Recent Posts

10251

Living Room / Re: Even V.I.S.T.A. can look beautiful...

« Last post by Renegade on January 21, 2008, 09:47 AM »

That is very cool!

10252

General Software Discussion / Re: Bits du Jour New Syndication Program (Partner Program)

« Last post by Renegade on January 21, 2008, 09:44 AM »

Ah I understand, you are suggesting that DC find some mechanism and incentive for websites to put a little dc box or page on their site somewhere that would send people to us.  interesting idea if could think of something that would work and fit in with our approach.

A natural idea would be for US to give a commission from donations to sites that refer people to us.. But I think again this goes against our basic ethical approach where we don't want people to think they are being recommended to donationcoder based on some kickback a site is getting.  I'd rather have half the donations but people know that when someone recommends us it's an honest recommendation not motivated by some affiliate fee.

-mouser (January 21, 2008, 01:43 AM)

Forget about the money. That's not important. Think SEO. If you can syndicate the content out to a select number of approved site owners (you don't want to allow just anyone like all the "me too" MFA [made for adsense] sites), they'll benefit from having quality content on their sites that will raise their rankings and traffic. A savvy site owner would understand this and see the benefit. It would naturally benefit you as well, but they'd still be getting the "first click" for a lot of things.

However, it would require proper formatting for syndication. That's the hard part...

10253

General Software Discussion / Re: How many of you use encryption?

« Last post by Renegade on January 21, 2008, 09:34 AM »

I don't need a lock on my door: I possess nothing of value. This sounds like such a good argument, doesn't it?
...
OK to sum it up: using encryption is up to everybody themselves. But consider why you do one thing (i.e. lock the door) but not the other 

-housetier (January 21, 2008, 05:25 AM)

The computers I run are sufficiently locked down that I really don't need to worry about encryption. It's kind of like putting a safe inside of a bank vault. It's really quite redundant.

So for day to day operations, encryption will only slow me down and prove to be a nuisance.

Look at it like this -- why would you bother locking your bedroom door or bathroom door everytime that you leave the room? Nobody is in the house anyways, so the only thing that you're doing is creating a problem for yourself. Think of that the next time you really really really really really have to pee badly and can't find the keys to the bathroom! 

Encryption matters, and it helps. It doesn't provide 100% protection against a dedicated "thief", but it very well helps against lesser villains.

-housetier (January 21, 2008, 05:25 AM)

Not quite. Good strong encryption provides 100% protection against anything known to mankind for now and the forseeable future.

To verify that, calculate the keyspace of Rijndael at 256 and you'll see that it very quickly dwarfs the number of atoms in the universe. Check here on symmetric ciphers to find out. The size of the number is 1,296 billion billion billion billion digits. Rijndael is VERY secure.

But let's put those numbers into a bit of perspective...

The number of hydrogen atoms in the observable univers is around 3 * 10^79. So, let's write that number out...

30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Now... The key space of AES 256 (Rijndael) takes up space on a hard disk, so we can't actually put that number here because it's that big. But, let's look at it a tad...

Now. 1 MB is 1,000 KB. And 1 GB is 1,000,000 KB. But we'll need much larger numbers that that. But 1 billion digits is far beyond even the SI system. It goes up like this:

10^24 = yotta-
10^21 = zetta-
10^18 = exa-
10^15 = peta-
10^12 = tera-
10^9 = giga-
10^6 = mega-
10^3 = kilo-

But we're talking about:
10^1,000,000,000 for just the small number of 1 followed by 1 billion zeroes!

But the key space is 1,296 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000!

For the new and upcoming hard drives with terabytes:

1,000,000,000 / 12 = 83,333,333

So you'd need:

1,296 * 8.3 * 10^7 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 terabyte hard disks
= 1.1 * 10^11 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 terabyte hard disks

To hold the number. That's a lot of hard disks... I don't have that many at home.

But just look at the first part:

1.1 * 10^11

Now, if that were money, you'd have $110,000,000,000. That's 110 billion. The numbers are staggeringly, insanely HUGE!

If that first part were simply bytes, it would fill a 110 GB hard drive! And that IGNORES the rest of the number!

Ok - I'm just blathering on at this point. But really... Those are some REALLY big numbers! I'd say AES 256 is secure, and I'd bet on 100%.

10254

General Software Discussion / Re: How many of you use encryption?

« Last post by Renegade on January 21, 2008, 01:31 AM »

I like the idea of encryption, but so far no implementation appeals.

I experimented with PGP a few years ago and found the whole mindset & workflow cumbersome.  I use TwoFish encryption in some of the software I write for security related objects, and offer it as a feature for "regular" data.  None of my customers avail themselves of this feature -- not sure why.

For normal correspondence I find most people don't understand what I say anyway, so it seems a waste of time.

-Ralf Maximus (December 20, 2007, 10:23 PM)

I'm with Ralf there. The "idea" is cool, but it's still far too difficult to be bothered with.

Besides, I don't have anything that could put me in jail anyways, so what do I care? Sure. Read my email to my mother! I've got some music with some pretty nasty lyrics? Wanna listen? (And no - I never keep any passwords on disk if it's possible to keep them on paper - you'd never find anything on my desk anyways! )

So there's very little reason for me to use encryption. Use it at the office? Huh? Silliness. If someone wanted to get into my files they could very easily. Slap on a hardware keylogger and DONE! (See below for real security.)

I do use PGP at the dayjob but ONLY because I MUST use it to communicate with some security companies. Otherwise, I'd never touch it.

When all this finally reaches the level that there's a hardware device on every computer, and I simply swipe my hadn over it for some kind of bio-metric identification, then it will finally be at a level that's easy enough to use. Otherwise, 2-factor (or multi-factor) authentication is just far too time consuming for me to play a few MP3s or whatever.

The REAL security that matters isn't encryption... It's the lock on my front door!

10255

General Software Discussion / Re: Bits du Jour New Syndication Program (Partner Program)

« Last post by Renegade on January 20, 2008, 11:05 PM »

I don't really understand this part:

One of the things I was thinking of was for you to have some kind of syndicateable (is that a word?) thing for DC.

-mouser (January 20, 2008, 10:10 AM)

I mean that in an abstract manner.

In this case above, Nico has taken the affiliate thing to a new level where he's adding value to the system, then looking for more affiliates through some form of syndication.

For DC, you've got reviews and such, but if you were able to package them up into easily consumable tidbits (small that is), you could syndicate them out to download sites to incorporate into their own sites alongside existing products. Have people click to get full reviews, etc. You'd likely want some branding or whatever, but... There are lots of different scenarios there where you could potentially get DC out to a much larger audience. I've left that all very vague, but if anyone "gets" the idea, it's easy to work with. (I'll be doing something abstractly similar in the near future.)

10256

General Software Discussion / Re: Bits du Jour New Syndication Program (Partner Program)

« Last post by Renegade on January 20, 2008, 09:59 AM »

Mouser, I don't necessarily mean just the affiliate aspect, but there is more to it than that. One of the things I was thinking of was for you to have some kind of syndicateable (is that a word?) thing for DC. DC is more than just a few programs. It's a real community and that's something that you can work with.

i just don't think we should be making money based on users buying certain programs instead of others.

Just don't start getting all pinko marxist commie red army socialist wacko on us! 

I've known Nico casually for a few years. He's a good guy. I know he's got good intentions behind this all. (Yes, it's a business, but you can still do good and make money at the same time. I help people learn music and play music better, and I get paid for it. Nothing wrong with that. We all have to eat and put rooves over our heads.)

10257

General Software Discussion / Bits du Jour New Syndication Program (Partner Program)

« Last post by Renegade on January 20, 2008, 09:24 AM »

This is really just very very cool. BDJ has a new partner program where you can put software deals on your own site!

I interviewed Nico (he owns BDJ) about this for the .NET Preacher Show -- Monetizing Web Sites Without Traditional Ads - Interview with Nico Westerdale

I'm NOT big on serving ads at any of my web sites, but this seems to add real value to a site and is a definite service to people.

If you've got a web site, definitely check this out! (But buy your software at the .NET Preacher site! --- Just kidding!)

Mouser, I think this is something that you may really want to have a look at for more than a couple reasons.

10258

Living Room / Re: 64 Bit CPU - Is it worth it?

« Last post by Renegade on January 20, 2008, 09:04 AM »

64-32bit: servers yes, desktop no.

-justice (January 18, 2008, 06:41 PM)

Hmmm... Understatement/Overstatement...

For servers, that's an understatement. Nothing in the future will work with 32 bit processors. Vendors are all dropping 32 bit support. (MS has already.)

For the desktop... I'm on the "it depends" fence there. If you need to run software that only runs on 32 bit CPUs, then go there. But if you're forward looking, get 64 bit.

With servers, upgrading is a major deal. With a desktop, who cares? For a desktop, you unplug it... AACCKK! That would never happen for a server... I think you get my drift there.

But even for the desktop arena, I see a lot of vendors going 64 bit now (component vendors included).

I like to buy for tomorrow, because that's always where the computing market is. But, if I need something that won't go there, it's a no brainer. Stick with what works.

10259

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Week: Flash Element TD 2 - Great!

« Last post by Renegade on January 19, 2008, 07:09 AM »

Ok - So I signed up and tried the hard level... Yep. It's labeled correctly.

10260

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Week: Flash Element TD 2 - Great!

« Last post by Renegade on January 17, 2008, 02:54 AM »

Just above the game there:

Finding it easy? Think you are a TD pro? Sign up to unlock the much harder 'Zig Zag' map.

10261

General Software Discussion / Better Archiver with Recursive Functionality

« Last post by Renegade on January 16, 2008, 11:21 PM »

Want a Better Archiver with Recursive Functionality?

Man... I think they're gonna be givin' us a run for our money! =)

10262

Living Room / Steve Jobs - "American's Don't Read"

« Last post by Renegade on January 16, 2008, 05:26 PM »

Steve Jobs criticized the Amazon Kindle saying that it's just a dumb idea because people don't read...

I think he's pretty much off-base though. The Kindle is a stepping stone towards what people really want - color display portable readers for digital magazines like Playboy & Hustler!

Oh Steve... How short-sighted you are!    -- (Could he be going blind? )

10263

Living Room / Browser Zoom Functionality...

« Last post by Renegade on January 16, 2008, 01:22 AM »

I'm curious about this...

I use it daily pretty much. In every browser. IE - Opera - FF. I'll actually switch between browsers on occasion because I like the way one or the other does zooming. (IE zooms pages, while FF zooms text only, etc. etc. etc.)

10264

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Week: Flash Element TD 2 - Great!

« Last post by Renegade on January 15, 2008, 07:40 AM »

97,936 at the end of level 50. I played 1 game for a few minutes, then quit and came back. Second game finished it though.

That Wicked Defence game is really good. Had to buy a copy of it... Hate myself for it... Wasting too much time on TD.

10265

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Week: Flash Element TD 2 - Great!

« Last post by Renegade on January 15, 2008, 03:55 AM »

Sigh... More time wasted...

They are SOOO addictive!

But it's a very good game. The voice in it is really good.

10266

Developer's Corner / Re: Comments That Make You Smile :)

« Last post by Renegade on January 15, 2008, 12:07 AM »

Having problems are we?

NSFW

Code: C++ [Select]

1. /* FIXME FIXME FIXME FUCK SOMEONE FIXME*/

Foreign languages got you down?

NSFW

Code: C++ [Select]

1. #define _GTK_EXTERNAL_WINDOW_HANDLER_H_
2. /*
3.  *  I FUCK WANT SOME FUCK THING TO HANDLE FUCKING EVENTS ON FUCKING FOREIGN WINDOWS ! FUCK !!!
4.  */

This one rocks!

NSFW

Code: C++ [Select]

1. #include <linux/config.h>
2. #include <asm/pgalloc.h>
3. /* Fuck.  The f-word is here so you can grep for it :-)  */
4. extern unsigned long asid_cache;
5. extern pgd_t *current_pgd;

10267

Developer's Corner / Re: Comments That Make You Smile :)

« Last post by Renegade on January 14, 2008, 11:41 PM »

And those licensing agreement comments:

NSFW

Code: C++ [Select]

1. /* This program is free software. It comes without any warranty, to
2.  * the extent permitted by applicable law. You can redistribute it
3.  * and/or modify it under the terms of the Do What The Fuck You Want
4.  * To Public License, Version 2, as published by Sam Hocevar. See
5.  * http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/COPYING for more details. */

The license is here. HILARIOUS!

10268

Developer's Corner / Re: Comments That Make You Smile :)

« Last post by Renegade on January 14, 2008, 11:39 PM »

Oh! Oh! Oh! This one is funny:

NSFW

peer = Peer(switch)
cb = CallBack()
peer.send("fuck you, asshole.", cb)
switch.wait_for_responses()

The irony is killer!

10269

Developer's Corner / Re: Comments That Make You Smile :)

« Last post by Renegade on January 14, 2008, 11:38 PM »

mouser wants this

Hahaha~!

Y'know, programmers can have a pretty foul mouth too sometimes -- NSFW code comments 1 and 2.

It's pretty funny to see how people get flustered!

10270

Developer's Corner / Comments That Make You Smile :)

« Last post by Renegade on January 14, 2008, 06:10 PM »

So, I'm back to cleaning up other people's messes yet again and going through source code, when I find in the source for one of the commercial modules purchased:

//the method formats... argh! see the code, it is self-explainig!

10271

Developer's Corner / Re: Question: Resizing on-the-fly in Visual Basic (Express Edition, 2008)

« Last post by Renegade on January 13, 2008, 11:39 PM »

That... sounds... like a really bad idea... Can you imagine how annoying that would be? Unless you have a very good reason, I'd abandon that thought.

However, it's simple. Just set anchors for the controls, then resize from there in some loop with a timer. Here's some really crappy description of 1 thing you can do:

On timer tick:

someloopmechanism...

tab.Width += 1
tab.Height += 1
OscilateFormTransparency() ' a function to fade in/out

' Sleep for .1 seconds...
Application.DoEvents()
etc.

endsomeloop

etc.



But check at codeproject.com --- lots of stuff there to help out.

10272

Developer's Corner / Re: source control systems: what's the best?

« Last post by Renegade on January 13, 2008, 09:50 PM »

Great Visual Source Safe resource here! It's a MUST read before you decide on ANYTHING!

10273

Developer's Corner / Re: Bow to the browser

« Last post by Renegade on January 13, 2008, 08:53 PM »

My Browser Rant...

OK - well, not much of a rant for those that know me, but still, the point to having an Internet browser is that IT'S A TOOL!

The this vs. that vs. whatever with browsers is sooooooooooooooooooooooooo flogged to death.

I need to get back on track here...

Ok - so:

The future holds only to 3-top browsers.

Not really. Opera is still very much alive with an almost 3% marketshare (depending where you look). But mostly correct.

Anything with less than 0.5% is totally marginal.

The thing here is that there is NO reason for ANYONE to write YAB (Yet Another Browser). It's a profitless, silly market to get into.

The IE users don't care about another browser.

The Firefox fanboys will continue to rave about OSS/FOSS/<insert buzz phrase here> and whatever extension doesn't bring your computer to its knees with memory leaks (much like how Firefox has not been).

The Safari users will always be Apple fanboys and sneer at anyone on any other OS or whatever.

The Opera users will silently shrug for the most part.

The <insert browser name here> users will continue to develop the browser they use for themselves and the 3 other people that use it for 5 minutes before returning to one of the above...

The only possible market for browsers is specialize usage browsers that have very specific functionality (I'm building one for my own use but will likely never release it).

At the end of the day, IE will continue for a long time because it's just the natural default for the average computer purchased at any store. The browser warz will follow the platform warz in other words.

Sigh...

I use IE, FF and Opera for different things. They all serve different purposes for me.

Peace, Love, and Eternal Groovieness!

10274

Living Room / Re: Have you ever wondered....

« Last post by Renegade on January 13, 2008, 03:23 PM »

The Zombie one is fun! A lot more there as well.

10275

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use a light or a dark background in your editor for programming?

« Last post by Renegade on January 12, 2008, 10:31 AM »

I use black on a white background.

I definitely prefer black text on a white background, or at least something similar - very dark on very light!

I do think the dark backgrounds look really nice, but I just find that over a period of time - especially if I am working on something for hours on end - the light background with dark text is easier on my eyes.

-J-Mac (December 26, 2007, 04:39 PM)

I wonder about this...

That said, for some reason, way back in my WordPerfect 5.1 days, their standard white text on a medium blue background was kind of easy on my eyes also.

-J-Mac (December 26, 2007, 04:39 PM)

I remember orange or green on black...

Yeah. Monochrome was kind of blech!

Mostly because it is the default. Although I sometimes make is a slight shade of gray. However, I imagine using light on a dark background is better for your eyes and have often wanted to try it for an extended period of time to see if it is, but I never seem to get around to actually trying it.

-tinjaw (December 26, 2007, 06:37 PM)

Same here. I want to get other color schemes, but I just can't be bothered. Too much *unproductive* "work" there.

Anyone have anything easy to switch VS colors?