and it would take a lot of time to clean up- or I could re-install, but either one was going to have a cost associated with it. but they didn't want to pay, and were quite mad that I'd sold them a computer, but now they had no computer to use.

8260

Living Room / Re: Farewell Skype ...

« on: May 10, 2011, 07:55 PM »

Take Windows Defender as an example - they bought up another anti-spyware product and made a complete hash of it.

-Carol Haynes (May 10, 2011, 05:16 PM)

I don't think that's entirely accurate.  Isn't MSE based on Windows Defender?  And to be sure, MSE is decent enough AV that I run it and nothing else.

8261

Living Room / Re: Farewell Skype ...

« on: May 10, 2011, 02:32 PM »

Since the Linux version received about as much attention as I give beetles in Mongolia, MS taking it over is simply more un-good news.

On a side note, what is it with independent services getting bought up by big conglomerates?
I understand the dynamics, but isn't there anybody who refuses to sell out?
Or is that simply the name of the game? 

-Edvard (May 10, 2011, 01:54 PM)

I think it is easy to say "I will not sell out"....until you see a check or cash sitting in front of you. Then, it becomes a whole new story.

-Josh (May 10, 2011, 01:56 PM)

Also, there's the fact that if I don't sell out someone will... and they'll have a check, and I'll have a whole new set of headaches from the new 800lb gorilla in the field...

8262

Living Room / Kickstarter and Indie2GoGo Projects Spotlight - May 10, 2011

« on: May 10, 2011, 01:50 PM »

I haven't posted the last couple of weeks, so I'm including a bit extra into this one... an analysis of a couple of projects and why they work (or don't) to give ideas for posting your own.

So what do you need for a successful project on Kickstarter?

1. The project goal must make sense

Kickstarter can be a bit like the .com era, and I think that people have that in mind when they look at projects.  You have to have a firm grasp of your project in mind, and how much it costs.  Though a high goal is not unreasonable, there needs to be some justification for it from a product standpoint, or people might get the idea that you're trying to cash in on the kickstarter idea, rather than create an actual product or fulfill some need.

2. Every contribution must be rewarded

This goes along with point 1, but is more geared towards the emotional side of the argument.  With financial times the way that they are, even parting with $20 or $30 is quite a bit to a lot of people.  Why should they contribute?  What will they get for their contribution?  And will it even make a difference?  These very basic questions need to be answered for the potential donator in your description- think of it as a prospectus.

3. Give solid information on your project

Again dovetailing into the two proceeding points, but also complementing them is the distribution of information about the project from a larger perspective.  Presentation is everything, and this is the one chance to get donators fired up about the project.  And not with an over-deluge of information, but with precisely targeted bits.  A concise, well worded description of what the project is, and what is to be accomplished is a definite must.  Pictures help even more towards that.  And video that much more.

Some good projects:

	Kamakura
Goal	$2500
End Date	2011-06-14
Project Creator(s)	Dyad Games
Location	Delaware, OH
Description	Though the video is an interview, the lighting is very well done, with well done subtitles, and actual views of the product, and talk of concrete examples.  It is informative without being 'talky'.  There are also videos offsite about how to play the game, and information about the game play.  The $2500 goal seems both reachable, and reasonable for this type of game, and the rewards are adequately tiered for contribution that would entice someone to donate.  In addition, the company has a website and a definite presence, lending to their sense of stability to deliver a product once the money is in hand.

	Startup Fever
Goal	$10111
End Date	2011-05-04
Project Creator(s)	Louis Perrochon, Meetpoint LLC
Location	Mountain View, CA
Description	The video is very well done, and shows a product in hand, and the information provided makes this definitely seem like one of the more stable of projects- through the prototyping/testing stage and ready for production.  Though the goal is a bit high, it does seem reasonable for what is shown, and indeed, the project has already blown past this.

And some bad ones:

	Epic Conquest
Goal	$1500
End Date	2011-07-04
Project Creator(s)	Alexander Van Dorpe
Location	Windsor Heights, IA
Description	This starts to go wrong when you look at the presentation.  There is no video, and the only media on the page is hand drawn (and not in a good way).  The ideas seem lofty- very much more than the price tag would seem to be able to deliver. And then there is the fact that because of fear of being scooped on his idea, he doles out only bits of the actual project implementation.  Not something that inspires me to donate.

	Natural Spotlection
Goal	$25000
End Date	2011-07-30
Project Creator(s)	Ethan
Location	Salt Lake City, UT
Description	Ethan does a lot well- he communicates the idea, and has a video presentation.  But then it goes wrong- he doesn't have a game designed; just an idea and mechanics.  And the video presentation is just him talking- not a catchy hook for investors.  He does have many reward tiers, but the final goal is very much lofty compared to the information that he gives, and seems quite out of touch with the idea, and hard to reach in the given timeframe.  I wish him luck, but I'd not donate to it based on his site.

8263

Developer's Corner / Re: Database for a Desktop?

« on: May 09, 2011, 09:28 AM »

Unfortunately, unless the 'much less' is $300 or less, I'll have to do without.  The perils of full time employment vs contracting.  When I was contracting, money wasn't really an object for development tools.  Now, doing it on the side, it's a lot bigger obstacle, unfortunately.

8264

Developer's Corner / Re: Database for a Desktop?

« on: May 09, 2011, 08:22 AM »

That being said, VistaDB is WAAAAAYYYYY better than SQLite... There's no comparison. Broken skateboard and space shuttle.

-Renegade (May 09, 2011, 07:33 AM)

At $1295 for a license, I should hope so...?

8265

Developer's Corner / Re: Pointers to nullable types (C#)

« on: May 08, 2011, 09:38 PM »

IntPtr doesn't help, eh?

-Renegade (May 08, 2011, 07:32 PM)

Unfortunately not.

8266

Developer's Corner / Re: Pointers to nullable types (C#)

« on: May 08, 2011, 06:27 AM »

@wraith808: That all makes perfectly good sense.

so again, why is it special?

-wraith808 (May 07, 2011, 08:47 PM)

A few more thoughts:

• They (MS) explicitly don't want you to do this
• You could exchange the int? by Int32 and get a pointer to that

-Ath (May 08, 2011, 05:30 AM)

That wouldn't work in this case.  It needs to be nullable to be able to store the database value, and the idea is to do a bulk memory copy, mapping the memory locations of the values over the memory locations of the structure.  And yeah, I think at this point that MS just explicitly made this impossible.

8267

Developer's Corner / Re: Keeping the UI Responsive - What Would You Do?

« on: May 07, 2011, 10:04 PM »

I don't think I articulated that well enough and I think I even confused it more above.

Here's the problem again...

The networking code needs to be spun off in a thread or background worker, yes, but the time it takes can be very very low, and low enough that a notification window won't fully display before it needs to be ripped down again.

So I need some mechanism that will quickly alert users that an operation is taking place. It should offer the chance to cancel as well.

-Renegade (May 07, 2011, 09:29 PM)

Ah.  I understand the problem more now.  How does your main UI look?  Is it possible that in the statusbar (or some other similarly always on type of area) you could put the notification and the possibility to cancel?  And optionally dim the main window when the event occurs?

8268

Developer's Corner / Re: Keeping the UI Responsive - What Would You Do?

« on: May 07, 2011, 08:53 PM »

Another vote for the thread idea.  I try not to do any sort of work on the UI thread except in the simplest of cases (or in cases where it would make the app quite complicated).

8269

Developer's Corner / Re: Pointers to nullable types (C#)

« on: May 07, 2011, 08:47 PM »

I've done no research on the subject, though I've done some stuff, including nullable types, in C#. But not in this direction. Nevertheless...

I kind of assume you read this msdn subject explaining nullable types?
It states:

T can be any value type including struct; it cannot be a reference type

This makes me suspect the actual implementation is something handled at compile-time, so pointers for getting at it won't exist during runtime?

-Ath (May 07, 2011, 08:59 AM)

Nothing so esoteric.  A nullable type is a struct, and using reference types as fields in structs is A Bad Idea.

When you have a struct that contains a reference type and you copy an instance of the struct, the reference type inside isn't "deep" copied, because it is simply a reference (pointer) to a memory location containing the actual class. So if you copy a struct that contains class instances, the copy will be referencing the same instances as the original.

So I think that's why nullable types can't be reference types- and it would be pointless in any case, since any reference type is already nullable.

Thanks for the links also, but neither one of those explains why you can't get a pointer to System.Nullable.  It's implemented as a struct (as they point out in the links) so why is it special?  As I said, if I create a struct that has the exact same format as System.Nullable, I can get a pointer to it... so again, why is it special?

8270

Developer's Corner / Pointers to nullable types (C#)

« on: May 07, 2011, 08:43 AM »

I found something out that was pretty strange. 

I have an object that's based off the IEditableObject interface.  It maps to certain db fields- I'm trying to abstract the data layer from the application so that it can be replaced; we have a legacy system that we're going to try to get rid of down the line, so this is a first step in that direction.  I was going to do a bulk memory copy based on the memory location of each field in the object, but by necessity, since some of the fields are nullable, we use nullable types to represent those fields, i.e. int? instead of int. 

Going further, i realized that a nullable type is just a struct with a value and a bool for isnull, which makes sense, but I never thought of it that way.  So I was going to have to get pointers to the fields to get the memory locations- but you can't get a pointer to a nullable type.  I created a struct that was the exact same format as the nullable type, and was able to get a pointer to that...so I don't understand the logic behind this...

Thoughts?

8271

Developer's Corner / Re: C# : Object Lifetime is Not (entirely) Determined by Scope ?

« on: May 07, 2011, 08:37 AM »

It seems to me that using the right language, with the right programmer, and making careful decisions in your architecture, etc., can yield results that balance productivity with performance.

-Renegade (May 06, 2011, 10:38 PM)

This.  I remember my most used class from college was "Organization of Programming Languages".  It was a senior level course purposed only with showing how much more languages are alike than different.  And the final project was to code a decently complicated project in a month in a language that was randomly assigned from languages that we didn't know.  A lot easier than it sounds; it wasn't my best work architecturally, but that wasn't the point.  His position was that we limit ourselves in what we can do by limiting our language choice.  Realistically, you have to specialize to get ahead.  But if you can bring something to the table other than what you specialize in, you definitely have a leg up on someone who only knows the one language.

8272

Developer's Corner / Re: Database for a Desktop?

« on: May 07, 2011, 08:26 AM »

Looking at SQLite, have you investigated the SQLite endorsed ADO.Net provider?

I especially like the headline message on the site:

This is a fork of the popular ADO.NET 2.0 adaptor for SQLite known as System.Data.SQLite. The originator of System.Data.SQLite, Robert Simpson, is aware of this fork, has expressed his approval, and has commit privileges on the new Fossil repository. The SQLite development team intends to maintain System.Data.SQLite moving forward.

(Emphasis added)

-Ath (May 07, 2011, 07:56 AM)

I wanted to try that... but the last time I installed it, it borked my vs installation.  I found the problem in a source file that they changed, but that was quite troubling and not something I wanted to experience again.

8273

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: PC game launcher/organizer/frontend

« on: May 07, 2011, 08:23 AM »

Games explorer notices eight of them

-kamahl (May 07, 2011, 06:53 AM)

Problem here is that games have to register with Games Explorer, during install usually, to be noticed by GE, so it's not directly GE's 'fault', IMHO

-Ath (May 07, 2011, 07:23 AM)

Exactly.  And there are ways around that.

8274

Developer's Corner / Re: C# : Object Lifetime is Not (entirely) Determined by Scope ?

« on: May 06, 2011, 08:51 AM »

Nobody ever frees sc nor sc2. Should I have used using() on this so Dispose() gets called automatically? Maybe. Or maybe not. This pattern works just fine for temporary 'local' types like arrays and the sort.

Woop de wooping wah wah, the GC helps me out by taking the worry of free()ing things away. But now nobody knows WHEN it happens exactly. And there is the pain of garbage collectors running and slowing down your app as a result unless they are very well optimized. Most of the time, it makes no difference.

-worstje (May 06, 2011, 08:03 AM)

I actually like the fact that GC takes care of a lot of that, since freeing the memory has nothing to do with compacting the memory, which GC takes care of also.  And the costs of doing this are not insignificant.  If the item hasn't survived GC once it passes from scope, it's very unlikely that it will be around in any case.  The only real thing that you have to remember if the object is not IDisposable is to manage your references to the object to make sure that there is not any unused reference keeping the object around past gen1.  There are cases where this is more of an issue, but I find them few and far between to compare to the advantages of not having to deal with that.  And if you want more control, there's always unmanaged code...

8275

General Software Discussion / Re: Delicious' new home..

« on: May 06, 2011, 08:39 AM »

p.s. was this there yesterday? Pinboard is charging $9.33 for new accounts?

-dantheman (May 06, 2011, 07:18 AM)

Yes, it was.  It's a set one time sign-up fee, that increases as they increase the number of users.  I actually like it as (1) it helps to keep the spambots away, and (2) they are already to a limited extent monetizing each user.  It's actually the reason I'm thinking about joining.