Messages

226

General Software Discussion / Re: Simple Machines Forum Organization in Chaos

« on: February 10, 2010, 03:10 PM »

If they don't get their act together this year we should start looking for different forum software. Only when we have found an acceptable alternative should we switch.

I'd love to stick to smf though; but only if the community gets their issues sorted.

227

Living Room / Re: Someone needs to expand our WikiPedia article

« on: February 09, 2010, 03:20 PM »

http://www.google.co...%3Adonationcoder.com might work. Maybe we'll find more references in our own DB though: there are numerous posts saying where DC has been mentioned in an article.

228

Living Room / Re: Nearly caught by spam.. [or 'Saved by Thunderbird']

« on: February 09, 2010, 09:36 AM »

I have made it a habit to never click but to always copy and paste the url. I assume this helps against a few scams.

229

Living Room / Re: The Diagram of Geek Culture

« on: February 09, 2010, 09:00 AM »

Hooray! I have a purpose in life again!

230

General Software Discussion / Re: CNet: Utilities Starter Kit - Software Roundup

« on: February 09, 2010, 08:56 AM »

They totally missed out Circledock!

Even though I probably won't ever use it myself, I believe it is the best dock because the mouse does not have to travel so much.

231

General Software Discussion / Re: Batch photo filter software?

« on: February 09, 2010, 08:52 AM »

Whenever I hear "batch" and "photo" (or "image") I think of Imagemagick. I have used it myself very often and generally was quite satisfied with the results.

For improved user experience there is Phatch which provides a GUI. I have not used phatch yet though; however, it is intriguing.

232

Living Room / Re: Seagate's Replica: Highly praised foolproof backup drive and software

« on: February 09, 2010, 08:41 AM »

I wonder if the admin at work might want to use replica. The other day we found out the backup solution didn't backup at all because one of the disks couldn't spin up. Naturally said solution also opted not to report such an issue...

And then management has to clear the funds, and the assistant admin has to go shopping. All in all, we might have a working backup solution by christmas! 

233

Living Room / Re: Worldometers -- real time stats around the world

« on: February 09, 2010, 08:34 AM »

I wonder what Information is Beautiful could do with these numbers.

234

Living Room / Re: Tale of a Would-Be Spy, Buried Treasure, and Uncrackable Code

« on: February 09, 2010, 08:31 AM »

First, hooray for wired having a "full page" link, so I do not have to go through hoops to read the whole article.

Second, it was interesting to read. Very exciting with real FBI agents and such. I did not look, but do you know if they released all of Regan's ciphertexts for hobby cryptographers to decode? I might find the time to try to crack it myself

Neal Stephenson also uses various encryption methods in his book "Cryptonomicon" which I can highly recommend.

235

Living Room / Re: The Diagram of Geek Culture

« on: February 09, 2010, 08:26 AM »

Bill Gates an idol? 

Guess I am not a geek then. 

236

Living Room / Re: How Success Killed Duke Nukem - A heartbreaking story of developer failure

« on: February 09, 2010, 08:15 AM »

There is a little wisdom in "release early - release often" it seems.

For several years I had problems finishing projects myself. Sometimes I wasn't even working on them anymore and still could not "let go".

This improved after a showed some of these projects to a friend of mine who, in my view, is a brilliant programmer. He not only criticized my work in kind words but also added improvements that led me in the right direction.

I am now much more confident to say: This is Good Enough! It passes the tests, it does not throw exceptions, it completes the use case - let's release it.

Being able to say "Good Enough" also relieves a lot of stress!

237

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for February 9th, 2010 - "Valentine Computing"

« on: February 09, 2010, 08:06 AM »

whoa this feels like a massive newsletter! Thanks for all the work.

I cannot imagine how much work it is though. I have been only following the first few links and already spent over an hour!

I think this is another thing that makes DC so special: the newsletter are always one of a kind; even though the are formatted the same (introduction, feature, headings, list of links) they certainly do not feel repetitious. So I want to thank all the newsletter editors for their efforts and want to assure them at least *I* appreciate each and every single issue.

238

Living Room / Re: How can we *share* Donationcoder.com better in 2010?

« on: February 09, 2010, 07:58 AM »

Every little bit can help. Just don't go overboard.

-app103 (January 05, 2010, 05:57 PM)

This is very very important.

Don't sharepromoteadvertisemarket every little thing, because that little thing would have to stand against all the other little things. Only share the stuff YOU like, and you REALLY want others to know. If it's not important to you, it cannot be important (enough to bother them with it) for them.

However, I do think a little more exposure would be nice

239

Site/Forum Features / Re: Gothic Idea for new page on the site/forum -- random thread page

« on: February 09, 2010, 07:36 AM »

Can we somehow make use of stumbleupon or so? But that might expose uses to that service who do not wish to get caught in their fangs... privacy (perceived and actual) and such.

I am thinking of a 'thing' similar to stumbleupon though: users can rate, tag, and suggest threads and posts to other users; users could stumble through the forum according to certain criteria (unread, tag=foo, older than x days, in this subforum, not in this subforum, and more).

Naturally this should be optional and not force people to change the way they use our forum.

240

Developer's Corner / Re: Is a website login script something people on DC need?

« on: February 07, 2010, 06:17 AM »

Looking at it that way makes much more sense indeed!

I am in favor of such a section on DC.

241

General Software Discussion / Re: word and excel shortcut

« on: February 07, 2010, 05:41 AM »

I do not know such a shortcut off the top of my head, but you could experiment with a combination of PgUp/Left/Home and Shift/Ctrl.

242

General Software Discussion / Re: on OS updates and breakage

« on: February 07, 2010, 05:39 AM »

Last time I lost something it was my own fault.

243

Developer's Corner / Re: Is a website login script something people on DC need?

« on: February 07, 2010, 05:29 AM »

And here I thought Simple Machines Forum already came with all the needed stuff for user registration and management, and with login and logout features.

So, yes I would use such a script on DC, as I have for years. But I do not see where the "addition" comes from.

244

General Software Discussion / Re: Scumbags Hall of Shame

« on: January 26, 2010, 12:39 PM »

I think we should put the names from image in the first post in this thread as text as well, so people can easily find them. We shouldn't link them, just name and shame them.

245

General Software Discussion / Praise: Fastspring

« on: January 26, 2010, 12:35 PM »

I have to sing praises for Fastspring.

A few weeks ago I bought the game Machinarium from Amanita and liked it very much. So later I bought their Christmas pack as well. It's a cute game!

But then I lost all my data on my harddisk due to a failed OS update and a botched rescue mission. When I wanted to play the game I realized of course it was no longer there. I then sent an email to Fastspring and explained the situation and also provided the payment information I got from my paypal account. Just one day later I received emails which contained the download links! 

There was no going back and forth, no double or triple checking who I was; no automatic answer like 'did you read the faq' or stuff like that.

So hats off to Fastspring for excellent customer service! 

246

General Software Discussion / Re: Saving web pages

« on: January 06, 2010, 04:59 AM »

If there is javascript involved, it might not work when the saved file is opened via file://-protocol.

247

Finished Programs / Re: ZIP to PHP converter

« on: January 05, 2010, 06:45 AM »

This is a very cool idea! Can it cope with tarballs (.tar or .tar.gz) as well?

248

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: Special Edition Newsletter for January 4th, 2010 - Codename "NANY APPS 2010"

« on: January 04, 2010, 02:42 PM »

Yay for newsletter!

And yay for NANY. This is a very good idea for everyone: the programmers, the users, the donationcoder site. And although I managed again to not participate, I could feel the excitement in the forum threads or in the channel. I am glad it's over in the sense that we can release all these great works; otoh I am already looking forward to what NANY2011 will bring.

Thank you all for your hard work. I love donationcoder. 

249

Developer's Corner / Re: micropayments - how are the filesharing people making it work?

« on: January 02, 2010, 09:29 AM »

Some of these filehosting sites like rapidshit have a subscription plan where subscribers pay a certain amount to be able to download without the usual limitations (wait several seconds/minutes, max so-and-so many MB per hour per IP, and so forth). I think that's how they generate revenue.

250

Living Room / Re: Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling

« on: January 01, 2010, 11:50 AM »

This is really helpful. Well, the violent language makes it a little less ernst. I think a good many people could actually profit from reading this, if only they read it.

However, I have one question regarding loose/lose: how do you spell the opposite of "find"?