Messages

976

Developer's Corner / Re: Cross-platform Coders Editor

« on: January 30, 2009, 01:34 AM »

*puts fire extinguisher next to chair*

What about emacs?

977

Best Text Editor / Re: How to do multiple selection on UltraEdit

« on: January 15, 2009, 02:29 AM »

If you mean selecting a rectangle of text by marking a block inside multiple lines, then you probably are looking for column mode (shortcut Alt-C).

http://www.ultraedit...dit/column_mode.html

978

General Software Discussion / Re: Website Watcher 5 is out - Plus Aignes.com blog

« on: January 15, 2009, 12:32 AM »

It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the list of new features, but I'm sad to see Martin changed the upgrade policy from free minor updates to a 1-year subscription plan.

Can't blame him though, he has been providing free updates to v4.xx for years and probably needs to make more money.

Edit: apparently this was changed almost a year ago and I just hadn't noticed .. I guess I should have used WSW to track it's own upgrade policy page .

979

Best Virtual Machine Tool / Re: no VirtualBox ???

« on: January 12, 2009, 11:15 AM »

The DonationCoder review was done in 2005 and the first public release of VirtualBox was in 2007, so I guess we will have to blame the lack of time machines .

980

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: PESplash

« on: December 29, 2008, 02:20 AM »

It sounds like a really neat idea .. is it similar in functionality to hydan?

981

Developer's Corner / Re: Dina in TTF format?

« on: October 10, 2008, 02:27 AM »

Thanks for your work on converting Dina to TTF format .. I have posted a link in this thread.

982

Jibz's Tools / Dina in TTF format

« on: October 10, 2008, 02:25 AM »

Nathaniel Sabanski has posted a link in this thread to his conversion of the Dina font to TTF format:

http://www.geenat.com/?p=66

It's something that has been requested a lot of times, and I have been reluctant to do because of the amount of work and expensive software involved in proper vector font hinting. It's great someone else has taken a stab at it though, so Dina is now available to programs that do not support bitmap fonts .

983

General Software Discussion / Re: BeyondCompare 3 Released

« on: August 07, 2008, 03:08 PM »

Upgraded to version 3 pro, thanks once again Scooter Software and DonationCoder.com .

984

Official Announcements / Re: August 2008 Discounts

« on: August 06, 2008, 09:39 AM »

Which once again makes it cheaper to buy a new license (pro) than to upgrade .. guess that will be my 3rd one then.

985

Developer's Corner / Re: Article: Performance Comparison: C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Jython, JRuby, Groovy

« on: July 29, 2008, 03:23 AM »

The C++ version looks like it would be spending most of it's time on allocating and deallocating memory. The default allocator is not suited for small objects, and most C++ coders would write the code in a different way due to that (or use a small object allocator).

The issue rears it's head because he is not comparing the speed of an algorithm, but comparing the speed of running an algorithm one million times.

986

Developer's Corner / Re: Mutex Problem

« on: July 19, 2008, 02:40 AM »

I don't have RAD studio myself, so I wouldn't be able to compile it I'm afraid.

I am sure there must be some way to compile with debug information turned on, which should let you pinpoint the exact place in your code where the error occurs. Then you will have to look through the code and figure out why and how to fix it.

It does sound a bit troublesome if the IDE gives you the error before you even start running your code though, may be a bug in that.

987

Developer's Corner / Re: Mutex Problem

« on: July 18, 2008, 02:13 AM »

If you do not need access to the thread while it is doing it's job, you can free the handle you get from CreateThread right away with CloseHandle.

If you do need access to it, it probably means you are going to be waiting for some kind of result from it, which you can do using the WaitForSingleObject/WaitForMultipleObjects functions.

By the way, it appears there is a potential problem in your code; if the user presses Button1 a thread is created and the handle is stored in a global variable, if the user presses Button2 while the thread is running, this global variable is overwritten with the handle of the second thread.

988

Developer's Corner / Re: Mutex Problem

« on: July 15, 2008, 03:09 PM »

Depends on what you mean by closing a process.

If you mean you have opened a handle to a process, and you want to close that handle, then CloseHandle.

If you mean you are a thread in the process you wish to close, then ExitProcess.

If you mean terminating another process that you are not directly involved in, then TerminateProcess (which is a bit harsh, and you might be better off adding some method of closing the process if you are the one coding it).

989

Developer's Corner / Re: Mutex Problem

« on: July 15, 2008, 01:55 PM »

The default permissions probably allow another process to open the mutex. I have used something along the lines of the following in the past:

[Select]

// attempt to create mutex
hMutex = CreateMutex(NULL, FALSE, szMutexName);

// get error state
dwVal = GetLastError();

// check if creating the mutex succeeded
if (dwVal != ERROR_SUCCESS)
{
    // if we got a handle to an already existing object, close it
    if (dwVal == ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS) CloseHandle(hMutex);

    // exit
    return 0;
}

...

CloseHandle(hMutex);

990

Living Room / Re: Picking the right mouse for gaming - suggestions?

« on: June 28, 2008, 05:42 AM »

I've used the various Logitech MX gaming mice, and am currently using a Logitech G5. Be sure to get a wired mouse for gaming -- nothing worse than having to leave your friends in the middle of battle because you have to recharge your rat .

Personally I have not installed the accompanying logitech software for any of them.

991

Developer's Corner / Re: OpenSSL Vulnerability?

« on: May 17, 2008, 03:25 AM »

This is a Debian-specific vulnerability which does not affect other operating systems which are not based on Debian. However, other systems can be indirectly affected if weak keys are imported into them.

-Debian Security Advisory

Please note that:

It is important for administrators to note that even if they replace and upgrade the OpenSSL package they must recreate and replace any keys or certificates generated by the broken OpenSSL kit.

992

Living Room / Re: Microsoft Bid for Yahoo - Interesting Development...

« on: February 29, 2008, 02:11 PM »

Who would have guessed comparatively unobtrusive text adds that even sometimes seem remotely relevant would have won the competition against the flashing malware-ridden window-spawning sex adds that many other add companies fill your screen with .

993

Post New Requests Here / Re: Request: (Email) Extractor With Options

« on: January 30, 2008, 10:17 AM »

print "$1\n" if /([\w+-]+(?:\.[\w+-]+)*@\w+(?:\.\w+)+)/

994

Official Announcements / Re: January 2008 Software Drawing Winners

« on: January 27, 2008, 10:23 AM »

Just for the record, I was in no way complaining about the selection process -- I know mouser has put a lot of effort into making the program doing it as fair as humanly possible .

I just sat there looking at the winner list and pondered how many had actually won multiple times, which was of course more than enough of an excuse for me to write a perl script to sort through the data .

995

Official Announcements / Re: January 2008 Software Drawing Winners

« on: January 27, 2008, 04:41 AM »

Congratulations to the winners!

Here's me being bored:

I went through the drawing result posts I could find in this forum section, and there was a grand total of 683 prizes won.

These prizes were won by 486 lucky people.

Of those, 138 have won twice or more, and 44 have won three times or more.

The three most winning users were:

superboyac (6: XFilesDialog, ACDSee Pro, MyBase, HDDLife, Zoom Player Pro, EverNote Plus)
dcm (5: Process Lasso, PageSpy Pro, MetaProducts Links Organizer, MusicIP Mixer Premium, FontExpert 2007)
Darwin (5: File-Ex, Almeza Apps, Collectorz organizer, Notezilla, Camtasia Studio)

Disclaimer: Winning of course relates to how many programs you enter the contest for, and how many others enter for the same programs .. that being said, I'd still love for superboyac to buy me a lottery ticket .

996

General Software Discussion / Re: Darik's Boot and Nuke

« on: November 19, 2007, 02:34 AM »

What, no screenshots of the actual app running?

997

General Software Discussion / Re: Question: Does the GPL allow program redistribution?

« on: October 03, 2007, 10:02 AM »

Here is the reply from the FSF licensing people for your reference:

The position stated in the GPL FAQ is correct.  After careful review with
our attorneys, we concluded that the installer was a separate work from the
GPLed program it installs.  As a result, it is not a derivative work
subject to the GPL's terms.  You have our sincerest apologies for the
earlier confusion.

-Licensing Compliance Engineer

998

General Software Discussion / Re: Question: Does the GPL allow program redistribution?

« on: October 03, 2007, 02:10 AM »

That's interesting.

I wonder if it is a change in GPL v3 that makes a difference, or if this is an example of how complicated the GPL is.

I have contacted the FSF licensing people again pointing out this apparent inconsistency, and I hope they can clear it up .

999

General Software Discussion / Re: Question: Does the GPL allow program redistribution?

« on: October 02, 2007, 03:22 AM »

Let me give you a quote from an answer I got from the FSF licensing department after asking a similar question:

> I was unable to find any information about this subject on your page,
> so I am hoping you can help clear up what the rules are.
>
> The question is: Is it legal to distribute files covered by the GPL in
> a self-extracting archive or installer, if the stub is not GPL'ed?

No.

-GPL Compliance Engineer

Short and to the point.

1000

Living Room / Re: question on compression and storage: help me be less stupid

« on: September 10, 2007, 05:27 AM »

Your idea is very good of course, and I think it is one that anybody who starts to look at compression has at some point .

Let's look at why no algorithm you may device will be able to compress any large amount of data into a short formula.

You want your decompression function to be a bijection, by which I mean it should be possible to decompress into any original data, and given compressed data there should be only one possible decompressed value.

The short formula your algorithm produces will be represented in the computer in a number of bytes. Since these bytes only give you a finite number of possible values, which is small compared to the vast amount of possible values of the original large data, the decompression function cannot possibly be bijective.

Try to imagine making an algorithm that will compress any integer in the range 1-1000 down to an integer in the range 1-10, and which can decompress that value back to the original value.

So any general compression algorithm that is able to compress some samples of data, will have to expand other samples.

There is a fairly good explanation of this on wikipedia also: Lossless data compression must always make some files longer.