Messages

176

General Software Discussion / Re: ghacks post: "Why I decided to uninstall my Antivirus software"

« on: December 08, 2007, 11:32 PM »

The problems is not viruses, but trojans imho. they could be sending your credit card details out if you're not careful and leaving them on your system for a day already compromises you.

-justice (December 08, 2007, 09:39 PM)

Sounds like some girlfriends I've had.

177

GOE 2007 Challenge Downloads / Re: SMAU - GOE Challenge 2007 Entry

« on: December 08, 2007, 11:31 PM »

There we go.  Whew, that *was* spooky.

178

GOE 2007 Challenge Downloads / Re: SMAU - GOE Challenge 2007 Entry

« on: December 08, 2007, 11:07 PM »

So I can change it back now?

179

GOE 2007 Challenge Downloads / Re: SMAU - GOE Challenge 2007 Entry

« on: December 08, 2007, 08:31 PM »

What do you mean?

180

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Do this First.

« on: December 08, 2007, 04:05 PM »

I may be having a brain phart (if I had a brain) but I thought that we had got over the next year hump. If I put in something for e.g. 01/15 I get a negative time back to last January.

-BigJim (December 08, 2007, 03:36 PM)

Oy, it's supposed to be handling that.  I'll take a look.  The date evaluation code got a rewrite because of the time bug; it's possible I broke something.

One small point: just about all of my "To-Do's" have a time of day attached and I'm a died-in-the-wool 24 hour clock guy. It would be handy to not have to put a colon in the time to make it work.

Forgot about this one.  Will do ASAP.

181

Living Room / World's Fastest Vista Notebook: The Apple MacBook Pro

« on: December 08, 2007, 03:19 PM »

Holy irony, Batman.  The fastest Vista notebook ever tested by PC World is made by Apple.

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



And priced below $2,500 USD it's reasonable for what you get:

- 17 inch widescreen
- 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 CPU
- 4GB RAM
- nVidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics
- 160GB drive
- 802.11n and Bluetooth
- Honking Big Apple logo

Note that it outperformed every other notebook tested, even machines specifically designed with Vista in mind.   And clocking 141 FPS on Crysis it's a damn sight faster than my desktop.  Getting past the fact it's only got one mouse button and moderate/sucky battery life, I can still see myself with one of these.

But (surprise, surprise) it doesn't come with Vista.  You'll have to supply your own copy of that. 

182

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Do this First.

« on: December 08, 2007, 02:57 PM »

Try this one, please.  Recompiled and tested on a plain-vanilla XP workstation.  Minimized to tray and Due/For syntax worked OK.

Thanks,
Ralf

183

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Do this First.

« on: December 08, 2007, 02:50 PM »

Erm... both versions?  New and old icons?  I just noticed the files are significantly different in size, like maybe my compiler barfed.

I'll take a look immediately!

184

Living Room / TOP 10 Theories Why Neanderthals Disappeared

« on: December 08, 2007, 02:16 PM »

One of the great mysteries of science: why did Neanderthals, a supremely successful progenitor of man, suddenly disappear about 45,000 years ago?  It was sudden in geological terms, and quite unprecedented.  There are many theories, but none have been singled out for dominance.  Until Now.

10. Space aliens came and swapped them out for an improved version.

9. Slunk away after losing monumental rock/paper/scissors contest with early Homo Sapiens.

8. All eaten by tricerotopses (Intelligent Design winner).

7. Succumbed to Atkins Diet, forgetting they are primarily herbivores.

6. Sudden infatuation with the gay/lesbian lifestyle.

5. Climbed back into their Space Arks and went home ("There Goes the Neighborhood" theory).

4. Discovered 48 Proof beer and partied like it was 44,999 BC.

3. Disasterous hunger strike waiting for Duke Nukem Forever.

2. There never were any Neanderthals!  Merely a prank that's gotten out of hand over the years.

1. Darwin went back in a time machine and accidently stepped on a butterfly.

185

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you testing XP SP3 RC ??

« on: December 08, 2007, 01:57 PM »

Nighted, thanks for risking your crumpets.  :-)

186

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Connected to Network Notification Window

« on: December 08, 2007, 01:35 PM »

Glad you like it.

As I said, this is just a proof-of-concept.  If the networking part actually works as advertised, then I'll be happy to pile on the goodies.   Go try it out when you can and report back.  If it passes, then I'll add:

- .INI file to configure IP address, ping interval, and auto-start.

- Lock the IP box so it doesn't change accidently.  (Double-click to unlock?).

- Screen position saved between sessions.  If somebody drags it into a particular corner, it should stay there.

- Some kind of minor animation whenever it's actually pinging, to indicate it's not dead.

- Display of the last time it successfully pinged ("Aw crap, I've been offline for 10 minutes!").

Aside from making it play MP3 files, I'm open to just about anything.  Just lemme know!

187

Living Room / 48 Proof Beer: On Sale Soon!

« on: December 08, 2007, 01:24 PM »

My heroes at Samuel Adams have brewed a 48 proof (24% alcohol) beer.  Finally.

http://www.realbeer....eerbreak20020214.php



This directly addresses my complaints about regular beer, that you can drink a six-pack or two and still operate a car.  With a six-pack of this stuff in your system you'll be lucky to make it to the ambulance. 

My god!  24% alcohol!  I've had weaker straight shots in some bars.  Medical practitioners will use this to sterilize things because not only does it kill germs, its foaming action cleans and brightens.

All hail our new beer overlords! 

188

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Connected to Network Notification Window

« on: December 08, 2007, 01:01 PM »

I wrote a little something.  Take a look at this:



Enter an IP address and hit the Ping button to begin checking at 1 second intervals.  If there's a response to the ping, the graphic turns green.  Otherwise it remains greyed out.  Click the button again to stop the process.

This is a proof of concept -- if it works for you, let me know what you want it to look like and any additional features (configurable ping times, etc).

Thanks,
Ralf

189

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 1 Terrabyte Western Digital Drive for $264 USD

« on: December 08, 2007, 11:42 AM »

Since I only need 250GB, I was thinking about buying one of these and partitioning it into quarters, then using RAID 5.

What could possibly go wrong?

190

Living Room / Re: Gender Genie!

« on: December 08, 2007, 11:37 AM »

What?  All you chicks posting here are really dudes?

191

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« on: December 08, 2007, 11:36 AM »

I think you're right, Carol.  What's hurt Vista the most is the pre-arrival hype.  They should have taken a page from the software gaming industry and downplayed things more... too many halfway decent games were destroyed by reviewers because all the pregame hype made it sound like Jesus was personally writing the thing.

192

Living Room / CommandBurner: Free CD/DVD Burner with Command Line Interface

« on: December 08, 2007, 01:36 AM »

The subject says it all: CommandBurner is a freeware CD/DVD burner that has a nice GUI but also accepts command lines, making it suitable for .bat file use.

http://www.commandburner.com/





I've used it for years, as part of my nightly backup strategy.  I always keep a RW DVD in my drive, and via a .bat file I wrote, CommandBurner wakes up in the middle of the night and overwrites it with a backup archive of my most critical sourcecode and documents.  Once a week I toss the DVD into a fireproof safe, in case the worst happens. 

Call it Murphy's Law insurance: because I do this, I'll never need the disc.

Small, light, rock-solid, useful, and free... doesn't get much better than this.

193

Developer's Corner / Re: Free icons for developers

« on: December 08, 2007, 01:09 AM »

Well, crap.  Sorry about that. 

Good thing I haven't actually used them in my apps.

194

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Do this First.

« on: December 08, 2007, 01:02 AM »

Here's an updated ToDoOrDie v1.5 with bug fixes and improvements:



- Fixed bug in date + time evaluation function where using a date WITHOUT a year component but WITH a time component (e.g. "12/31 8:00 pm") freaked it the hell out.

- If American style dates annoy you, the parser should handle long date formats like "31 Dec 2007" or "December 31, 2007".  It's in there, but the code is (shall we say) only lightly tested.

- New "For" feature.  JennyB requested that TODOD track the time she spends working on an item, then pop up at predefined intervals to remind her with a total accumulated time.

To configure this feature, include the optional magic keyword "For nn" in the task description like so:



...where "nn" is the number of minutes you would like TODOD to wait before popping up -- 30 minutes in the example.  Then, when you launch the item (by double-clicking its icon) TODOD scurries away to the tray and waits 30 minutes before popping up again.  As a bonus, the cumulative total spent with a particular document is tracked and displayed as the (+2:23) in the example.  Each document has its own time counters, and all counters are saved between sessions.  Note that the popup timer only works with one document at a time... start a new one and the first timer is stopped and the second one starts.

When minimized to the tray, hovering the mouse over the TODOD icon displays the elapsed time, the remaining time until the annoying popup pops, and the total time spent messing with the current document for the life of TODOD's tracking it.

Upon popping up, it plays a brief sound: Notify.wav located in the TODOD folder.  If you don't have Notify.wav, one will be created for you.  If you wish, replace Notify.wav with whatever .wav file you prefer.  Deleting it, however, is futile as Notify.wav will be recreated automatically upon TODOD startup.  Muhahahaha!

Whew.  Hope all that makes sense; if not please say so.

CleverCat: I dropped you a personal message about your icon.  (Thanks!)

JennyB: I am so very sorry it took as long as it did for me to get moving on this again.  I've not been doing much recreational coding lately, since work's been sucking the life out of me.  But I found some time now, and I hope this is close to what you envisioned.  Get back to me with bugs and/or feedback and I'll turn it around quicker, I promise.

Thanks,
Ralf

UPDATE: Added a second edition with an alternate icon design provided by CleverCat.  If JennyB prefers this one, I'll make it the default for the project.

195

Developer's Corner / Re: Free icons for developers

« on: December 08, 2007, 12:07 AM »

Also, The Icon Factory's freeware section.

Frequent updates, and gorgeous pixels.

196

General Software Discussion / Re: Max Alert = Max Ripoff

« on: December 07, 2007, 11:56 PM »

I theenk, from reading Tinman's post, that he feels they changed the rules on him.  There's no guarantee that the FAQ on their site now is the same one that was up in 2006. 

In fact, Wayback Machine doesn't have any archives on the place prior to July 2007.  The FAQ may not have even existed when he bought the software.

Even so, the "purchase information" only states that it costs "$29.95 per copy" without mentioning a subscription.  You have to dig down farther in the FAQ to even see that, and it's deceptively labeled "How do I RENEW my license/subscription?"  The implication being that those customers who have opted for a subscription have an option to renew -- no mention that it's required.

So I think Tinman has a valid beef.  But even as deceptive as it is, legally there's not much recourse.  The only thing to be done now is what Tinman is already doing: spreading the word about his dissatisfaction.

Kimmchii, I hate to sound harsh, but it doesn't matter if you think it's silly he bought this software.  You've probably bought things somebody else thinks is stupid -- that's not the point.  Somebody spent money with a vendor and now feels ripped off.  I wish there was more to be done, but all I can offer is commiseration.

197

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Connected to Network Notification Window

« on: December 07, 2007, 07:14 PM »

Do you know if the "gateway or server or something" has ping services turned on?

198

Living Room / Re: Any old Amiga users among us?

« on: December 07, 2007, 04:59 PM »

*sob* King tut!  My old friend.

And here's another...



Your own Windows version of Boing! can be had here.

199

Living Room / Tin Foil Hat Alert: Weather War!

« on: December 07, 2007, 04:44 PM »

Got some aluminum foil?  Fashion yourself a beanie and follow me into the murky depths of the US Military's Climatic Warfare program.

http://www.globalres...text=va&aid=7561
http://www.globalres...8&articleId=1061



Apparently the United States has sought control of the weather since the late 1940's, enlisting the aid of such historical figures as mathemetician John von Neumann.  More recently, the HAARP array in Alaska has been scrutinized as a potential physical manifestation of such research, citing HAARP's incredible 3.9 megawatts of transmitting power -- all into the earth's ionosphere.  What possible use is all this juice squirted skywards?

Research, according to the official HAARP website.  Other, more conspiracy minded folk, speculate that its true purpose is to stimulate and/or disrupt weather systems.  Imagine being able to generate a hurricane at will, or clear the skies over an enemy target.

The truth is, as they say, out there.  And probably somewhere between here and the clouds.

(Image ganked from System 16, serving all your oldschool Atari needs.)

200

Living Room / Re: Top 10 Signs You're Coding Too Much

« on: December 07, 2007, 04:10 PM »

When you start ending all your sentences in emails with a semi-colon.   

-jandi (December 07, 2007, 04:02 PM)

And when you hit Send and are momentarily surprised it "compiles" properly.

Good one, jandi.  :-)