Messages

276

General Software Discussion / Re: Upgrading RoboForm from v6 to v7: worthwhile?

« on: December 16, 2010, 12:07 PM »

As it happens, I was just rebuilding my work system yesterday and ran into the same problem you mention. However, the problem cleared up, and it worked for me a little later yesterday afternoon.

But when I first encountered it, I logged a support query with them, and I had a reply this morning. The important part of that reply was:

Go to http://activate.roboform.com/?lang=en in the browser to which RoboForm has attached

From that URL, you can enter your name and your Order ID to register your existing copy.

As to the upgrade... Their licenses are pretty expensive, and I'm having a hard time seeing that it's worth the expense.

277

Living Room / Re: DDOS Ethics

« on: December 10, 2010, 10:05 AM »

You are going to play the morality/ethics card for credit card companies and banks? Huge fortunes built on corpses and cocaine that haven't paid a dime in taxes because they pride themselves on tax (evasion) "loop-holes" that typically involve storing (hiding) money in other countries.

-Stoic Joker (December 09, 2010, 05:54 PM)

That's such absurd hyperbole that I won't bother to respond.

Aside from the morality argument, you haven't addressed my point about the attacks being bad tactics (because they may give incentives for other companies to stay away).

You attempted to address the point about bad strategy:

Do you really think the government needs an incentive to strip away additional rights and freedoms?

-Stoic Joker (December 09, 2010, 05:54 PM)

But this isn't quite right. Of course they don't need any incentive. What they do need is an excuse, some rationalization that they can claim is the reason they need to do this. The fact that millions of dollars in revenue were lost because some of our most important commercial institutions were crippled by terrorists -- and that this happened during the Christmas shopping season, so mommy couldn't buy that doll for little Suzy -- proves that the government is needed to protect the citizens. The DDoS attacks give that fig leaf of rationalization (even though we both know there's nothing they could do about it anyway), and this is the opposite of what (I assume) the Anonymous folks want.

278

Living Room / Re: DDOS Ethics

« on: December 09, 2010, 11:42 AM »

Aside from whether the WikiLeaks release was itself moral...

For a private entity to decide they don't want to do business with someone is entirely within their rights. It is not a censorship question. Quite the opposite: the 1st Amendment guarantees us the right to decide with whom we want to associate. So forcing, e.g., PayPal or Amazon, to do business with WikiLeaks is morally wrong.

On the other hand, using the fear of government "displeasure", as Lieberman did, is still a form of censorship. Were it not for the implied threat that something would be done to them, or at least that their future dealings with the government would be viewed unfavorably, Lieberman is acting as a censor even without official Congressional action.

The DDoS attacks are wrong both morally, practically, and strategically.

They are wrong as a matter of morals because (a) they ignore the right of these entities to decide who to do business with, and (b) they ignore the "collateral damage" they're doing to other people (e.g., merchants who can't make sales). This latter is particularly ironic because these are the same people criticizing (by way of wikileaks releases) the collateral damage that the USA has created in Iraq.

They are wrong as a practical matter because they may have the opposite of the intended effect. That is, rather than making companies think "I'd better keep WikiLeaks on my client list so I can avoid retribution", they are likely to think "I don't want to ever get anywhere near WikiLeaks (or anything else controversial) or else I may run into trouble", thus making life harder on WikiLeaks and many other organizations.

They are wrong as a larger strategic matter because they're pushing the US government's hand over network security. We just may see demands that traffic be monitored by Cyber Command (NSA) so that attacks can be traced if not prevented.

EDIT: filled in a couple of missing words in "Lieberman" sentence.

279

Living Room / Re: A NAS server for my home

« on: December 08, 2010, 01:54 PM »

Also little things like not being able to power on to standby at power restoration after a power failure - it's a NAS for heavens sake.  One of a NAS' main functions is backups and the damn thing can't recover from a power failure to continue it's main function.

-4wd (December 08, 2010, 05:39 AM)

This feature was added in the most recent firmware update for the DNS-321 (which I think was like a year ago).

I was concerned with wasting power too, and I set it up to shut down overnight.

-Perry Mowbray (December 07, 2010, 06:42 AM)

The DNS-321 can be configured to sleep the hard drives when unused for a given timespan. However, they take a long time to wake up, so my client software would frequently timeout, so I disabled the sleep feature.

280

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sagelight Image Editor - pay what you want promo (Apil 2010)

« on: December 07, 2010, 02:55 PM »

So, I'm thinking about doing quite a few short videos on various feature and putting them up on Youtube.  But, I am wondering what people think on the best way to describe how to use more advanced features in an easy way?

-Rob Nelson (December 06, 2010, 10:24 PM)

Rob, I found some of the videos you've already created to be quite helpful. Unfortunately it's been long enough that I don't recall the specific attributes that made them work, but I can tell you that the ones on making Thomas Kinkade-like pictures, and about the "undo brush", both stand out in my mind as giving me an "ah-hah!" moment.

I downloaded your videos from YouTube into my media server, then sat down in front of the TV to watch them in comfort. And I think I did get a lot out of it.

But I do know how much work can go into producing one of those videos. I can recall producing one of my own, a demo of a new web site for internal use here at work, and spending an entire day planning out, scripting, and then editing, a single video.

281

Living Room / Re: A NAS server for my home

« on: December 07, 2010, 11:30 AM »

I've had a D-Link DNS-321 for about two years, and I'm quite happy with it. It comes empty, with space for two drives, so you can easily get 2TB into it. I have 2 1TB drives in a RAID configuration for safety, because it's where I keep all my photos and that kind of irreplaceable stuff.

Its primary purpose was media storage, but I've had a heck of a time getting the whole system (including client-side) working the way I want. I only just recently got it right.

I started off using XBMC on an old XBox and a Netbook, but neither could quite handle H264 video at full framerate. My XBox died, which spurred me to replacing my DVR with a new DirecTV HR-24, but it turns out that this device can only do UPnP, not read from SMB. I tried using TVersity (running on my domain controller) to transcode and serve the media, but this didn't work very well, as TVersity has all kinds of compatibility problems.

My eventual solution was to replace both clients with dedicated hardware devices. I chose the Prodigi PD-100N because it's the only such device I could find that can read from SMB. This is now working wonderfully. It can play any kind of media I can throw at it (JPG photos; MP3 audio; H264 and DivX video, etc.) at full 1080p.

282

General Software Discussion / S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for 99 cents

« on: December 06, 2010, 12:04 PM »

Good sale until Tuesday morning from Games For Windows. Get "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl" for $0.99. The deal is here: http://www.gamesforw...s.com/en-US/stalker/

It's a 3-year-old game, but at the time it got pretty good reviews, scoring around 8+ out of 10. Reviews here and here.

283

DC Gamer Club / Re: Steam Thanksgiving Sales

« on: November 30, 2010, 01:50 PM »

Freedom Force is unusable due to a problem with the mouse.

-CWuestefeld (November 30, 2010, 11:24 AM)

Is that the problem where the mouse moves extremely fast horizontally but extremely slow vertically? (Or was it vice versa?)

-Deozaan (November 30, 2010, 01:42 PM)

Yup, that's the one. It's a little more subtle than that. If you're moving fast, it behaves as you describe. If you're moving slowly to try and hit a particular spot, it doesn't move at all in either direction.

284

DC Gamer Club / Re: Steam Thanksgiving Sales

« on: November 30, 2010, 11:24 AM »

I grabbed Starwars KotOR and Freedom Force (thanks Deozaan).

Unfortunately, neither of these work on my computer.  KotOR just plain won't run at all, and Freedom Force is unusable due to a problem with the mouse. Both of these seem to be widespread issues.

285

General Software Discussion / Re: Advice Needed: Optical Storage

« on: November 24, 2010, 08:21 AM »

What everybody else said.

But with that in mind, you still need a way to slice up the file into 2 or 3 chunks (I would suggest aiming for 4GB chunks, as the media is much cheaper). I suggest you look at 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/). This supports several archive formats that can handle large files and multiple sections. ZIP format does not (afaik), but its native "7z" format will, plus it offers better compression and is *almost* a standard these days.

286

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: XYplorer Lifetime License 51% discount on BitsDuJour on Monday 8 Nov 2010

« on: November 11, 2010, 11:28 AM »

I like this one too - quick compare (just tells you if exactly the same or not):

-tomos (November 10, 2010, 10:56 AM)

In "Compare Current File with Previous File", what does "Previous" mean? Does that mean I first click a file, then click a second, and the first I clicked becomes the "previous". Or does it mean the file that appears in the list above the selection?

287

Living Room / Re: Windows Mobile 7 Review

« on: October 28, 2010, 10:11 AM »

I can't understand why Microsoft would  bring out a phone OS that does not support multitasking now

-xtabber (October 28, 2010, 09:34 AM)

While I complained about Windows Mobile and I won't be buying it myself. However, it most certainly does multitask. I routinely use my WM6 device to execute multiple applications simultaneously.

Just to clarify, here's what the referenced article said:

And there’s no multitasking. You can play your own songs while working in other programs, but you can’t listen to, say, Pandora Internet radio.

Although he says there's no "multitasking", he's misusing that word. I'm not sure exactly what he does mean by it.

288

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: dot Net complaints

« on: October 25, 2010, 03:14 PM »

Might be true for the IL code generated, but what happens when the JIT'er runs?

-f0dder (October 25, 2010, 02:27 PM)

Hmmm, that's a good question. I never thought about it at that level. I don't know enough about how the CLR represents things at that level to know, but it may be below the level at which it makes a difference. That is, it might be that it can continue to use a just a single implementation, because at that point it's already getting a vtable as input and need not worry about the details of how it got to be so. Do you have any specific knowledge of this?

there's object allocation overhead every time you use a delegate

-f0dder (October 25, 2010, 02:27 PM)

...which shouldn't be a big deal, but in real life turns out to be a significant source of memory leakage for those who don't know it works this way. As I said, you've got to know your platform. I do this pretty extensively, and haven't had an issue with it -- but I know that I've got to clean up the delegates when I'm done, or the referenced objects won't be GC'ed.

which includes the very innocent-looking lambda expressions. Setting up the closures might be relatively inexpensive, but it isn't free

-f0dder (October 25, 2010, 02:27 PM)

Sure, but at the same time, it makes it much more straightforward to write code that operates on huge amounts of data, that stream through the app. A naive approach would involve loading all the data. Having closures makes it simple to write a program that deals with such enormous data with minimal memory footprint. This is possible in other languages (e.g., C++), but involves more difficult coding.

289

Living Room / Re: Windows Mobile 7 Review

« on: October 25, 2010, 12:35 PM »

I've been a PocketPC user for many years now (I'm on my third PocketPC device). I've watched the capabilities of ActiveSync march backwards over the last few years -- they've literally removed features from it in each version (e.g., WiFi sync, converting fonts). And the situation I've been in for the last several months is that of three different PCs, I cannot get a single one to synchronize successfully at all.

On top of that, Microsoft now officially does not support (and it doesn't work) syncing with 64-bit Outlook.

So from my perspective, the Windows Mobile platform is dead. You won't find me buying a new WM device. When my current PocketPC dies, or I just can't deal with its refusal to sync anymore, I'll most likely get an Android.

290

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: dot Net complaints

« on: October 25, 2010, 12:30 PM »

well, .NET apps don't just appear to use more memory than an equivalent native app, they use more memory; one reason is the structure of the .NET library and the idioms around it

-f0dder (October 25, 2010, 09:50 AM)

That's not necessarily true, although it will be in many cases. There are a couple of things that can allow for more efficient memory usage.

For example, the immutability of strings allows the reuse of a single instance of a string value, without allocating multiple redundant values.

Also, the CLR design of generics is much more efficient than any other language/platform that I'm aware of. In some cases this can allow the source code to be much smaller. Basically, the definition of MyGeneric<MyClass> only needs to be stored once; whereas C++ for example must separately compile this for each different MyClass that's used.

In general, then, some kinds of programs will take more memory, and some may take less. But that's really comparing the same program, ported to different platforms. I'm betting that if you design your code from the ground up with an understanding of .Net (or whatever platform you're building for), you should be able to come up with a design that meshes well with whatever criteria are important to you.

291

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: LogMeIn Hamachi²

« on: October 17, 2010, 06:42 PM »

Since this is working at the level of a VPN connection, I assume that it's usable to establish a Remote Desktop connection to the machine at the other end?

How does it affect TCP/IP routing? Specifically, I'm wondering what happens if I try to use this to connect from work to home. If I have a connection open to my home computer, will my network stack still know that work-internal traffic should not travel through the Hamachi VPN, but stay within work?

292

Living Room / Re: Google testing cars that drive themselves...

« on: October 12, 2010, 11:50 AM »

I'm with Renegade. They've only solved the (relatively) easy part of the problem so far.

Their tests so far were just on dry pavement, as far as I can tell. But I would expect that given proper data (accelerometers for detecting unanticipated yaw and impending hydroplaning, input from wheel speed sensors to detect slippage, visual input to detect e.g. approaching ice) that the problems of inclement weather could be handled. In the long run, I bet the computer can do it better than a person thanks to its fast reaction time and immunity to panic. In principle, the computer could also have discrete brake inputs for each wheel (or at least each of two brake lines), allowing for finer control than is possible with just one brake pedal.

I think the biggest challenge is noticing and interpreting the "body language" of other drivers, in order to anticipate problems and thus avoid them before they become critical. Frequently a human can tell that someone is about to change lanes, just by observing the way that other driver behaves. The same is true for other behaviors.

293

Living Room / Re: New image format for the web

« on: October 07, 2010, 01:12 PM »

The only in-depth analysis and comparison I've seen is here: http://x264dev.multi...edia.cx/archives/541

I could understand the push for “WebP” if it was better than JPEG.  And sure, technically as a file format it is, and an encoder could be made for it that’s better than JPEG.  But note the word “could”.  Why announce it now when libvpx is still such an awful encoder?

Other stuff:

The best format now is PNG with transparency. Alpha is not optional anymore. Otherwise, it's only good for photo albums.

-Renegade (October 04, 2010, 07:41 AM)

They seem to have that covered. See http://googlecode.bl...-format-for-web.html:

We plan to add support for a transparency layer, also known as alpha channel in a future update.

Nobody will use WebP if it doesn't work in IE.

Looks promising though. A 39% reduction is a LOT~!

-Renegade (October 04, 2010, 07:41 AM)

I'm too lazy to look up a citation, but IE just dropped below 50% marketshare, with Chrome making a big leap. If Google can cut down file (and transmission size) for 39% of what it's serving, just on the percentage of users that have Chrome (not to mention Firefox, who will presumably add support), they can save some real money.

I do have some reservations about the digicam issue, though. And the addition of WebP support to digicams may not be trivial. One of the criteria people consider when shopping for a camera is how quickly the camera can take shots in a burst. Using a format that's much more computationally intensive will probably slow that down (although that might be balanced by decreased usage of bandwidth to the storage card), and thus make such cameras less attractive. On the other hand, the fact that this is just a specialized usage of the VP8 video codec means that the combination of still and video capture in a single device is much more elegant architecturally.

294

General Software Discussion / Re: Another reason to drop Kaspersky?

« on: September 28, 2010, 11:10 AM »

I've got several things in KIS 2011 disabled (like spam protection). Now the stupid thing continually warns me that I'm at risk because I'm not using all those modules. Does anybody know if there's a way to say "this is the configuration I want, only bug me if it deviates from this"?

295

General Software Discussion / Re: Another reason to drop Kaspersky?

« on: September 24, 2010, 02:54 PM »

Keep Kaspersky running but install Virtualbox/VMware Player.

-Bamse (September 24, 2010, 08:06 AM)

One comment in defense of Kaspersky. I just upgraded my KIS to the 2011 version. They've got a neat new feature so you don't have to do that.

In last year's version there was a setting so that you could have specific applications run inside a sandbox. In the new version this is extended, so that you can open a whole sandboxed desktop. This accomplishes the same thing that running in a VM would, but is much faster and easier.

296

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sagelight Image Editor - pay what you want promo (Apil 2010)

« on: September 24, 2010, 01:54 PM »

Rob, based on your word I'm about to plunk down the $40 for the lifetime license (despite having already paid a small amount for the pay-what-you-want).

I'm excited about seeing your new version. Can't wait. I'd like to weigh in also with a suggestion, but since I really don't want to wait, it can certainly be deferred to a later version.

The tools you offer give much better control than other tools (Elements, PaintShop Pro) of color, exposure, contrast, and the like -- or at least, better control than I can get with the time I have available, and my expertise with those tools. However, I think that you're actually weaker with two operations: sharpening and noise suppression. So far I've been accomplishing these with plugins (sharpening with PhotoWiz's Focal Blade, and noise fixing with Noise Ninja). However, plugins don't go as smoothly with the Sagelight workflow, so it would be better (and cheaper!) to have these built in.

297

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sagelight Image Editor - pay what you want promo (Apil 2010)

« on: September 23, 2010, 01:45 PM »

Rob, thank you very much for the update. I'm really very glad to hear that you're still around, and that things are progressing -- if a bit slowly than you and the rest of the community might wish.

But, I do have to concentrate on the public side of it, because sales (i.e. income) is the thing that enables the development

-Rob Nelson (September 23, 2010, 01:18 PM)

I agree completely. But let me suggest that it's extremely important that your potential customers see this as an ongoing concern. If it looks like everything is "lights out", nobody's going to want to sink their money into that dead end. And for your existing customers too: their word-of-mouth ought to be an important marketing tool for you, so keeping them feeling like they're spending their time in a product (and community) with great future potential is essential. Your presence is necessary for all that.

Even if you were to just post to the forum every day or two a couple of sentences, something like "Today I'm working on the new vibrance enhancements, but it's taking longer than I'd hoped because I need to optimize the code to get it to the point where it's still comfortable to interact with." [1] Even if you told people you wouldn't have time to respond or add any more detail, just the fact that (a) you're seen to be there and active, and (b) the topic is progress on the new version would be a big help. Your users and potential customers would feel anticipation rather than anxiety.

For what it's worth, I'm using Sagelight for most of my image editing needs lately, and I really am looking forward to your upcoming version. Once you're ready, I hope to see you back here with the announcement.

[1] I made that up. It's probably not true, but seems typical of what might go on.

298

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sagelight Image Editor - pay what you want promo (Apil 2010)

« on: September 23, 2010, 10:57 AM »

Back at the time of this thread (June) I wanted to make a comment on Sagelight's discussion board. I registered an account, and have been waiting ever since for it to be approved. I sent the developer a message on the board asking to have it approved. I've resolved that although I want to send additional money, I'm not going to do so until I can at least make that comment.

But now, the whole discussion board has been turned off. The developer hasn't made a post in several months, and last week I noticed that he hasn't even logged into the board since August.

I'd think that this marks the death of the product, except that the developer also recently reworked the website a bit, and posted a flurry of new articles to his blog.

Does anybody have a clue what's going on with Sagelight?

299

Developer's Corner / Re: Challenge: algorithm for counting progressively/exponentially

« on: September 16, 2010, 04:31 PM »

Since I'm a sci-fi geek, I'm thinking of the velocity of a starship as it travels to its destination under constant (say, 1g) acceleration. The idea is that you reach your highest velocity at the halfway point, then turn around, and start decelerating.

So:


halfway = distance / 2
velocity = 0
counter = 0
accelerationfactor = 1
while (counter < distance)
    if (counter > halfway AND accelerationfactor > 1)
        accelerationfactor = accelerationfactor * -1 // turnaround
    velocity += accelerationfactor
    counter += velocity


You'll need to clean up for overshooting, but I think that should pretty much do what you want.

EDIT: re-reading your question, your linked image doesn't look like what you've described textually. The algorithm I've outlined will give you the linked image. But if you want to start from "high speed" and just decelerate, then either do the geometric algorithm that Deozaan gives, or


velocity = 100 // or whatever
acceleration = 1
counter = 0
while (counter < target)
    velocity -= acceleration
    counter += velocity

300

Living Room / Re: Forum registration explosion

« on: September 14, 2010, 01:43 PM »

Run the IPs/e-mails through that.

-wraith808 (September 14, 2010, 01:30 PM)

My forum runs on SMF. I installed the Stop Spammers mod, which looks for username/email/IP in a blacklist (via a service), and won't approve the rejects. This seems to be working pretty well.