Recent Posts

10126

Living Room / Re: the award for most clueless pc user ever - my candidate.

« Last post by Renegade on March 01, 2008, 08:20 AM »

Not sure if this beats it, but...

I've got one customer that emails me periodically with "something". Most often it's something along the lines of, 'This other software that has a different purpose than yours does can do X. Why doesn't your software do X? Please put it in. And make sure there are no bugs. Other companies make software with bugs.'

Well, one of the first emails from him a while after he'd bought my software was that he couldn't open an audio file with it. Seemed strange to me, but after somewhere between 15~20 emails later I finally figure out that he HAS NOT INSTALLED IT YET!

Whenever I get an email from him, I just start laughing before I even open it, anticipating something that's just off-the-wall. He never fails to disappoint. And while I'm quite sure most developers would refund his money and tell him to go away (that has happened to him before), I think he's well intentioned, but just, well, whatever. He gives me a laugh.

10127

Living Room / Re: Timeline Software

« Last post by Renegade on March 01, 2008, 01:16 AM »

I know a few people that ONLY ever post when they're plugging themselves. It is quite annoying, and reduces any amount of respect I have. Plug away, but be a part of the community as well...

For the spamming accusation thing, I suppose that I probably just hang out in good neighborhoods where people don't flame at the first chance.

10128

Living Room / Re: Wide Open License

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 11:16 PM »

Found another reference to the WOL elsewhere. Just search the page for WOL here. Seems like it's only used in DSP though.

10129

Developer's Corner / Re: The DC Coders' Breakfast Club

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 09:45 PM »

This morning isn't about coding, it's about trying to get a dead machine working... NOT FUN...

Click power on... Nothing happens... Cleaned it out (compressed air)... Nothing happens... Maybe it needs a new video card... The DVI on it crapped out and the symptoms were the same.

I hate hardware problems...

10130

Living Room / Re: Timeline Software

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 09:31 PM »

I think it's hard for some people to be straight about things. They seem to think that there is some kind of shame, or that they'll be accused of spamming. I've never seen anyone accused of spamming when being upfront and direct about things.

My first post to DC is here. My first 2 paragraphs in that post were specifically to let people know who I was. The next post from mouser started, "what a fantastic post!"

Being transparent about things is virtually guaranteed to earn you points with people, and I think that's a pretty general thing that extends beyond DC in a lot of other places as well.

Just my $0.02 though.

10131

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 09:14 PM »

Yes... EU = European Union... why would you think EULA?

I didn't... I was just wondering why Renegade feels that having the EU stop Microsoft's bid to compete with Google via purchasing Yahoo! is very sick! It occurred to me that he may have interpreted EU as M$' end user agreement or something...

-Darwin (February 29, 2008, 04:03 PM)

I didn't mistake EU for EULA.

The thing is that the EU is very socialist and controlling in a lot of ways. Their answer to a problem is to create new legistation that simply makes things more difficult (same goes for Canada). I'm vehemently against creating new laws to solve problems at every turn. It's not a good thing. It merely restricts freedoms and leads down a very dark path.

Google is far more dangerous than MS. They really are the major 800 lb gorilla right now, or they soon will be. Neither MS nor Yahoo are fairing very well against them in the ad market, and some real competition for Google is needed to keep the market in check. A combined MS & Yahoo would have a much better chance at offering advertisers and content providers some real choice. Right now your 3 choices are Google, Google, and Google. If you want to stretch things, you do have a fourth option: Google.

If someone has THE perfect solution to compete with Google, AND 100 million dollars to get started, then there may be hope. But that's not likely. The most realistic approach to the problem is to create another 800 lb gorilla to keep the other 800 lb gorilla in check.

Google is driving up prices for consumers indirectly. Just go to any web master forum and look for people complaining about their minimum bids being jacked up.

As an experiment, you can try creating some AdWords ads. You'll quickly find that bidding for "super esoteric keword combination that nobody bids on or cares about but has a small amount of traffic and is worth about $0.10 when bidding" will actually have a minimum bid of at least $0.50, and more likely much higher. It's quite common to see minimum bids skyrocket to $5.00 or higher -- for 1 click...

That has the effect of driving people out of the market, or jacking up prices to cover the ad costs.

Having the EU block things won't fix the problem. It will only make it worse. Legislation isn't the answer to the problem. This problem needs to be addressed in the business domain, not the judicial domain. And the ONLY thing in sight that can address the problem is an MS and Yahoo deal.

10132

General Software Discussion / Re: Stage6 closing for ever on Thursday

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 08:07 PM »

Part of the attraction is that you don't need to download from Stage6 (or Veoh, etc.). You just click play. Simple.

+100 for tinjaw.

The petition means nothing practically. If it gains media attention, it may have some very tiny miniscule small influence on the studios to actually open up to new business models.

My suspicion is that a lot of these video sites got into the business expecting ad revenue to actually mean something (which I think is rather naive) and that it would tie them over until the studios caved into a new distribution models and embraced the Internet. That isn't happening in any really meaningful way.

There are LOTS of ways to monetize things, but the status quo is safer than trying out unproven business models. The dot com bubble burst in 2000 showed that the ad revenue model and the "eye-balls" model isn't fully developed or stable yet. That is a real concern for the content producers that have to pay for the production of the shows. How do they get sponsors? How do they sell? How do they distribute? The current movie theatre and cable TV model is proven and works.

What they don't really understand is that piracy isn't the big concern that they think it is. i.e. If you can expand your market by 10x, but you lose 50% of that market to piracy, you've still increased your revenues by 5x. Maximizing revenue per unit isn't always the best solution, and isn't the best way to increase revenues for a lot of things. (It works for high-end products where there is a limited audience, but not for mass market products.)

It's too bad that Stage6 is closing. But hey, it's been a fun ride while it lasted.

10133

General Software Discussion / Re: Google Sites

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 10:08 AM »

Already semi-ranted here: http://discuss.joelo....asp?biz.5.599197.14

10134

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 10:06 AM »

Oh well, at least we have the EU to stop their dreams

-Lashiec (February 29, 2008, 09:51 AM)

Ok -- You've got some good points, but that there is just a very sick sick sick thing to say!

10135

General Software Discussion / Re: Stage6 closing for ever on Thursday

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 09:51 AM »

Man... This sucks...

Not sure about everyone else, but I live in South Korea, and getting content is almost impossible.

I'd be more than happy to pay for it, but none of the studios are interested in letting me buy their stuff. Stage6 was great because I could at least get things that would not otherwise be available to me.

I don't download from Stage6, but I certainly love having TV shows available.

I suppose this is a "burn rate" issue with the money running out and the studios not giving in to the new business models that are available to them.

Just how hard is this question:

I WANT TO GIVE YOU MY MONEY. PLEASE TAKE IT! HOW CAN I GIVE YOU MY MONEY?

Complete ****ing retards!

At least we still have Veoh...

Maybe someday someone will wake up and smell the money. I hate farting around and would much rather just buy TV shows or movies online than mess around and waste time.

Stage6 has such great quality too. Not very stable software, but the quality rocked when it didn't crash.

10136

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 09:34 AM »

Sure, they might pretty much have a monopoly on the ad market, and there's a lot of money involved in that... and there might be some negative consequences for webmasters who want to make money off ads. But how does that hurt me as a regular end-user, compared to how Microsoft's OS monopoly (arguably) hurts us all?

-f0dder (February 29, 2008, 09:10 AM)

Very simple. Google squeezes merchants. Merchants squeeze customers. Microsoft squeezes people too, but Google is now the defacto ad company in the world. They dwarf the top 10 ad agencies combined!

When Google drives prices up, who pays for that? We do as consumers. It's not direct as in the MS case. It's much more insidious...

10137

General Software Discussion / Re: get the text from html

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 09:29 AM »

http://www.4guysfrom...btech/042501-1.shtml

http://weblogs.asp.n...2003/05/13/6963.aspx

http://www.databasej.../article.php/3494196

There are more of course. But those are techical.

The easy way is to copy to the clipboard, then paste as text. That can be automated as well.

10138

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 29, 2008, 09:05 AM »

Oh, I worry about google as well... but they do seem a slight bit less evil than Microsoft. Might just be because they don't have quite as bad a monopoly as Microsoft (yet).

-f0dder (February 29, 2008, 06:51 AM)

I don't think that I could disagree more.

Google IS the 800 lb gorilla, but few people see it or say it. They have a complete strangle hold on the ad market. We need competition there, and neither MS nor Yahoo are cutting it on their own. They really need to combine in this area to hope to provide some kind of competition for Google.

The insidiousness of Google's penetration into the ad market is beyond sinister. They provide the ad channel, and the "free" analytics. Add that up! It spells pure evil.

Essentially you buy ads through Google, then use their anyalytics to tell them just how profitable you are so that they can jack prices up on you. It's sinister on their part and idiotic on our part for cooperating with them there. Why not just <insert obscene violation of your body here>?

10139

Living Room / Good Names for Your Child :)

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 08:04 PM »

How's about naming your kid "Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;--"?

It's a very cute comic that I'm sure a few people will get a chuckle out of.

10140

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 08:01 PM »

Gay marriage is probably not something that should be discussed here at DC

-f0dder (February 28, 2008, 06:39 PM)

Exactly. That's why I didn't go into any reasons.

-Deozaan (February 28, 2008, 07:44 PM)

As long as everyone agrees that what other people do is none of their business it seems like an ok topic.

Another thing that ticks me off --- policital correctness and ers that can't keep their personal opinions out of other people's business.

I was chatting with a few people down at the British Embassy pub here, and mother-of-god... The insane laws that are being passed in North America and the UK are just off-the-hook crazy infringements on personal liberties! Makes me sick.

10141

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 06:12 PM »

Seven Shareholders Sue Yahoo for Flubbing Microsoft’s Bid

And here's the kicker...

Meanwhile, Microsoft may use its right as a Yahoo shareholder to overthrow its 10-member board (which includes CEO Jerry Yang) – and replace it with directors who would lend a more sympathetic ear to Microsoft.

Muahahaha!

Microsoft hungry! Microsoft eat Yahoo! Yumm!

10142

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 05:07 PM »

Forums whose search has the default operator OR instead of AND and that always get me 1million results and the result i'm looking for ISN'T one of those!

-jgpaiva (February 28, 2008, 12:17 PM)

+1 for that!

I can't imagine who thought OR would be a good idea...

10143

Living Room / Re: Wide Open License

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 09:22 AM »

the WOL assumes we live in a more benign world in which enlightened self-interest leads people to voluntarily share significant improvements with the community

can someone direct me to this planet? how much does it cost to go there? do cute girls live there? how is the weather?

-mouser (February 28, 2008, 09:13 AM)

ROFLMAO~!

10144

Living Room / Re: Timeline Software

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 09:13 AM »

This is the kind of software where I could knock-out a quick, simple product in a couple days... However, I'd have to go out and buy a Gantt chart component... They start at $1,000. If anyone wants to buy a license for me, I'll knock one out real quick like for ya!

But seriously, the pricing on Gantt chart components is crazy!

10145

Developer's Corner / Re: The DC Coders' Breakfast Club

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 09:03 AM »

Ok. I'm in...

But I'll just post whenever at random (usually morning) and try to keep it frequent...

CODING:

I'm working on creating Codesmith templates at the moment for creating stored procedures in databases (MS SQL Server 2000) with complex relationships than just for single tables. Seems like a common problem, but I couldn't find anything for it. Believe me... I've looked...

The end result of this project will be a moderately sophisticated web site... We'll see though...

Oooops!

That was the DC beer club post! It's late at night and I'm drinking again!   

Oh, one other thing... I'm looking more into DSP. Just did a vocal removal thing this morning before the dayjob. Got up at about 3:30am and had it done right quick. I'll work on the DSP stuff more though in the future though. Tons to be done there.

10146

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching encrypted archives

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 08:50 AM »

Which other solution do/would you use/recommend for such a task?

I like simple and easy stuff, so I'd probably just make a small NTFS partition to store sensitive things and have it encrypted at the drive level, then remember what's there. I'd avoid using software if possible. Low tech, but likely more efficient. How many "secret" files do you have anyways? Probably not that many... Then again, I don't store anything that's really important on disk. It's on paper and physically secure. Dunno. That's my take on it anyways.

10147

Living Room / Re: Benford's Law

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 08:46 AM »

Solution #1 is here.

There's more there as well. Ignore the heavy math stuff though. That's not as much fun!

The funny thing is that it took 80 years and a huge amount of math to show that Benford's Law is false!

But the really fun part is the last paragraph:

Lastly, this discussion would be incomplete without mentioning the practical applications of Benford's law Next time you file your income tax return or other financial report, consider what happens to the distribution of leading digits if you fabricate some of the numbers. I'm not going to help you cheat, so I won't give the details away. Simply put, the numbers you make up will probably not follow Benford's law, making your fraudulent report distinguishable from an accurate one. I'll let you imagine who might be interested in this.

Hehehehe!

10148

Living Room / Benford's Law

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 07:46 AM »

This is WIERD!

30.1% of all numbers have "1" as the leading digit! (Ignore 0's (they cannot "lead") and sign, e.g. -0.03892 has the leading digit "3". Think in scientific notation and it's easier.)

It follows through nature and just about anything!

Who are you?

The new number 2.

Who is number 1?

You are number 6.

I suppose that #1 is the true "leader"!

Want to bend your mind, start reading at that link above!

10149

Living Room / Wide Open License

« Last post by Renegade on February 28, 2008, 07:04 AM »

The Wide Open License

I'm kind of bringing this over from a thread in the Developer's Corner... It's kind of related as this license does a nice job of saying why the GPL is isn't useful in some circumstances:

Consider, for example, if you had a embedded software application project consisting of 75% of your own specialized, proprietary software combined with 25% generic, free/open software. If the latter uses the GPL, your 75% now becomes free and open. But since that doesn't make any business sense, you and your team decide instead that it's just a lot easier to reinvent that 25% of the wheel yourself.

You can see in this example, that the use of the GPL has had the net effect of discouraging the use of otherwise-useful open-source software in an inherently commercial/closed application. So, rather than provide users with "freedom", the GPL has, in fact, inadvertantly "restricted" them from using it. You then have to re-invent the wheel--which is just plain wasteful.

Therefore, for commercial projects, a license with more "freedom" is needed. Rather than free the software, the WOL frees the user. (And let's face it, who deserves freedom more: the software or its user?!) Instead of assuring that "anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it", the WOL assumes we live in a more benign world in which enlightened self-interest leads people to voluntarily share significant improvements with the community when that makes sense, or else they just quietly ship their tailored code. (And that really doesn't hurt anybody.)

We believe that making open-source software easy in a legal sense will open up its use. We call this principle "wide open".

Very nicely put.

In any event, it's an interesting license that kind of reminds me a bit of the WTFPL...   (A license that is definitely NSFW.)

10150

Living Room / Re: look at the size of my mouse mat !!!

« Last post by Renegade on February 27, 2008, 01:26 PM »

Ok... I just want to know... WHY?

Why would you buy something that big?

And why would anyone make a mouse pad that large?