Topics

201

Living Room / Google Developing Tools to Detect ISP Throttling

« on: June 17, 2008, 12:50 PM »

In an effort to identify traffic discrimination by American ISPs, Google is prepping a suite of network analysis tools for everyday broadband users.

"We're trying to develop tools, software tools...that allow people to detect what's happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they're not happy with what they're getting - that they think certain services are being tampered with," Google senior policy director Richard Whitt said this morning during a panel discussion at Santa Clara University, an hour south of San Francisco.

If the country doesn't have neutral networks, Whitt contends, innovation stagnates among application developers. And he believes that individual consumers - as well as Washington policy makers - should join the fight for such neutrality.

"The forces aligned against us are real. They've been there for decades. Their pockets are deep. Their connections are strong with those in Washington," he said. "Maybe we can turn this into an arms race on the application software side rather a political game."

http://www.theregist...rk_management_tools/

202

Living Room / LibriVox: Free Audiobooks

« on: May 13, 2008, 07:20 PM »

If you love audiobooks, or never had time to read all the old classics, or just want to discover some hidden gems, this might be just the thing for you:

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

All of the recordings are all released back into the public domain, so you can share them, burn them, give them as gifts...even sell them if you want. There are no restrictions on what you are allowed to do with them.

http://librivox.org/

203

Living Room / SkyScraperPage.com: For those that appreciate art & architecture

« on: April 28, 2008, 03:49 PM »

Welcome to SkyscraperPage.com, the world's finest resource for skyscraper and urbanism enthusiasts.  Featuring unique skyscraper diagram illustrations, a world-wide buildings database, one of the world's busiest skyscraper-themed discussion forums and one-of-a-kind skyscraper posters, SkyscraperPage.com is a one-stop resource for the skyscraper enthusiast in everyone.

There are tons of illustrations in the diagrams section, complete with detailed info on every single building. This site is amazing! They cover the entire globe. Take a look at what they have for your nearest city.

http://skyscraperpage.com

There is a site that lets you build your own city using a bunch of the buildings from the skyscraper site. (unfortunately it doesn't work in my browser)

eLouai's City Creator

204

Living Room / Knock, Knock, It's the FBI

« on: April 27, 2008, 05:38 PM »

This is a pretty scary scenerio and one that would be having me thinking about pulling the plug on the internet for all employees, if I owned a business that had any employees.

Just imagine if one day in the near future the FBI comes to your enterprise with warrants that allow them to seize and remove any computer-related equipment, utility bills, telephone bills, any addressed correspondence sent through the U.S. mail, video gear, camera equipment, checkbooks, bank statements and credit card statements. The first question you'd ask is, "Who has done what?"

You're going to be presume your CEO has been involved in some outrageous stock manipulation, or maybe your CFO has been cooking the books. But no, the agent in charge says: "Someone here clicked on a Web link and we're going to find out who did it."

http://www.pcworld.c...ock_its_the_fbi.html

205

General Software Discussion / Getting rid of "Google Goo"

« on: April 06, 2008, 03:26 PM »

Anyone with a Google account may have started experiencing something rather unpleasant recently, when doing searches while logged in.

Google has begun adding extra tracking garbage to links, making it rather difficult to copy a link target from the search page.

A friend of mine wrote a javascript function that removes the "Google Goo", leaving you with a page full of nice, clean, copyable links.

It has been tested with FireFox 2 and 3, K-Meleon, and IE 6. It should work in all other versions of IE after IE6, as well. Also should work in Opera (in theory), but has not been tested.

What you need to do is create a new bookmark with the function as the target (copy & paste it in). When you do a Google search, before you click anything, click the bookmark and it will clean the page.


Copy the function from the page linked below (don't create a bookmark with the page as the target, or it will not work)

http://pastebin.com/jpMiu5Vj (courtesy of Krishean/draconislabs.net)

UPDATE: His site is down. I think the xbox he was hosting it on died. So here is the code for it:

Code: Javascript [Select]

1. javascript:{function detect(el){var r=false;if(el.className&&el.onmousedown){var c=el.className.split(' '),m=el.onmousedown,t=false;var s=((m.toSource)?m.toSource():m.toString());for(var i=0;i<c.length;i++)if(c[i]=='l')t=true;r=(t&&(s.indexOf('return rwt(')!=-1||s.indexOf('return clk(')!=-1));}return r;}var a=document.getElementById('search').getElementsByTagName('a');for(var i=0;i<a.length;i++)if(detect(a[i]))a[i].setAttribute('onmousedown','');void(0);};

206

Developer's Corner / Dr. Dobb's Challenge, Game Coding Competition, Win from prize pool of $10,000

« on: March 19, 2008, 06:47 PM »

I just got this alert in my email today:

Here's how to compete:

1) Download our specially created Dr. Dobb's Challenge games for either Windows or Windows Mobile.

2) Modify the games using a trial version of Visual Studio 2008

3) Compete and win from a prize pool of $10,000!

The games star the personification of Dr. Dobbs, alongside the characters from Microsoft's famous 'Defy All Challenges' machinima videos, as you battle to collect Visual Studio icons and complete the levels.

Full source code and images for the games are freely provided for programmers to 'mod' the results and win prizes.

Use your creative side to make fiendish and cool new games - change the mechanics, add new levels, even change the entire game genre - using the power of Visual Studio 2008, and win thousands of dollars doing it! For more information please review the contest guide.

Prizes:

The Dobbs First Month Challenge ($1,000) - Produce the best modded game (of any kind) in the first month.  Can be either a Windows or Windows Mobile game.

Best Windows Game ($4,000) - Produce the best modded Windows game (of any kind) across the challenge.

Best Windows Mobile Game ($2,000) - Produce the best modded Windows Mobile game (of any kind) across the challenge.

Best One Button Game ($1,000) - Produce the best game created with the intention to be accessible to all. The title is expect to use one one form of input - i.e. one button. Can be either a Windows or Windows Mobile game.

Best Game Starring Dr Dobbs And The Defy All Challenges Crew ($1,000)  - Produce the best game that still stars the Dr Dobbs and The Defy All Challenges Crew (though these characters can be redrawn or otherwise used in any way in the title.) Can be either a Windows or Windows Mobile game.

Best Total Conversion ($1,000) - Produce the best game that is completely different from the original Dr. Dobbs Challenge - i.e. uses no design aspects or assets other than the use of Visual Studio icons. Can be either a Windows or Windows Mobile game.

The deadline is June 13th, 2008,
and the deadline for First Month Challenge is April 14th, 2008.

http://dobbschallenge.com/

207

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Specialized anti-idle and 'modem booster'

« on: March 12, 2008, 06:02 AM »

I need a utility to act as a specialized 'keep alive' for my old 233mhz, 64mb ram, WinME pc that has a 33.6k dialup connection.

I have a combo soundcard/modem that requires continous sound in order to work properly, otherwise my internet connection becomes unstable because if a sound plays on the pc, it locks up just long enough to kick me offline.

Additionally, the ISP will disconnect me automatically after a lenghth of time without any http internet activity.

I have tried other keep alive utilities and none have worked. The most effective way to kill both birds with one stone has been to run Winamp with a looped playlist, 24 hours a day, and a lyrics plugin that downloads a web page with lyrics when the song changes.

As long as I do this, I can keep sound flowing through the soundcard/modem and beat the ISP's idle timer at the same time, staying connected for up to 7 days straight.

But this is an extreme waste of my pc's resources to run something as bloated as a media player with a built in browser, all the time. Additionally, after awhile, the changing of the songs from one to another will cause a freeze up of my pc that lasts just long enough to cause me to be disconnected, defeating the purpose of the whole reason I am running Winamp.

And if I am working on this pc at night, I have to keep the speakers turned off so people can sleep, meaning I can't hear any other sounds like various alerts.

So basically, this is the small utility I need:

1. has to accept a url to a file as command line parameter.
2. produce a continous tone at frequency of 25hz (something my cheap speakers can't produce, so it will be 'silent noise') You can NOT loop a wav file for this, it will not work to produce the results I am after. The application must generate the sound itself.
3. test for an internet connection every 10 minutes, and if connected download the file specified in the url given as command line parameter, overwriting the old one that may exist from a previous download. (I plan on downloading a small txt file from my website for this)
4. sit in my tray and not get in my way
5. work on 9x
6. be light as a feather and use as little resources as possible to accomplish the job. (this means no .NET!)

Now, if you want to attempt this, I'll help you a little bit by providing this link to some info on how to produce the tone needed: http://www.codeproje.../SoundGenerator.aspx

I would attempt this myself but I only code in Delphi and that isn't a Delphi project...and I don't understand it enough to be able to do it in Delphi.

If you can manage to create this little tool, every person that still has a really old pc on dialup with an Aztech Sound4 combo card will love you for it. 

208

Developer's Corner / 7 Day Roguelike Game Coding Challenge

« on: March 07, 2008, 10:07 PM »

Rogue Temple is running their annual 7DRL (7 Day Roguelike) Challenge from March 8 to March 16, 2008.

The challenge is to announce that you will create a roguelike game and then from that point you have exactly 7 days to code a playable game.

The idea behind 7DRLs is forcing developers to finish a showable product instead of adding features endlessly to their grandiose, never to be released projects, a common pattern in the roguelike development world.

7DRL Challenges are NOT about being a /fast/ coder, but rather proving you can release a finished, playable roguelike to the world. There is no winner of the challenge, but rather all those who finish are honoured for their work, the criterion is completeness.

Roguelikes are old school rpg dungeon games, mostly text based, similar to the 1980 game called Rogue.

For those that are not familiar with what exactly a roguelike is, please refer to this wikipedia article.

For full rules and details of the challenge, please refer to their site.

http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/

ps. Here is where most discussion of the contest seems to be, and where you should post if you want to enter:
http://groups.google...lopment/topics?hl=en

209

Living Room / Comic Strip Generator (and March Caption Contest Announcement!)

« on: March 02, 2008, 01:38 AM »

I was doing a little research on what is available in the way of tools to create your own web comics, easily. I found a greate site that was sort of along the lines of what I was thinking of.

Strip Generator lets you create your own comic strips with drag & drop ease, with lots of characters, props, creatures, shapes, talk & think balloons, etc.

It's a lot of fun to play with.

http://stripgenerator.com/

And now for the contest...

While playing around with some of the stuff there, I saw a few familiar things that reminded me of this site and created this little single frame comic:



All you have to do is fill in the talk/think bubbles with the conversation that took place between mouser & cody, during this little visit.

Mouser will be giving away a prize of a mug to the winner...with the winner's captioned image printed on it! (how cool is that?!)

Deadline to submit your captioned image is March 21, 2008.

Good luck! I am really looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. 

210

Living Room / Game: Traveler IQ Challenge

« on: February 21, 2008, 11:47 AM »

How well do you know the world you live in? Can you pinpoint on a map where various cities are? How close do you think you can guess to where they actually are?

Play Traveler IQ Challenge and find out.

http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq

211

Living Room / How many germs are living on your keyboard?

« on: January 31, 2008, 09:53 PM »

Ok, this is kind of gross...

My daughter sent me this link.

Answer the quiz and post your results.

Here is my disgusting results  :

There are about 2,561,580 germs on your keyboard right now!
That's equivalent to the number of germs on 512 toilet seats.

http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/keyboard

212

Developer's Corner / Delphi Contest: Create Fancy Applications for Fame & Glory

« on: January 27, 2008, 09:49 AM »

If you are like me, you like experimenting - creating pieces of Delphi code just to learn something new and create something interesting. If nothing else, to amaze your coworkers / family / yourself.

Sometimes the funny code I write actually does something smart - but most of the time - it's just to see if *this* can be done in Delphi.

Here's an idea that originated from this idea of mine: let's create a simple Delphi programming contest - the task is to code a fancy-do_nothing_smart application (a piece of code) in Delphi!
Let this one be for fame and glory - no material prizes will be given to any contestants - all of us will code for fame and glory - pure rivalry

Nothing smart but fancy - and this is all what this contest is about: to create a "useless" application in delphi - one that is nice to see and one can learn something from it.

Hm .. ah .. ok. Rules are about to change! By looking at some of the "useless" applications I have created for delphi.about.com over the years ... it seems there are quite a few that are pure gems: Ruler is a must, Zoomer is just great. Ok, I'm not shy
New rule: it is ok for the fancy Delphi application you submit to useful!

http://delphi.about....n/a/fany_contest.htm

213

Living Room / SeeqPod: Playable Search

« on: January 09, 2008, 05:22 AM »

Here is a rather unique approach to audio/video searching...

The SeeqPod search engine allows you to search and then play the results for both audio and video files it finds on the web.

It also has a PodCrawler tab where you can see other results it has found from other searches it has done, scrolling right on your screen. This could be a great way to discover new music you may never have heard of before.

You can add any item to your playlist, save playlists, share them, embed them on your site or blog, etc. (some options require you to sign up for a free account)

What I find interesting, and will probably be the thing to allow it to have a longer life and not be targeted by the **AA's, is that it will not allow you to actually download the files it finds....you can only play them in their player.

http://www.seeqpod.com/

214

Living Room / DonationCoder's Blog on MillionRSS

« on: January 08, 2008, 06:47 AM »

I added DC to the MillionRSS directory today, in order to see if we can bring our blog some more attention that it rightly deserves.

Now, to raise it's rank in their listings so it ends up higher in search results on their site, we need to vote to 'bump it'. The more bumps a feed has, the higher it will rank in a search.

Every bump is a vote.

If you like our blog, bump us. 

http://www.millionrs...-of-Blog-168229.html

215

N.A.N.Y. 2008 / DonationCoder Search Deskbar v1.0.43

« on: December 31, 2007, 07:51 PM »

DonationCoder Search Deskbar v1.0.43 -  April 6, 2010

New in this version:

- Fixed cursor over edit control corrected
- Improved theme support
- Removed dead link to Wordzilla's site from menu
- Fixed copy/paste/select
+ Added "triple click/select all" support



Download it here.

NOTE: If you have an older version of the deskbar installed, close it and reboot, first. Then uninstall the older version before installing this one. If you do not close and reboot first, it will not uninstall correctly because the file will still be in use.

version history

DonationCoder Search Deskbar v1.0.11 -  December 31, 2007

First public release.

System Requirements:

This should work on Windows 98/ME/2K/XP with IE 5 or newer.
I have not tested this on Vista or Win7.

It will work with both horizontal and vertical taskbars.




^{screenshot from mouser's horizontal taskbar}


Installing:
     
Just run the DCSearchDeskbar.msi file by double clicking it.

After installing, just right click your taskbar and on the menu, under Toolbars, just select "DonationCoder Search Deskbar". If you do not see it listed there, wait a minute and check again.

You can also add this to your Explorer windows by selecting it from the View > Toolbars menu in Explorer.


^{screenshot from my Explorer (not Internet Explorer!)}

Using:

Just type in one or more search terms into the box, select the type of search you want to perform from the drop down list, and click the Search button. Your search will be opened in your default browser.

You can access a handy popup menu, with lots of goodies to explore, by right clicking the search button with the little picture of Cody on it. There are some things on the menu that will require you to be a member and logged in on the forum for them to work. There are also some things on the menu that can only be used if you are a full member of the site.


^{screenshot of popup menu, from my vertical taskbar}

Configuring:

It can also be dragged off the taskbar and placed on the desktop or even docked on any free edge of your screen. You can also set the docked toolbar to always stay on top and even autohide. You will have to minimize open windows in order to drag it off the taskbar.

You can take up the extra empty space on the toolbar by resizing it and/or adding the Address bar or making a new toolbar from a folder of shortcuts.


^{screenshot from hollowlife1987's horizontal docked autohiding toolbar}

Uninstalling:

It can be removed from Add/Remove programs by finding and uninstalling the entry called "DonationCoder Search Deskbar". You may have to reboot to complete the removal process.

Known issues:

     Internet Explorer:

This isn't meant to be an Internet Explorer toolbar, even though it does appear on the Internet Explorer toolbars menu.

I had to add it to that menu to get it to show up in the Explorer toolbars menu.

You can use it with Internet Explorer, but it will not open searches and pages in the open instance of Internet Explorer. It will open them in a new instance of your default browser, which in some cases might be a different browser than Internet Explorer.

     XP Themes:
         
Improved theme support. Haven't tested on Vista/Win7, but it works on XP. Let me know how it works for you.

     Clipboard paste of invalid characters:
         
It will allow you to paste some invalid characters from the clipboard that it normally won't allow you type.

Since the Firefox and AOL Explorer search plugins don't do any kind of filtering at all, the fact this toolbar does any filtering could be considered an improvement, even if it doesn't offer 100% filtering of invalid characters yet.

216

Developer's Corner / Top 11 Signs Programming May Be Ruining Your Love Life

« on: December 23, 2007, 01:14 PM »

11. If you’ve ever missed a date to add finishing touches to an input function… and then e-mailed the finished code to her the next day, assuming that she will see reason.
10. If you spend your time at the bar breaking cute girls into polygons in your head instead of undressing them with your eyes.
9. If you respond to the profile of all the girls dating sites who claim that they’ve done modeling work with polite inquiries as to which 3D packages they’ve used.

You'll have to click for the rest of them. 

from AvantGo

217

Living Room / GetHuman

« on: December 22, 2007, 05:32 AM »

Have you ever wanted to contact a company about something, but when you call them all you get is their blasted automated unhelpful answering system?

This site tells you how to navigate those systems to get a real live human to talk to.

Their database covers over 500 companies, with specific information on what phone number to call and exactly what to do for each one...step by step (and even grades each company on an A-F scale, based on ease of getting to a human to talk to).

http://gethuman.com/

218

General Software Discussion / WMP Annoyances: Looking for solutions

« on: December 21, 2007, 12:08 PM »

As some of you may know, I have a rather odd desktop layout, with a large vertical taskbar on the right side and an additional large taskbar-like toolbar on the left, both on autohide.

The WMP deskbar that can be placed on the taskbar seems to only want to show itself in a vertical orientation and I can't find an option to flip it to horizontal. This creates a large amount of dead space on my taskbar.

The other problem is the additional bar I have on the left. It has the same context menu with the same options as the taskbar, including showing the WMP deskbar on it, only when I select the option it won't show the deskbar on that toolbar. It does nothing, and won't even show a check mark next to it as being selected. I can't seem to put the WMP deskbar on that toolbar, even though it gives the impression that I can by including the option on the menu. It is the only option on the menu that doesn't seem to work. Everything else can be added to that toolbar.

So what I would like to know is...

How do I flip the WMP deskbar to show horizontal rather than vertical, and how do I get it on my other toolbar instead of the regular default taskbar?

219

Living Room / Disclosure Policy Generator for your blog

« on: December 10, 2007, 07:17 PM »

Blogging can be about community, technology, politics, self-promotion, big business, small business, cultural awareness or Aunt Mary's secret recipes. That is the beauty of the blogosphere, each person blogs for their own reason in their own words. Blogs are written by real people with real feelings, opinions, motivations, and experiences.

However, as the blogosphere has grown so has the financial opportunity it represents. Now more than ever Advertisers, PR agencies, political organizations and bloggers themselves are reaching out to blog owners in an attempt to gain visibility for their products, services and causes. As a reader it has been difficult to identify which blogs are influenced by these organizations and how… until now.

Disclosure Policies are designed to allow bloggers to self-identify any affiliation, payment or other conflicts of interests that may influence the content of a blog. From banner ads and paid content to free gadgets and travel, disclosure policies allow you to make your own judgement regarding the influence on content you are presented with. Bloggers provide this service to you, their reader, in order to be as transparent as possible with their blog.

Even if you accept no advertising of any kind (not even Adsense) or do not receive any compensation for your posts, you can still use a disclosure policy on your blog to state this. This site makes it easy to generate an appropriate one for your needs.

If all you have is Adsense or some other 3rd party auto-generated ads, there is an option for that too.

When you are finished generating your disclosure, it's as easy as pasting it into a post and publishing it to your blog and including a link to the post you just made on your blog's menu.

Your readers will appreciate your honesty.

http://www.disclosurepolicy.org

220

Living Room / Skill Learned from Online Gaming Saves Child from Moose Attack

« on: December 07, 2007, 01:16 PM »

Who says WoW doesn’t have its uses in real life? Freely translated from the Norwegian online news site Nettavisen:

"12 year old Hans Jørgen Olsen from Lesvik in Nord-Trønderlag, Norway feels a few years older after last Thursday’s action filled encounter with the King of the Forrest. Hans Jørgen and his 10 year old sister were on their way to school and took a short cut through a meadow. Suddenly they stood eye to eye with a Moose.

- It charged straight at us when it saw us, says Hans Jørgen to Nettavisen

Hans Jørgen’s sister tried to run while Hans Jørgen stopped to try and scare it off.

http://acaciaizm.com/?p=294

Take that, all you nay-sayers that think games are bad for kids!

221

Living Room / What makes DonationCoder so special?

« on: December 06, 2007, 09:33 PM »

When I decided to write about DC's NANY 2008 Challenge in my blog, I decided to make it a bit more than just a simple announcement.

I felt that too many people that might read it on my personal blog (and the one for my programming chatroom) might not understand what the big deal is about this site and the community behind it.

So I set about explaining that, by telling about one of the most wonderful things about this site that isn't often mentioned elsewhere, from the perspective of both a software developer and an end user.

http://cranialsoup.b...008-programming.html

222

GOE 2007 Challenge Downloads / AnotherOneDone - GOE Challenge 2007 Entry

« on: December 02, 2007, 05:09 AM »

My entry:

AnotherOneDone - v1.0.0

What it does:
Helps you keep track of your progress with a numerical goal, such as the amount of books you want to read, blog posts you want to make, batches of cookies you want to bake, etc.

Features:

• Autosaves the amount of your goal.
  
• Autosaves how many you have done.
  
• Calculates the remaining amount left to go.
  
• Copy info to clipboard.
  
• Progressbar.
• Stays on top.
• Minimizes to tray.
• Access to some controls from tray menu.

Limitations:

• Only tracks a single goal.
  
• Stores data to registry, so it isn't portable.

How to use:

• Enter the amount of your goal in the top box.
  
• Click the Set button.
  
• Each time you complete one towards your goal, click the Add 1 button.
  
• Once you have reached your goal, click Reset and begin again to set a new goal.

Screenshot:


Download here

223

Living Room / Gamespot Editor Fired for Writing an Honest Review

« on: December 01, 2007, 03:45 AM »

We've heard an unsettling rumor today from an anonymous tipster that longtime game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot has been let go. That wouldn't necessarily be newsworthy, but the conditions under which he was allegedly dismissed were. According to the source, Gerstmann was fired "on the spot" due to advertiser pressure for his review of Eidos' Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. A visit to Gamespot shows that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game has taken over the site very prominently, with backgrounds and multiple banner ads all pitching Kane & Lynch. Allegedly, publisher Eidos "took issue with the review and threatened to pull its ad campaign."

Gamespot Editor Fired Over Kane & Lynch Review?

Alleged Gamespot Employee Spills Guts On Valleywag

CNet Comments On Gamespot Controversy

The Review

224

Living Room / Signs You're a Crappy Programmer (and don't know it)

« on: December 01, 2007, 03:26 AM »

You know those crappy programmers who don’t know they are crappy? You know, they think they're pretty good, they spout off the same catch phrase rhetoric they've heard some guru say and they know lots of rules about the "correct" way to do things? Yet their own work seems seriously lacking given all the expertise they supposedly have? You don’t know any programmers like that? Come one, you know, the guys who are big on dogma but short on understanding. No, doesn’t sound familiar?

http://damienkatz.ne...signs_youre_a_c.html

225

Living Room / Dental Robot "Feels" Pain

« on: December 01, 2007, 03:20 AM »

A new robot yelps when dental students drill too close to sensors that have been fitted where nerve endings would be.

http://news.national...dental-video-ap.html