Recent Posts

1051

Living Room / Re: 100 questions

« Last post by housetier on September 09, 2006, 11:18 AM »

I live too far away to attend. I could ask my mother if I get her on the phone...

1052

General Software Discussion / Re: MiniReview: Windows Live Writer

« Last post by housetier on September 09, 2006, 05:17 AM »

I don't use windows at all, but thank you very much for letting us know about your mini review. 

1053

General Software Discussion / Re: houseforge recommendation September 2006

« Last post by housetier on September 09, 2006, 05:07 AM »

 

Thank you all for the positive feedback! It sure feels great 

Remember to suggest something for next month's recommendation; I am watching freshmeat but I might miss something.

Don't be mad if I don't recommend your suggested program/tool. I look to see if it matches the criteria then "keep it mind" on del.icio.us; when it comes to chosing I look at the list and decide on a whim, I pick the one that I like best at that moment. Highly subjective. 

1054

Developer's Corner / Re: HELP REQUEST: Finding Developer Related Sites that Accept Press Releases

« Last post by housetier on September 09, 2006, 04:49 AM »

heise publishers by far are the most important publishers in the German speaking IT/technology sector. I checked their contacts page to find how to submit press releases. Each editorial office has its own email adress:

• c't the most popular of their magazines, very very influencial; everybody knows this magazine
  
• iX less popular than c't, more business like, let's say more sophisticated; still very influencial
  
• can't say anything about this
  
• Telepolis can't say anything about this
  

Spiegel Online is the most viewed German general newssite. They outrank every other online news service. There cooperations with The New York Times (or so, dunno exactly), and there is a section called "Net World".

• spiegel online editorial office
  

Back to the "IT sector": Golem is a good alternative to heise news. Here you will also find (p)reviews of games and other stuff such as hardware, as well as "hardcore" IT news.

• golem editorial office
  

Yes these are all .de email addresses but keep in mind that many Germans learn English in school and that the language of IT (internet technology) is in fact English; heise and spiegel both feature an English section/translation of their news; I am 100% positive the editors from golem also understand English.

These are top 3 most influential online publishers for the German market (which is the largest one within Europe). I can't wait to see donationcoder.com featured on spiegel's Net World

1055

Living Room / Re: Do you have a blog yet? Introducing "Vox"

« Last post by housetier on September 09, 2006, 04:22 AM »

I registered at vox the other day too http://housetier.vox.com/  But I only did it to reserve my name. I am waiting for a certain feature/module for [http://drupal.org/]Drupal[/url] to be updated, then I might start posting there.

I came across vox via cuteoverload...

1056

General Software Discussion / Re: keeping/saving cloned files

« Last post by housetier on September 08, 2006, 11:39 AM »

This is the best alternative, but NOTICE THAT THIS METHOD DOESN'T CREATE 2 DIFFERENT FILES!
So, it can't be used for backup.

-jgpaiva (September 08, 2006, 11:13 AM)

Which one do you mean, the filesystem thingie, or the daemon thingie?

1057

General Software Discussion / Re: keeping/saving cloned files

« Last post by housetier on September 08, 2006, 10:52 AM »

The filesystem NTFS does support this feature (unix guys will know this as hard link as opposed to symlink). But the operating system on top of NTFS doesn't offer easy access to this feature. There are, however, tools which will let you make more use of NTFS.

Sadly, I do not know any such tool by name I only know they exist.

If you don't use NTFS but FAT32 you will need something different, some watch-and-clone-changes daemon or so. I am positive there are free tools for this.

1058

General Software Discussion / Re: Gobby: A Collaborative Text Editor

« Last post by housetier on September 07, 2006, 05:23 PM »

has anyone of you guys already worked with it? how is the "feel"? how is the crossplatformness?

1059

Developer's Corner / Re: Computer Programming Algorithms Directory

« Last post by housetier on September 07, 2006, 02:48 PM »

Here is a free book with a few algorithms, grouped in topics:

Chapter 0: Prologue
Chapter 1: Algorithms with numbers
Chapter 2: Divide-and-conquer algorithms
Chapter 3: Decompositions of graphs
Chapter 4: Paths in graphs
Chapter 5: Greedy algorithms
Chapter 6: Dynamic programming
Chapter 7: Linear programming
Chapter 8: NP-complete problems
Chapter 9: Coping with NP-completeness
Chapter 10: Quantum algorithms

The individual chapters and the book as a whole are available for download.

I have not looked into this book that much, I can't say if it's good or substantial. I think it's best to have several sources for algorithms because that way you usually also get several different examples which might help a lot.

1060

Living Room / Re: Slashfood: Cool Website for Food Lovers

« Last post by housetier on September 07, 2006, 11:08 AM »

I regularly visit another blog from Weblobs, Inc. Network: engadget.

slashfood always reminds me of slashdot; I think this similarity is intentional, I did the same!

Slashfood does look interesting though. I believe hadez had sent me to a few of their posts in the past... I'll add their feed to my long list of feeds and see how it works out.

1061

Developer's Corner / Re: WANTED: PHP CODER (other languages possible) TO BUILD A CMS-LIKE REVIEW SYSTEM

« Last post by housetier on September 07, 2006, 07:42 AM »

I will give it a go.

1062

Living Room / Re: Prediction: In the year 2010, all Digg Stories will be about Digg

« Last post by housetier on September 07, 2006, 03:34 AM »

Techcrunch has an article about recent developents at digg.

...Digg will soon be implementing a new algorithm that weighs a diversified group of Diggers more heavily than groups acting together

-http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/06/troubles-in-diggville/

When digg manages to "get the curve" as we Germans say, I might consider giving it another shot. If they aren't at least a little convincing their new rating system will work "better" (from my POV), then I will never speak of it again.

1063

General Software Discussion / Re: houseforge recommendation September 2006

« Last post by housetier on September 06, 2006, 06:00 PM »

housetier: you mentioned something about Revelation. does it have a website?

-lanux128 (September 05, 2006, 09:00 PM)

It does, but Revelation

...is a password manager for the GNOME desktop

-http://oss.codepoet.no/revelation/about/

Which means it will not work on windows; therefore I didn't link to it originally.

1064

Site/Forum Features / Re: A dilemna regarding affiliate fees

« Last post by housetier on September 05, 2006, 08:58 PM »

I am in line with my four previous speakers and mouser's conclusion.

1065

Developer's Corner / Re: Turbo C and Turbo Pascal are back!!

« Last post by housetier on September 05, 2006, 05:58 PM »

They have been giving away IDE's longer than Microsoft...and always making you jump through hoops by making you get an account, answer survey questions, wait for an email, confirm this, confirm that...then you get your key...and if you are lucky you might be able to find the software to use it with somewhere...maybe in Poland?

-app103 (September 05, 2006, 04:39 PM)

HAHAHAHA well put! 

It sometimes is strange how much you have to go through to get a product. One would think they are more interested in spreading their product than keeping visitors on their multiple websites and ftp servers. But then, I don't really know what software distribution on this scale is like...

1066

General Software Discussion / Re: Win/IIS to LAMP Converts

« Last post by housetier on September 05, 2006, 10:01 AM »

I recommend: use what your peers use. That way you can ask for help more easily.

-housetier (August 31, 2006, 08:50 PM)

Now tell us what your peers so we can recommend you use the same. Or pick ubuntu as I think it has by far the friendliest community.

Do not expect things to be done for you, but tell us what exactly(!) you want to achieve. I will try to help you with ubuntu. YOU make the choice.

1067

General Software Discussion / houseforge recommendation September 2006

« Last post by housetier on September 05, 2006, 09:45 AM »

about houseforge recommendations

In this section I want to recommend one tool each month. The tools have to meet several criteria:

* work both on Linux and Windows
* have to be free, as in "no cost", and open source of course
* provide "extra value" to the user: useful and/or fun, or just plain amazing
* I have to like it

Please tell me if you think I should consider a certain tool, game, program, application, whatever. You name it, I rate it!

  Here Is The HouseForge Recommendation for September 2006 

short

Name:	Keepass
Purpose:	Secure password safe, and password organizer/manager
URL:	http://keepass.sourceforge.net/
Mini-Review:	right here on dc.com

longer

For the month of September 2006 I have decided on Keepass because it is very useful, has features at least *I* want, and it works both on Windows and Linux; there are even ports to PocketPC, Palm OS, and MacOS X. And so you don't have to rely completely on me, Donatiocoder.com member Josh has written a mini-review.

Keepass helps you organize your passwords for just about anything: websites, email accounts, databases... You can organize passwords and search for them. The passwords themselves are securely stored on harddisc, protected with quite strong encryption.

Also you can use Keepass to generate "strong" passwords, so you don't need to come up with them yourself and dont have to use yet another program.

Now, I must admit I don't use keepass(x) myself yet, as I am very happy with Revelation. However, I am very much intrigued by keepass and will definitely try it out myself soon. If I hadn't found Revelation yet, I would have used Keepass.

I am very well aware that there are many "password safe" programs for all the different operating systems out there, but only a few (one?) of these programs support several operating systems; hence I recommend Keepass.


screenshots, painty and colorful

Platform	Main window	add entry dialog
Windows
PocketPC
Linux
MacOS X

1068

Living Room / are YOU an internet addict?

« Last post by housetier on September 04, 2006, 05:33 PM »

short

Where can I find out?	Right here
How do I find out?	if 5 of those 6 criteria match, you are an addict
in German?	klar, gibt's auch

longer

I came across this via an article at heise.de. The article is short and so is the test.

However, what I learned: there is a huge difference between doing something "a lot", "extremely often", or even "excessively" and being sick in a pathological sense. That is, just because you met only 4 criteria doesn't mean you are not an addict, but if you met 5 there is a high chance you should seek help.

Don't ask me though, I am just posting this for the curious inclined. If you are sick and feel I made of fun of you and your addiction what can I say besides "you are sick!" 

Personally I scored 0.5:

kind of compulsion to use the Internet

I got rid of my only major addiction when I gave away my tv. Best thing I ever did...

1069

Site/Forum Features / Re: RSS Feeds for DonationCoder.com and this Forum

« Last post by housetier on September 01, 2006, 07:02 PM »

Here is what I use to get the latest 15 active topics, not posts:

[Select]

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?action=.xml;limit=15;sa=news;type=rss2

1070

General Software Discussion / Re: Win/IIS to LAMP Converts

« Last post by housetier on August 31, 2006, 08:50 PM »

I recommend: use what your peers use. That way you can ask for help more easily.

If you want to switch system choose the distribution/operating system with the nicest community. They all have essentially the same features anyway, so getting friendly competent help is the key. 

The next advice is: use what you feel comfortable with. If you can work good with windows and mediocre with linux - use windows! If you hate linux but windows doesn't really cut it - try bsd.

If you are going the linux route, I would like to recommend ubuntu but that it just my preference. 

What will you be using the server for?

1071

General Software Discussion / Re: Win/IIS to LAMP Converts

« Last post by housetier on August 31, 2006, 05:26 PM »

I wonder what software that would be... besides apache does work on windows as well. So you could get started with a WAMP system first and wouldn't need to learn a whole new operating system.

If you feel you must have a LAMP system, I don't want to discourage you any longer. But my advice is: start slowly to keep the frustration low. 

1072

General Software Discussion / Re: Win/IIS to LAMP Converts

« Last post by housetier on August 31, 2006, 09:59 AM »

First, I have a couple of questions:

1. Are you dissatisfied with IIS&co or are there other reasons why you need(!) to switch?
2. What would you use such a server for?
3. Do you have friends who could help you getting started?

1073

General Software Discussion / Re: Need Virtual Desktop software recommendations

« Last post by housetier on August 31, 2006, 08:45 AM »

I friend of mine is using bbLean and has just recently discovered the usefulness* of virtual desktops.

*Useful for him of course.

1074

Developer's Corner / Re: CTU: 10 common misunderstandings about the GPL

« Last post by housetier on August 30, 2006, 12:56 PM »

a little late but still super short

/.	It's on slashdot now as well

1075

Site/Forum Features / Re: Converting threads for offline reading?

« Last post by housetier on August 30, 2006, 10:37 AM »

Or maybe into some usenet-news format...

I know some mailing lists are "converting" emails into forum posts and offer a nntp(?) view too. So people who like newsreaders can do their thing, and people who prefer email can do their thing, and people who want to use forums can do their things as well.

What I am trying to say: while there might not be an export/view of the forum to treepadlite .hjt, there might be one for "something". I would assume it depends on the features of SMF (greatest forum software I have seen so far).