Recent Posts

10501

Developer's Corner / Re: Microsoft providing .NET Framework source code!

« Last post by Renegade on October 07, 2007, 04:43 PM »

I wouldn't say that it's a waste of time to get into MS technologies. They certainly open up a large market for you very quickly. At least on the desktop.

VS is also very RAD with .NET. The amount that you can get done with it is just huge. You simply can't compare that to something like ANSI C. Well, you can, but they are worlds apart.

I take the view that I'm not really betting on an "MS technology," but rather that I'm betting on the CLS (the foundation for .NET - but yes - it is really an MS initiative/technology). Mono is the only serious contender other than .NET there. Portable.net exists, but I don't really hear anything about it much and don't figure many people are adopting it.

Well see though. Novell seems committed to Linux and Mono. MS seems to be cooperating well with Novell.

It may be that MS is trying some strategy to gain more developers there. As you mentioned, they've made several free versions of VS and lowered the barrier to entry.

10502

General Software Discussion / Re: Isn't it ironic?

« Last post by Renegade on October 07, 2007, 07:44 AM »

The page IS NOT secure in Opera. 

-Renegade (October 07, 2007, 03:51 AM)

Apparently, the man has no fault... On opera 9.5 build 9562, it is displayed over https, which means it probably was a problem with earlier versions of opera and not the page itself.

-jgpaiva (October 07, 2007, 06:37 AM)

I refuse to recant!

The problem can't be in the browser. HTTPS is determined by the server. When a request comes in over HTTP, you can either accept it and continue, or refuse, or redirect. Just because a client asks for an HTTP/HTTPS page doesn't mean that it can necessarily get it. Those decisions are left to the web application.

10503

General Software Discussion / Re: Isn't it ironic?

« Last post by Renegade on October 07, 2007, 03:51 AM »

BEAUTIFUL!

The security crowd really irks me as they really do little more than peddle fear and confusion. I love to see them trip over their own 'doom and gloom' sermons. Serves them right.

Not sure if anyone ever listens to the Security Now podcast, but there was a show a few episodes back (between 108~110 - forget which) where Steve is going on about his "secure" password page where you can generate "secure" passwords and that nobody can know them because the page is all "secure" through SSL, blah blah blah... From that page:

What makes these perfect and safe?
...
Also, because this page will only allow itself to be displayed over a snoop-proof and proxy-proof high-security SSL connection, and it is marked as having expired back in 1999, this page which was custom generated just now for you will not be cached or visible to anyone else.

*Emphasis mine...

Screen shot courtesy of my favorite screen shot utility, Screenshot Captor:



The page is http://grc.com/password.htm.

Both IE and Firefox redirect to HTTPS, but Opera doesn't. Why? Well, the answer should be fairly obvious. IT'S A SECURITY HOLE!

The page IS NOT secure in Opera. Huh? WTF? Wait a second... Didn't the security expert just say, "this page will only allow itself to be displayed over a snoop-proof and proxy-proof high-security SSL connection?"

So much of the security industry is just pure snake oil.

And besides, nobody needs 64 character passwords. That's just silly. The universe will die out before you can brute force anything near that.

Reminds me of an Ozzy song - Miracle Man. It's about when the TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart got caught with a hooker.

10504

General Software Discussion / Re: Appaholic - Another nice freeware review page

« Last post by Renegade on October 06, 2007, 07:26 PM »

Screen shot... PUKE! Old Win2K screen shots look like crap.

-Renegade (September 18, 2007, 10:30 AM)

Oh, I feel rather embarrassed suddenly.  That could have been a screenshot from my machine.  I always hated the soft-look WinXP icons, so I've been using "Windows Classic Style" for years. 

You've got me interested in skins and styling now....

-suleika (October 06, 2007, 05:01 PM)

I used to use the Classic look for a long time, but really, for screen shots, they need to have a bit more appeal. It's got nothing to do with personal preferences and everything to do with making things 'sexy' for potential downloaders/customers. It's a marketing thing.

The Classic look is just dated now, and you either need to use the full XP theme, another theme like Royale (used at Softpedia), or the new Vista look (Aero or otherwise).

10505

Developer's Corner / Re: Association of Shareware Professionals

« Last post by Renegade on October 06, 2007, 06:48 PM »

If you're debating it right now, look at it this way... It's a mere $100 per year. Not a big deal. Drop the $100 and get into the news groups. Get some information and post some questions. At the end of the year, decide if you want to renew. In all likelihood you'll renew.

The free software you get there and the discounts will MORE than pay for the membership in any event.

The thing about the ASP compared to forums like here is that they are private and verified. Not just anyone can join. Consequently you get more open discussions there that you won't see in public forums like this. Developers are more willing to be open when they know that there aren't 'prying eyes' peeking in on them.

You won't be disappointed.

10506

Developer's Corner / Re: Recommended/Best/Most Useful IDEs for Language *insert language*?

« Last post by Renegade on October 06, 2007, 06:44 PM »

For a freeware C# IDE, you can't go past SharpDevelop.

-Ehtyar (October 05, 2007, 08:11 PM)

+1 for SharpDevelop - It's EXTREMELY well done!

10507

Developer's Corner / Re: Microsoft providing .NET Framework source code!

« Last post by Renegade on October 06, 2007, 06:41 PM »

Like i said, there is a ton i like about .net, C#, and MS development tools.  I consider myself pretty neutral in the open source debates -- i love the idea and spirit behind open source, but i have been burned so many times with half-finished open source tools that show no sign of having developers willing to fix the unfun-to-work-on-issues that i have grown to fully expect it now. 

-mouser (October 05, 2007, 10:33 PM)

Amen to that. I always check to see if a project is VERY active before using it. Most often I just go for commercial software for that reason. It's really much cheaper to buy rather than use something that's free. Ironic, but true.

(In my ideal world all source code would be "open" but developers would get enough funding to support them while they work on the non-fun but necessary stuff and would be free from others taking their code and profiting from their work -- but that's a side issue and a pipe dream).

-mouser (October 05, 2007, 10:33 PM)

This is happening a lot more in the .NET and component industry now. A lot of commercial .NET components offer source code now. You can't resell it, but you can modify it. That's good enough for me.

Anyway -- nothing would please me more than hearing some announcement some day that MS fully blesses and supports the Mono project and is committed to seeing 100% cross-platform compatibility of all .net features in a timely fashion so that everything written for .net would be fully portable on win/mac/linux/etc.  I don't pretend to understand the business issues that would be involved.

-mouser (October 05, 2007, 10:33 PM)

So far it looks like MS has given its blessing to Moonlight and the cooperation between MS and Novell is very promising.

I'm just saying that as much as I may like a lot of .net, i'm not going to be embracing it until i know it's a viable long-term cross platform solution. My primary development platform would in all likelyhood stay on Windows, but I don't think single-platform languages are a good idea and i don't want to go down that path again.

-mouser (October 05, 2007, 10:33 PM)

I know what you mean. I'm generally pretty conservative, but when I first heard about .NET and looked into it, I figured that this was going to be the next big thing that would have some real longevity. Unlike most, I didn't jump into web development there - I went into application development instead.

I think that in the next few months you'll hear some good news from the Mono Project and be pleasantly surprised.

10508

General Software Discussion / Re: download managers: what is the best for mass-downloading all mp3s in a site?

« Last post by Renegade on October 06, 2007, 06:26 PM »

Teleport Pro. Let's you download entire sites, or just files. Very good.

10509

General Software Discussion / Re: registration benefits

« Last post by Renegade on October 06, 2007, 06:24 PM »

Some authors will send out update notices, which is worthwhile.

I only resend lost registration keys to the email address that someone purchased with unless I can verify that it's the same person. Not really registration, but I encourage people to let me know if their email address changes for that reason.

Often there isn't really a huge benefit. It's mostly marginal.

10510

Living Room / Re: How to stop worrying

« Last post by Renegade on October 06, 2007, 10:30 AM »

Oh c'mon!

The answer to "Don't Worry" is "Be Happy!"

Everyone knows that!

10511

General Software Discussion / Re: Question: Does the GPL allow program redistribution?

« Last post by Renegade on October 05, 2007, 08:46 PM »

Renegade: just keep in mind that, unless exceptions are added, LGPL still requires you to distribute the .obj files so users can re-link with a newer version of the LGPL code you use... (okay, you could put all the LGPL code you use in dll files to avoid this).

-f0dder (October 05, 2007, 04:55 AM)

And that's the beauty of the LGPL - it gives people options.

Hey - doesn't giving options make something "more open'"?

10512

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Renegade on October 05, 2007, 08:42 PM »

I just installed BRU - very nice. Lots of easy options there.

Also, I noticed that it's using pcre.dll - handy. (Stands for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions)

10513

Living Room / Re: Versioning of files

« Last post by Renegade on October 05, 2007, 07:49 PM »

Hmmm... Interesting topic... Seems to me like NTFS streams would be ideal for this kind of thing. Is that what FileHamster does?

10514

Developer's Corner / Re: Recommended/Best/Most Useful IDEs for Language *insert language*?

« Last post by Renegade on October 05, 2007, 07:43 PM »

All for C#:

Have a look at BlackSun for Eclipse for C#.

There's also Improve C# Plugin for Eclipse.

Also, XDevelop is another option.

I'm currently trying out those 2/4 (depending on how you count - 2 are plugins for Ecplise) above and Mono Develop - all for C#.

So far nothing even comes close to Visual Studio. However, I'm going to give them a fair shake. XDevelop is first because I've only got a 30 day trial for it and need to get as much done in the limited time that I have with it.

Mono Develop is now at v1.0 beta 1 (0.16). I was trying out v0.12 and v0.15 and both were rather unstable. I won't be getting back to 0.16 for a bit as I'll be focusing on XDevelop for a while (probably until I get bored of it or frustrated - and most likely frustrated).

The jury is still out on all of the above as I've just started to get into it with my shiny new Suse box. I'll most likely do a review of them for the .NET Preacher Show once I'm more comfortable with them (or gotten frustrated with them). We'll see...

10515

Developer's Corner / Re: Microsoft providing .NET Framework source code!

« Last post by Renegade on October 05, 2007, 07:28 PM »

mouser,

I think that you're going to be pleasantly suprised in the near future.

.NET really is what Java wanted to be. Java is still 'write once, break anywhere'. .NET isn't at the point where it will 'break anywhere', but Mono is bringing it closer!

Ok - silliness aside, we've seen quite a few major shifts in the MS attitude towards being more open and supporting various open source initiatives. e.g. DNN, Mono, etc.

The problem is that people fundamentally don't understand Microsoft and their attitude. MS has traditionally been hostile to OS/FOSS/whatever, and is still against GPL licensing. There's a very good reason for it though. Microsoft was built on the backs of third party developers that created software for their platform. Offering for Windows flourished where other platforms were more or less barren.

But why would others develop for Windows? Money. Pure & simple. They can make a living doing it. Or at least beer money in any event. Microsoft's best interests are served by helping it's third party developers make money. The GPL sinks this, and so it's understandable that MS wouldn't cozy up to it. BSD licensing on the other hand makes sense. It enables a profit model. MS now has quite a few licenses that steer in this direction, e.g. MSPL, etc.

The markets and technologies are getting to the point now that it makes sense for MS to open up more than in the past. .NET is clearly the way of the future in how it works.

The CLS is open for anyone to come up with an implementation (CLI/CLR/.NET). Only Novell has stepped up to the plate in a serious manner. Well, there is Portable.NET, but how far along are they? Mono seems to be the only serious contender.

MS is in no fear of having .NET being usurped for the moment. Looking at the various tools available:

Eclipse with BlackSun, etc.
Mono Develop
XDevelop ($500.00)

And comparing them to Visual Studio? There's no comparison. VS is light years ahead of all of them.

While a small developer may choose an alternative to VS due to cost, for a company that needs to be productive, VS is the only option available. The alternatives might be ok for compiling or whatever, but productivity in VS is just leagues above anything at the moment.

Businesses are and will be the main focus for a long time. .NET was never marketed to small developers when it came out - MS only targetted enterprises and government. .NET is now feasible for small developers and becoming more and more attractive all the time.

I think Mono is going to be the major force there in pushing .NET (or the CLS) forward for cross-platform development. There really isn't much else. RealBASIC. ANSI C. Java. A few others. But nothing is really coming close to the very rich set of tools that you get with .NET.

Time will tell of course, but with 2 billion dollars of initial investment from MS in the CLS, and all they are pouring into .NET, there's no way MS will ever let .NET fail. Right now they need to address the cross-platform issue and the open source issue in order to remain relevant and expand. It's only good business for them to embrace what's going on right now. And this time, it's not the MS 'embrace and extend' going on, it's MS embracing, and others on the outside 'extending'.

If MS isn't careful then .net is going to get surpassed by a similar project which isn't so wedded to one platform (windows).

Another way to look at it is that there is absolutely nothing out there other than the CLS that remotely addresses the issue. Java? Well... Not quite. It's very fragmented. What flavour of Java?

So who's going to drop $2 billion to come up with something relevant? I don't see anyone other than Novell stepping up to the plate there.

This is a good thing for Novell because Netware has really lost its relevance. Novell needs something to keep it in the game in the future. They're moving towards Linux now, but they'll need more than 'just another Linux distro' to do it.

Anyways, let's hope for the best. Better and faster development tools are always a good thing.

10516

General Software Discussion / Re: Question: Does the GPL allow program redistribution?

« Last post by Renegade on October 05, 2007, 02:10 AM »

Calling the GPL evil is a bit too... religious. 

-mwb1100 (October 03, 2007, 09:49 AM)

I've certainly got a lot of animosity - no denying that - but not towards the GPL.

My animosity is purely directed towards the GPL zealots, the FSF, and those that try to hijack the meaning of the words "open" or "free" for their own political agendas. Animosity? That's putting how I feel mildly... It's got a 1984 stench to it.

I've got nothing against the GPL itself. But there's a definite stench that surrounds it.

Here's an example of the GPL religious stench that sickens me...

Developer ABC comes up with a cool piece of software called 123 and releases it as GPL. Developer XYZ come around and says, "hey - that's pretty cool. I can't use GPL software, so can I buy a commercial use license?" ABC scoffs and spouts some religious sermon about <insert insanity here>.

Huh? What's that about? And it happens. It's perfectly within ABC's rights to be a jackass about his software, but that's what I don't get. Why do that? XYZ is ready to put money in your hands? Why not take it? ABC can rewrite a new license for XYZ. Just seems crazy.

For the large projects it's almost impossible to do that because... who gets the money? A lot of people worked on it... So... ??? It's a bad situation there. That's where the GPL kind of screws itself, or rather, screws the developers behind the software because they can never benefit from their work directly.

There are certainly good and bad developers (from a 'personal' perspective I mean) out there. I had one guy approach me to use his software and I told him flat out - no - it's GPL and I can't go within a thousand miles of it. He turned around and released it as LGPL as well, which made it possible to use. A fantastic example of someone not blined by the religiosity that often surrounds the GPL. He was practical about it and wanted people to use his software. That kind of developer I like.

The LGPL is a great license for everyone. It keeps things free for users, and allows commercial developers to get involved as well.

It's very often important not to exclude commercial developers because they can give a project momentum that it otherwise might not get.

Got to run now.

10517

Developer's Corner / Re: Microsoft providing .NET Framework source code!

« Last post by Renegade on October 04, 2007, 11:49 PM »

but I don't think I really agree with Miguel that it's not "open source".

-Renegade (October 04, 2007, 07:21 PM)

One concern that Miguel has is that it's not appropriate to incorporate the MS code into Mono (Miguel's project) because the MS code is not open source 'enough'.  Hence his warning for anyone who might contribute to Mono to avoid studying the MS code - that course of action avoids tainting the Mono code base.

-mwb1100 (October 04, 2007, 11:00 PM)

A very valid concern - thanks for pointing that out.

10518

Developer's Corner / Re: Programming 101 Lesson: Don't Purge User Data

« Last post by Renegade on October 04, 2007, 07:43 PM »

Very interesting discussion here, and on one of my favorite topics - databases!

I'm going to have to go with the "archive the data" thing. There's no excuse for deleting users from a database. That only means that you hired a shitty consulting firm to do an inadequate job when designing the system.

Like above - "Primary keys are cheap." Agreed 100%.

It's not hard to go an extra step in normalization to use a single table as a "key" table to store only the most essential data for a particular user. e.g. Primary key, full name, passport number & type as foreign key (int), or whatever. Your table is the really nice and lean and easily searched. Getting too big? Hardly possible anymore with the current state of hardware.

Concurrency issues? Just a bad design. Primary keys should only ever be in one place, so looking in multiple places just doesn't make sense. If you're spinning things off into another database for archived data, then there's a design issue there that needs to be resolved, but still there should be no issues with duplicate information.

Ok - I'm a bit radical with database design. I like pushing towards the 5th normal form as much as possible. Data should always be unique where possible.

Ah well - I'll go back to lurking.

10519

Developer's Corner / Re: Microsoft providing .NET Framework source code!

« Last post by Renegade on October 04, 2007, 07:21 PM »

I heard about it on the Hanselminutes podcast. Sounds good.

I'll try not to rant, but I don't think I really agree with Miguel that it's not "open source". The source is there. You get to see it. The locks are off and you get to see it. That seems open to me. Microsoft Reference License? Still seems open. You don't get to change it or anything, but it's still open enough to see. Open is open.

The whole "what is open source" thing just ticks me off. It seems like there needs to be a real, honest, and true blanket definition for 'open source' that is permissive enough to allow anything that is 'opened up'.

Beyond that some set of sub-categories would make sense. e.g. Just to blow hot air out my butt - open source: proprietary reference (as above), open source: proprietary mutable (e.g. commercial software that doesn't permit reselling but permits changing), open source: restricted free mutable (GPL), open source: free mutable (BSD), etc. Just something that makes more sense and isn't some kind of religious radicalism like the FSF.

Never-the-less, it's great to see MS opening up .NET. It will certainly make some things easier in those wierd situations where things go awry and you just can't figure out where/why.

Kudos to MS for this. It's a huge step.

10520

Living Room / Psychic Whois Service :)

« Last post by Renegade on October 03, 2007, 10:57 PM »

Check this out:



It's got that search suggestion tool for whois domain name lookups. I figured it was kind of nifty anyways.

Notice the red & green text.

10521

Living Room / Re: Podcast Clients....

« Last post by Renegade on October 03, 2007, 10:36 PM »

Not a bad idea. I'm not sure if it will work with an iPod though. They do some wierd stuff with files renaming things to stuff like "a87gh7ms3.mp3" or other similarly meaningless file names.

10522

Living Room / Re: Podcast Clients....

« Last post by Renegade on October 03, 2007, 06:20 PM »

...
I suggest you use your web browser's ability to subscribe to RSS feeds, subscribe to the podcast, download the mp3 file, put it on your player, and leave it at that. This is what I do after spending a few hours a few weeks ago looking for a good podcast client/player/radio (free or pay) and not finding anything that wasn't abandoned several years ago.

-tinjaw (October 03, 2007, 11:47 AM)

Not sure whether I agree with you there. That's just far too much work.

I use iTunes to manage podcasts simply because I haven't tried anything else that can do the job right. And while iTunes doesn't actually work properly (it's buggy as Hell), it's got the right idea.

Step 1: Subscribe to podcast
Step 2: Plug in hardware audio player
Step 3: Done.

Having to copy files to the player is a step that you shouldn't have to do. The whole thing should be automated for you once you subscribe. That's kind of the point of the subscription - it comes to me rather than me going out and getting it.

It's sad that there isn't anything out there that really works right. Honestly, this stuff just isn't that hard to do. XML is almost trivial to consume. It's just another markup language. The only hard part is if there are 'updates' to a podcast (e.g. the file size changes in the feed) in which case you do need some kind of error checking. Do you download the update? Do you overwrite the existing file? Do you alert the user to decide? Do you even bother looking at previous entries? Etc. However, that's all easily handled with defaults and preferences.

Well, I suppose the other hard part would be detecting when an audio player is inserted/attached to the computer. You might need to maintain a database of names for that - not fun.

I do think that I'll check out that Ziepod thing. I'm really getting sick of iTunes not syncing my iPod properly. It's really frustrating when I get on the road and the podcast that I was expecting to be there isn't.

10523

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Let's talk about software testing!

« Last post by Renegade on October 03, 2007, 09:36 AM »

Hmmm... Interesting...

I just gave a developer a set of cases to test a couple weeks ago... Well into the tens of thousands of cases... He won't even look at them for a while - with good reason.

Unfortunately I can't say much more. The numbers themselves should speak volumes though.

What platforms/languages does it work with?

I keep thinking nunit for some reason - any similarities?

10524

General Software Discussion / Re: Question: Does the GPL allow program redistribution?

« Last post by Renegade on October 03, 2007, 08:39 AM »

Imho GPL software isn't free, by any means. It's enforced open (I certainly don't dislike openness!), and is usually gratis as well, but free?

-f0dder (October 03, 2007, 08:18 AM)

OH! I am SOOOO with you there! 

The GPL is NOT "free".

What drives me absolutely bonkers nuts blood-thirsty crazy is the incredible arrogance with which a couple of *free software* organizations purport to be authorities and define what it is to be "free" or "open". Their definitions are self-serving and extremely narrow.

I purchase commercial software that comes with source code once I buy the license. That's "open source". There's NO debate there. Zero. Nadda. Zilch. I get the source code once I purchase. It is then opened to me. Some will disagree. They are just wrong. Period. (Yes - I'm being a bit beligerent. I hate extremists and extremely narrow positions for broad definitions.)

The core problem for me is that the terms "free", "open source", "free software" and similar others are being hijacked. Those are normal English words with normal meanings that anyone should be able to understand without reading a trillion pages of nonsense. Trying to narrow down the definition for a broad term is simply wrong. Period.

Here's an example. Let's redefine "program"...

A program is a set of instructions that runs on a computer.

Wow. Cool! We're done!

Well... What about the program for an event at the local community center. A 12 step program for alcoholics... A...

It's just ridiculous for any organization to try and take control of a word or short phrase.

Ok - rant over. 

10525

General Software Discussion / Re: Question: Does the GPL allow program redistribution?

« Last post by Renegade on October 03, 2007, 07:01 AM »

Just shows how much of a bothersome hodgepodge can of worms GPL is if you're not doing 100% GPL. Viral, it is. Evil, it is.

-f0dder (October 03, 2007, 03:57 AM)

Agreed and agreed.

It's simple to work with GPL software if everything in the project is GPL.

However, once you start working in other things, it breaks. e.g. You cannot use a lot of non-GPL software with GPL due to the viral nature of the GPL, but if you ask in some places, it's ok. Pure confusion. e.g. I have software A that is GPL and software B that is proprietary. I have rights to distribute both. Now, I create some software, C, that uses A and B. I GPL license C and release the source. So... What about B? It's a part of the software.... GPL is viral...

The answer so far as I've been able to determine there is that the FSF wants to have its cake and eat it too - they'll let B slide because it's not YOUR software and it's used under license. Double check on that though - I'm still fuzzy there.

An installer isn't really a part of the program - it's just a delivery mechanism and so isn't infected by the GPL.

From my perspective, it's just easiest to steer clear of any GPL software period when you're developing software. It's just not worth the headaches. Most often there are other non-GPL software solutions to fix any problem that any GPL software solves anyways. And yes... I tend to side for commercial solutions because then I have some recourse for support - you can call that laziness.

But in all fairness to the GPL, there's nothing to stop you from selling GPL'd software. The point of the GPL is to keep the software free forever. There is some merit in it. The FSF however does seem extreme in many ways.