Recent Posts

10326

Living Room / Re: Tell me why I have to be a PowerSlave?

« Last post by Renegade on December 15, 2007, 10:42 PM »

What? No Powerslave allusions yet?

I know what it's like though... My electricity bill is insane. But I'm still too stubborn to turn off my computers. I hate rebooting.

10327

Developer's Corner / Re: Free icons for developers

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 11:00 PM »

Wow! Those were some very good icons. Most of the free ones are just garbage and unusable in a real project. I'd use those ones in a heartbeat.

10328

Developer's Corner / Re: Dilbert On Agile Programming

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 10:58 PM »

I liked that!

Thing is, while there is a certain amount of truth to it, I really think that for a lot of things Agile is the way to go. It won't work for some things, but for an awful lot of projects out there, it's ideal.

And yes - I hate waterfallllllllllllllllllllll...

10329

Living Room / Re: PipeBytes: Simple Internet File Transfers

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 10:27 PM »

I so totally skimmed... I missed that it wasn't stored on a server. 

Nifty!

10330

Living Room / Re: Applications Stealing Focus...

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 10:16 PM »

there should be a focus queue (maybe with shortcut) and some visual /audio notification. like a system tray balloon + unique sound, there's software needing your attention click here or press ctrl-shift-alt-caps I don't think you should disable keyboard handlers for dialogue boxes though, they should just not get focus until the user tells them to. that's how i see it.

-justice (December 13, 2007, 07:39 PM)

I don't think that an audio notification is appropriate. It's effectively "stealing audio focus". What if I'm recording? Again, bad.

The system tray balloon thing seems to be the most reasonable. However, you *could* say the same thing about that... But something needs to act as a notifier. A balloon seems to be the most unobtrusive.

10331

Living Room / Re: Applications Stealing Focus...

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 10:13 PM »

Jeff Atwood did a recent blog entry about this:  http://www.codinghor...archives/001011.html

His wrap-up line sums it up nicely:

... please don't steal my focus. I'm using it right now. Really. I am.

-mwb1100 (December 13, 2007, 08:30 PM)

I liked the part:

Stealing focus from the user is never acceptable. I can't imagine any circumstance where this would be desirable or even defensible behavior.

100% agreed there.

10332

Living Room / Re: Applications Stealing Focus...

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 10:04 PM »

If you use <a href="http://www.snapfiles...m/get/tweakuixp.html">TweakUIXP</a>, there is a setting to prevent applications from stealing focus. Instead the window will blink a fixed number of times (you set the number) in the taskbar to alert you.

-icekin (December 13, 2007, 08:44 PM)

I tried it, but it never seemed to work for me.

10333

Living Room / Re: Applications Stealing Focus...

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 10:03 PM »

you should clarify -- you mean applications that "pop up" unexpectedly and take focus.  not applications that come up when called.  right?

-mouser (December 13, 2007, 07:02 PM)

Yes. I suppose "steal focus" is jargon and could be misinterpretted.

10334

Living Room / Applications Stealing Focus...

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 06:58 PM »

Stealing focus is something that really ticks me off. I can't count the number of times that I've been happily typing along when some application steals focus and I end up doing something very bad. Ok... It's not really THAT often, but when it happens, it can be disastrous.

At a minimum, there should be no default action for a window that steals focus. e.g. The space bar does nothing -- no "OK" and no "YES" or "Cancel" or anything like that.

Thoughts?

10335

Living Room / Re: VectorMagic: Convert Bitmaps into Vector Art (Free)

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 05:59 PM »

Wow. That's some pretty good quality - especially for a web site.

10336

Living Room / Re: PipeBytes: Simple Internet File Transfers

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 05:57 PM »

There are a ton of sites like this. Perhaps the most popular is RapidShare.de... Or at least in the warez and porn scene anyways...

YouSendIt.com is good as well.

Of course they have limits though. I think the PipeBytes "no limit" thing is a gimmick to get attention for the time-being.

The company I work for has been doing the same basic thing for years now. There's an English demo site at http://engdemo.internetdisk.com/ (It's not geared towards end-users, but as a demo for corporate use). It's a bit different though in that it comes as a packaged solution for companies/organizations and as a turn-key solution for ISPs. The scale and function set is much larger than on all the web sites that do it. e.g. It is accessible via the web through a browser, as a client application, and also integrates into the OS to make your virtual disk space look the same as a local hard drive. There are other companies that have similar solutions, but I haven't seen any with as complete a function set as InternetDISK.

10337

Found Deals and Discounts / GroupMail 5 free license for registered users

« Last post by Renegade on December 13, 2007, 03:34 AM »

Infacta is giving out a free license to all their customers. Nice of them. Anyways, I had the email - ignored it - then saw it posted at JoS. Here's the email:

Complimentary offer to all GroupMail customers

Dear Ryan Smyth,

As the end of 2007 fast approaches, the GroupMail product has now been on the go for roughly 12 years.

One thing you may not be aware of, is that the vast majority of new GroupMail users come to us on the back of personal recommendations from friends and colleagues who are already existing GroupMail customers. This is something we are very proud of and it shows at least some of the time, we are doing something right.

As a token of our appreciation for all these recommendations, we are offering all existing customers a complimentary license of GroupMail 5 Personal Edition, to do with as you choose. So give it to a charity, school, club, friend or colleague that might find it useful, or use it yourself in your own organization for an additional user - your call.

To avail of this offer, simply enter the details of the beneficiary at the following link, and we will setup up their license as soon as we can. If you are giving the license to a friend or colleague, please inform them beforehand.

Link: group-mail

Note: This link will expire on Dec 31st and is limited to one use.

Thank you once again for all your support, and on behalf of the GroupMail team, have a great holiday season and a prosperous New Year.

Warm regards
Robert Martin,
Infacta Ltd

Anyways, if you have GroupMail, don't ignore the email!

edit by jgpaiva: fixed link (hopefully)

10338

Living Room / IE8!

« Last post by Renegade on December 10, 2007, 07:43 PM »

You'll love the title of this article about IE8!

10339

Living Room / Re: Gender Genie!

« Last post by Renegade on December 10, 2007, 07:23 PM »

It seems to work... I tried it on a half dozen CNet articles written by men & women, and it got it right every time... Just an observation...

10340

Living Room / Re: 48 Proof Beer: On Sale Soon!

« Last post by Renegade on December 09, 2007, 11:31 AM »

Reading the article:

Sam Adams Utopias MMII, which goes on sale this month, is in fact 24% alcohol by volume, making it the strongest commercial beer in the world.

Not a doubt there. The beer I had was in the "Vintages" section of the liquor store. Most likely a small batch and not really what you'd call "commercial" in the sense of mass production.

I couldn't drink the stuff. I split it with 2 other people!

10341

Living Room / Re: 48 Proof Beer: On Sale Soon!

« Last post by Renegade on December 09, 2007, 11:28 AM »

I've had beer that was either 25% or 27% --- I forget now as it was so long ago. But it was from Belgium, and yes... It was pure evil! 

10342

Living Room / Re: Look at what got passed quickly and without much fanfare.

« Last post by Renegade on December 06, 2007, 09:03 PM »

This kind of lunacy seems to me like a way for governments to infringe on freedoms more and more. 

"Oh... But it's for the CHILDREN! You don't hate CHILDREN? DO YOU?"

It's a kind of sneaky emotional blackmail and it's disingenuine. Of course nobody "hates children", but imposing insane legislation doesn't fix the real problem.

A similar law was passed in Canada a while back -- If you are Canadian, and you go off on pedophilic sex tours outside of Canada, you can be charged IN CANADA upon your return. Now, it's a great idea to protect kids, but infringing on another nation's sovereignty is a bad path to go down.

These things seem like very dangerous slippery slopes that lead to very... very dark places.

To be honest, I believe that these sorts of things are the exact reason for the right to bear arms in the USA. At some point, governments overstep their bounds and stray into those dark places where violence becomes the only saviour. History is full of examples. Today is no different.

Freedom has always been paid for and stained by blood, and most likely always will be.

Rant aside, at some point in the future there may be technologies that make this sort of thing possible. However, we don't have that kind of technology at the moment. Years ago there were attempts to do image recognition for this sort of thing, but they all failed. It's just too intense of an operation to do. Much more CPU and computer resources are needed for this to become remotely feasible.

Analagously, the legislation is like saying, "If you see someone in distress, you MUST help/save them." This is just pure insanity. Ok - you see someone screaming on the 10th floor of a burning building... We see the problem then. You're effectively being asked to do something that you simply CANNOT do. It's just not possible.

10343

Living Room / Re: Destroying the World, One Server at a Time

« Last post by Renegade on December 06, 2007, 02:54 AM »

4. Your favorite song is Avenue Q's "The Internet is for Porn"

-Deozaan (December 06, 2007, 12:08 AM)

HAHAHAHAHAHA~!

Check out the vid at 2:43!

Not Safe For Work

Muahahahaha~!

That was hilarious!

10344

Living Room / Re: Tower Defense games collection update 30-11-07

« Last post by Renegade on December 05, 2007, 07:34 PM »

Wicked Defense is VERY far from balanced. If you want to have any hope of getting anywhere in "medium" difficulty, you'll need to modify the maps to give you more money and mana.  The game is good, but the default maps in it are insanely difficult. "Hiway", the second map, is impossible to complete without modifying the map settings.

And what's with these 1 post things... 

10345

Living Room / Re: When Acronyms Collide

« Last post by Renegade on December 04, 2007, 05:25 AM »

Hahaha~!

That's hilarious! I can imagine some slogans.

Ride MILF!

MILF - We blow the competition away!

Got MILF?

MILF - You'd be surprised where we've been!

Good grief! Talk about marketing whores! There is zero shame left in any kind of media.

But it is funny!

10346

Living Room / Re: Another cody spotting? CAPTION THIS PICTURE CONTEST

« Last post by Renegade on December 03, 2007, 07:50 PM »

Ah, c'mon people! Surely you've got a few more fun captions! Let's hear 'em!

10347

Living Room / Re: Interesting Signs

« Last post by Renegade on December 03, 2007, 07:46 PM »

Renegade has a similar site with pages of amusing Konglish signs from, where else, Korea. Check out Soju Dreams. Some of these are hysterical.

-Darwin (December 03, 2007, 07:27 PM)

My favorite is the bathroom sign!

10348

Living Room / Re: CyberNet's birthday! And software giveaway!

« Last post by Renegade on December 03, 2007, 06:46 PM »

Drat... They're taking people from the top 10 comments, but there are way too many now.

Oh well.

10349

Living Room / Re: Tower Defense games collection update 30-11-07

« Last post by Renegade on December 03, 2007, 01:04 AM »

Wicked Defense is pretty good. Bought a copy... wasting time... need... to... shoot... self...

10350

Living Room / Re: Signs You're a Crappy Programmer (and don't know it)

« Last post by Renegade on December 01, 2007, 08:25 PM »

That was a good list.

I know that sometimes I write just total crap. That's usually because I'm trying to get something done quickly and ignore the best way to do things. Most often those aren't for release though. I take more time when working towards a release, but I still do take shortcuts from time to time.

The way the images are done in the Anti-Christ Hunter isn't the best way at all. I've statically added all the images instead of having a dynamic method to do it. Not the best way, but a quick and easy way. It would have been better to do it dynamically so that images can be easily added.

Often there's no "right" way to do things, just different ways. It all depends on what you need to do.

I recently corrected someone on a programming issue where they were dealing with a URL, but treated it as a string. The logic behind that is IMMENSE and very difficult. The best way to do it is to cast the URL as a URI type and then deal with it. You have MUCH LESS code then, less prone to bugs, it's more reliable, and a LOT less work. Treating it as a string is in every way inferior. So sometimes there are situations where there is a clearly superior way to do things.