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Messages - iphigenie [ switch to compact view ]

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251
Those of you who have made the jump - did you tweak windows so that the often written folders (cache, virtual memory files, temp folders, user folder) are on another drive or did you just install as normal? Of course on a laptop there is no choice, it is all or nothing anyway, but on a multi drive desktop it might be worth it

PS: I used to do that on XP just to protect my files and settings through the regular reinstalls, but things seem more tangled on windows 7 - but when I dig in there are a lot of configuration, settings and files in the hidden folders under the user tree (put there automatically by apps), some of which would be sorely missed in case of a failure and are not easy to back up except with manual configuration (since the files are hidden)

252
Living Room / Re: Tech shopping tips
« on: May 22, 2011, 10:45 AM »
Some systematic errors in mainstream tech shopping that bug me

- :down: buying on screen size not resolution. Resolution matters (imo) at least as much as screen size.

- :down: buying cameras on MP. Once we passed 5MP it becomes far more important to have a good lens, good zoom, good sensors to produce good images. Yet we see cameras making worse images (as in the new model makes worse images than the previous model) but with more pixels, because people buy the MP.

- :down: ignoring antenna power and battery life on mobile phones.

My main rule? buy things that are at least 6 months out, perhaps even a year. Reviews are always super positive in the first week/month, then the hairballs come out

253
DC Gamer Club / Re: AI War: Fleet Command
« on: May 20, 2011, 02:26 AM »
you can buy AI war on impulse and gamersgate as well - less invasive than steam. Impulse has a client, whereabout GG just has a download manager that starts a game download (per game in the installation file, not installed on the computer)

254
Living Room / Re: Farewell Skype ...
« on: May 11, 2011, 09:19 AM »
Skype keeps the laptop/desktop as a good tool for communication - that's of value to microsoft in the face of all the cloud and mobile stuff.

I cant seem them kill it, it running on all platforms increases its value for all.

Although certainly they will make it play nice with office, live chat, and is also extend the corporate services so skype can work within the business framework (Dynamics, Sharepoint etc.) - move skype into a less centralised model perhaps

If they were clever they could make it more open... that would shake things up a lot :)

255
Living Room / Re: Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading List
« on: May 07, 2011, 12:50 PM »
How much time have you got? avid fiction reader here - I cant even keep my librarything up to date... http://www.libraryth...om/catalog/iphigenie

As for the Hugo/Nebula list, It is rather scary, I have read most of them  :o

256
General Software Discussion / Re: Delicious' new home..
« on: May 06, 2011, 01:47 AM »
I use diigo as my main bookmark service -mostly I started using it due to some of the cool features such as highlighting/annotation, lists but first and foremost the "keep a cached copy" (and full content search that comes with it, meaning i dont have to waste time tagging/organising). So I bookmark specific content in diigo. But I use delicious as a backup (can be automatic with diigo) because:
- almost every service/site out there will integrate with delicious, but almost no other bookmarking service
- many more people seem to use delicious as main or backup than any other service, so my network on delicious often produces great discoveries

But yeah, i'm not sure what will happen and a little concerned, but with the api and export tools it is easy to keep copies of a lot of the information. Of course if you invested a lot in organising tag bundles etc. you might lose a lot more than me who just bookmarks.

257
I still encounter places that dont accept a - in a name... grrr or want a US state even for other countries...

But this is not just a deadline thing - it is a management thing, siloed thinking, in my experience. Not having QA as a separate team (even if temporarily), not having the right stakeholder input (hint: more than just marketing should have a say...)

And pretty much this happens everywhere there is custom development, really - and the sad thing is, that in these kinds of projects it is so easy to put feedback loops and testing in place... But I remember a story of the SAP system in J&J which in Europe for the CRM part did not allow italian phone numbers. So the team in Italy had to do each their own workaround for over 2 years, putting numbers in other fields, losing the sync to PDA option etc. A CRM. in a Fortune 100 company. Cant handle phone numbers... (and it wasnt the only problem)

258
Developer's Corner / Re: Endless Projects - Dr. Dobbs article
« on: May 05, 2011, 04:23 AM »
To me there is no big difference for small projects - as long as there are good libraries to match the problem domain and the general abstraction model.

And as others have said, the first time you encounter a language with a good ecosystem and a great IDE it makes a hue difference :)

The right abstraction model (oo, functional, aspect oriented etc.) that matches how you think and solve problems can make a  big difference. I can totally believe that there would be a language that makes really good programmers (the ones already 10 times more productive than average) more productive by another factor 10

For larger projects, or longer in time, i think it can matter even more - but there is often a tradeoff

- some languages make it easier to translate the thinking into code the first time, they flow easier for you - this is often familiarity as much as anything, but it counts
- some languages make it easier to extend, refactor, debug over time (and some languages make it easier to be correct and consistent and error free up front)
- some languages make it easier to develop with a team and with other functions (UX, BA), with easy separation of concern, domain model, assets etc.
- some languages make it easier to manage and deploy and monitor
- some languages make it easier to measure, document and communicate the system... it can go on

trick is, at the moment based on my experience over years, they are not the same languages, especially in a team setting - and sometimes it's a tough tradeoff

259
I'm *in* the industry and I feel like tearing my hair out near daily. Especially in ecommerce sites and corporate mazes sites

But I doubt it is a developer issue

260
Living Room / Re: The internet in 1990 -- holy smokes!
« on: May 04, 2011, 02:17 PM »
I still thing the internet from today, especially social media, has a lot to learn of the ecosystem of these old days - especially usenet. Features we had in newsreaders to find, save, organise posts - filters, killfiles, saving, collate into collections - are sorely missing from . And some of the idioms of the days could do with a revival (standard format for collections, finger, plan files, geek codes) perhaps as microformats :)

We have more problems with noise, trolls, fame-seekers, topic hijacking, fakeries etc. now than we had then, and the way communities had evolved to handle it could be useful patterns even now :)

261
Post New Requests Here / Re: PlayDead
« on: April 24, 2011, 03:20 AM »
I can think of tools that would disable all keys but a subset, but making the power button be ignored is not all that common (well, i would know how to on linux/bsd)...

In your specific circumstances I would think that a screensaver or tool that makes the computer look very busy might be a better scenario :)

262
Living Room / Re: what is the benefit of this old style network
« on: April 24, 2011, 03:18 AM »
still very commonly done on server clusters

security is one reason, another is performance - two sets of NICs means that any intense internet traffic will not affect the internal applications communications. If there was remote access or large downloads/uploads occasionally, it might have been a consideration.

Also means that if the internet network is under load or attack, there is the other network to reach the machine to make changes, maintenance, monitoring etc.

263
Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?
« on: April 23, 2011, 07:43 AM »
Reading Zoo City, which appeared about 10 times in Locus' 2010 Recommended book lists. http://angryrobotboo...urenbeukes/zoo-city/ It is modern/future urban fantasy in a South African setting

It is certainly unique and intriguing so far, but I am not quite halfway through.

Note: I have bought several books (ebooks) from Angry Robot and it is certainly publishing some very interesting authors and titles if you are into various kinds of speculative fiction

264
Don't they realise that ALL material uploaded is copyrighted? Technically these lines I type are copyright me whether i assert it or not...

They should be more precise "content which a large corporation claims intellectual monopoly" and "uploaded in ways not considered fair use"

The digital distribution system does not yet allow usage patterns which everyone would consider fair, such as two married people both being able to play a music tune or a game, or read a book... (which would be totally easy if the music or game was bought on DVD, or the book bought in print)


265
Developer's Corner / Re: Documenting the Why not just the What
« on: April 14, 2011, 04:43 PM »
It's something I learned and tell my devs: try to code -and document- to yourself in 2 years looking back

Hm-m-m ... thought it was just me  :huh:.  I've been chastised in the past - corporate world - for being overly verbose in code.  This, mind you, by fellas that could make neither head nor tail of code they'd written just six (6) months agone  ;D.  External documentation is not my strong suit when it comes to apps I've created, but internal comments have been such that I could come back a decade later and know what - and sometimes the why of it - I'd done.  Thought it was standard practice  :o?  Now I don't feel so bad about some of the Web stuff I've done recently ... seems I'm in popular/common, if not good, company  ;D.

On a slightly different, hopefully related, note ... how much does it matter between having in-line documentation as opposed to external?  Yeah, the obvious bit about not having the separate document, but what else?  The relevance is that I'm showing someone else how to do some rather esoteric Web pages, and we have a constant battle over in-page comments ... she claims they slow loading time.  For that matter, what weight do comments in compiled code have, as opposed to pure code?  Is there really a significant trade-off  :-\?  Or is the reason just laziness?


Note: my opinion is of course influenced by my experience, which is mostly on fairly large scale internet/web technology solutions, on code that needs to evolved over months and years and with teams that will also evolve, and of inheriting such systems already a few years old and in trouble...

In line versus separate: you want both, of course, because when you are reporting about a system or picking something new up, you want to be able to do that by reviewing 1 file instead of having to scan the whole code. But when you are digging to reengineer or tracing a problem, nothing beats in context documentation to speed up the process. And ideally you want both without having to duplicate effort. I have always liked systems that can take inline comments + (ideally) syntax analysis and generate documentation - but then I was totally influenced by perl and its pod, then later javadoc/phpdoc so I am totally biased.

But still, I think there is some progress that could be made to minimize work duplication and maximise documentation value - from spec/user stories + code comments + code syntax => system docs, api docs, test cases etc.

In my opinion, if you dont have automation of these and dont have the time (and who has?) then:
- in line documentation comes first, because it is easy to maintain
- at least 1 arch document of the solution structure
- diary of design decisions and design debt (decisions we know could cause work or issues later if the system evolves in certain ways, but since we are not sure it will ever go this way and it saves time/effort/complexity...), easiest is to do that in the ticketing system or a wiki
- api, can be self documenting (eg in the case of WSDL)

Performance: In interpreted code the comments can in some cases have an impact, although it is something i received as received opinion, I haven't ever bothered to benchmark. I did notice an impact in javascript though, but that is because the files are sent to the client, so logically size matters.

If comments are an issue there is a way to get them stripped as part of the continuous integration/build/deployment process, several of the tools used in these set ups can strip comments prior to deployment, they can sometimes also do other forms of compressing

266
Developer's Corner / Re: Documenting the Why not just the What
« on: April 10, 2011, 06:18 AM »
It's something I learned and tell my devs: try to code -and document- to yourself in 2 years looking back

Picture yourself having to go back to the thing in 2 years, or even a year. Most likely, your future self will shake their head at the mess and quality of it. That is normal. You'll know better in two years, one hopes. But if your future self will tear their hair out and imagine their hands around your neck... well... document and/or refactor some more :)

In the fast moving, agile web world, often all you can do is document all the design debt you have accumulated in the product against future pain. But at least you can do that.

267
General Software Discussion / Re: SpiderOak - very nice people =)
« on: April 09, 2011, 12:09 PM »
another nice feature: command line - every action, configuration etc. you can do in the gui you can also do in the command line. Which means you can create stuff like "add this file to spideroak backup" context menus or in scripts. Or if for some reason the gui has problems you can go restore a file...

I don't know if others offer that too, but I have found it useful :)

I do find that the synchronisation is a bit inefficient, but as mentioned in this thread it is the price of encryption. I used to have some syncs but they caused me problems, but perhaps I should revisit that. Problem is the main things I want to sync are settings and saved games, so not 1 tree, but lots of little 2-3 file syncs

268
General Software Discussion / Re: SpiderOak - very nice people =)
« on: April 09, 2011, 12:03 PM »
The thing I don't like about SpiderOak (the software) is that if you try to restore from a backup (after a format, for example), it will copy everything back to the original directory locations and doesn't give you an option to download the content to a different location.

I went and restored a whole bunch of settings etc. and it did ask me whether I wanted them in the original location or a folder of my chosing.

269
General Software Discussion / Re: SpiderOak - very nice people =)
« on: April 07, 2011, 01:37 PM »
I am very pleased with spideroak, been a paying customer for a while, got several people to use it (although none paying i dont think). They seem like a bunch of real people working together, which is how i prefer my online companies to be. People with names, less posturing, pedigree and less legalese than many :Thmbsup: (many of the online backup companies have slick site, 2-3 "pedigreed serial silicon valley entrepreneurs" listed on the about page, no real people and no real contact details...)

Early on the main attraction was that it worked on linux, so no matter what machine i had and what os I booted, i could backup and recover things. Things like versioning and encryption came as icing on the cake. I do think the sync is a bit unwieldy (especially in disk space used) but it is safe. I think I have used nearly all features at one point or another.

270
Living Room / Re: The "Cloud" Goes Up in Smoke
« on: April 07, 2011, 08:06 AM »
I dont think the problem here was the data lost, i am sure these photographers kept DVD backups - but this was their storefront as well. They probably had weddings waiting to review the images, and contracts attached...

It is easy to say "dont keep your data only in the cloud" (or online) but the problem there is "dont keep your business model only in the cloud" and alas for many business models it is by definition going to be only in the cloud.

And that will always be a problem with ecommerce on any hosted solution. Hosting your own is a little safer, but a lot more work. Having 2 is probably a reasonable option, or having one based on open source where you have the backups/dumps and could get someone else to set up an alternate option fast...

271
Skwire Empire / Re: Birthdays (simple birthday tracking app)
« on: April 07, 2011, 04:40 AM »
It's tough, isnt it, to keep a piece of software small and perfectly formed, features seem to just sprout :)

This is just for information - I was looking into the matter for other reasons recently, and it might be useful: both gmail and facebook allow export of birthdays, but only as ical. If you are looking at one off import this might be a useful option to consider.

I would say that is my biggest problem with birthdays: you seem to copy/enter them over and over. Phone, email client, online tool, paper diary. And as a result you dont copy all of them, losing some behind that you might regret later (especially if you forget you hadnt copied everything and reformat the machine) and never have all of them anywhere. My side project was looking into "master data" for contacts but especially birthdays, and how to import/export/convert so i can have them on my phone, online etc. and not miss a birthday whether I am home or travelling :)

272
I found that as I install lots of software to try, and lots of games, and several portable, no installation or command line utilities, I spent too much time cleaning up and managing menus and entries, and still had broken links, removed programs still appearing, and missing entries that I had to go seek in the file system and create and edit shortcuts for.

End up reinstalling a machine and you need to redo it all, or having to artificially reinstall software which would work perfectly directly... just because it is missing shortcuts (and sometimes installation on a new windows wont be able to reuse the old configs so not reinstalling is best) and if you split your time across several PCs, well, you never have quite the same set of apps on each, and it's just far too much time wasted with menus and stuff. And almost every startup or menu utility out there relies on you manually adding every entry. Not fun when you are a software addict.

So when I found Task Commander I loved it - it will add a little menu dot on the task bar which starts the menu. And it autopopulates the menu from every software that is triggered by the user - whether from the start menu, command line, a tool like FARR, or post an installation routine. The software could do that because as a task manager it was monitoring tasks anyway. It would catch more executables than I really wanted (install programs, for example) but I found it was WAY less work for me to quickly hide all these and organise the rest.

It was quirky but made my life easier. All the other features of task commander I didnt really need, but that one I miss.

But it hasnt made sense for them to port the tool to Vista/7 because most of these other features are now covered out of the box and I must be rather unique about the self populating menu

I really miss that, and I wonder, anyone encountered that feature elsewhere?

273
@iphigenie

That screenshot is pretty damning...

Actually I think that screenshot is less damning - at least the first thing on the page is "your download will start shortly" and there is a clear direct link if it fails to start. The Webroot Ad is clearly an advert and has a clear statement to that effect at the top of it.

-Carol Haynes (April 04, 2011, 08:06 AM)

The clear statement is new, and yes it improves things :) I suspect it was added after too many people complained.
And iirc the ads you get often depend on the mirrors rather than sourceforge direct. Technically you can go in and exclude certain mirrors if they do too much invasive advertising.

I just imagine someone less savvy to the way of computers following a link to download an open source program and falling on what looks at first glance like an order form that wants all imaginable information. They might go back and decide open source is just too scary.

On a personal note I chose not to use ad blockers, because I want to respect the way a publisher wants to get an income. I will accept the advertising OR not use a site with too much advertising and look for alternatives. I will sometimes pay for ad free options on sites I use a lot. Of course it comes from having worked in the web industry for a very long time and that includes long stints in the publishing industry with advertising supported sites and all its challenges and struggles. But I see respecting what a producer/publisher does to have an income to be the same for websites as for software or music. Either I accept it, or if I can't accept it, then I dont use/buy, I look for alternatives.

274
you bought the potato sack :)

And Defense Grid is great

275
DC Gamer Club / Re: Hoard
« on: April 05, 2011, 12:52 PM »
It wasnt unlocked for us (preordered 4 pack) earlier but for the last few hours it has. R is deep in it already...

PS: am superiphi on steam

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