Recent Posts

10576

General Software Discussion / Re: Licensing add-on, copy protection software, and one specific question.

« Last post by Renegade on August 27, 2007, 03:52 AM »

Maybe I overreacted.  Some serious family issues have arisen and it has been difficult for all of us to deal with them calmly.  *If* I overreacted, my apologies.

-fowmow (August 27, 2007, 03:45 AM)

No worries - just please be forgiving the next time I get blitzed drunk and start posting completely insane drivel!

(I do post & drink from time to time - it's embarassing.)

10577

General Software Discussion / Re: Licensing add-on, copy protection software, and one specific question.

« Last post by Renegade on August 27, 2007, 03:14 AM »

Is this not the general software discussion forum?

-fowmow (August 27, 2007, 02:27 AM)

Yes, but it's not really so much of a developers forum as it is a users forum.

Get a clue or do not bother to respond.  I do not need someone being asinine for the sake of it.

-fowmow (August 27, 2007, 02:27 AM)

No need to get nasty. He was looking for clarification. Your original request was too broad to answer. If you were in a specifically developer forum, like say here, then it would have been easier to determine what you were asking.

In any event, your questions are still far to vauge to answer. You really need to narrow them down to something that someone can answer.

Good components? ILS, IPN.NET, .NET Reactor, VBOLock, DeployLX... There are lots of them... Depends on what you want to do... What language are you using? Delphi? MFC? ASM? .NET? VC++? For Windows? Linux? OSX? Solaris? Is x64 support necessary? Do you need activation? Protection vs. licensing - they aren't the same... Too many wide open questions to give a decent answer.

Narrow it down to what you're looking to do and someone can give you a decent answer. Otherwise visit the ASP NGs or the JoS BoS forum. There are other places to look as well.

10578

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / ALPass v2.74 Released

« Last post by Renegade on August 27, 2007, 02:55 AM »

ALPass v2.74 is now available at www.altools.net.

ALPass is an Internet Explorer enhancement to securely store logins and passwords, and to automatically log you into web sites.

The top improvements in ALPass v2.74 include:

1) Fully Windows Vista compatible (x86 and x64)
2) Can now be directly installed to removeable storage, e.g. USB Drive, digital camera, iPod, portable media players, etc.
3) Full support for Internet Explorer 7 (IE7 64-bit not supported)
4) Security update
5) Language updates - Now in English, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese (Available through Ahnlab), Korean, and Polish

For more information, please visit the ALPass home page.

Regards,

Ryan - Your ALTools Guy here at DonationCoder.com



Version History Since Last Public Release:


### ALPass 2.74 ###

1. Added: Greek translation
2. Fixed: ALPass did not properly handle importing malformed ALPass database files (*.APW)
3. Fixed: Security issues related to #2 above
4. Fixed: In rare circumstances, creating a new folder in ALPass and entering illegal characters could cause a system crash


### ALPass 2.73 (Limited Release - Invitation Only) ###

1. Fixed: On some sites ALPass would incorrectly enter the login information from a previous site
2. Fixed: In some ALPass site folders sites would become shuffled out of order
3. Fixed: Languages were not properly displayed on Windows Vista
4. Fixed: Could not connect to "ALPass Online" with Kaspersky Antivirus 6.0 running. (***NOTE: ALPass Online is only available in the Korean edition of ALPass.)


### ALPass 2.72 (Limited Release - Invitation Only) ###

1. Added: ALPass can now be installed directly to removable storage devices
2. Added: Support for Internet Explorer 7
3. Added: Full support for Windows Vista


### ALPass 2.71 (Limited Release - Invitation Only) ###

1. Added: Windows Vista support
2. Fixed: Starting multiple instances of Internet Explorer at once from ALPass caused ALPass to misbehave
3. Fixed: Starting multiple tabs in Internet Explorer v7 at once caused ALPass to misbehave
4. Fixed: When uploading sites to ALPass online, manually set site keywords were not properly uploaded (Korean version only)
5. Fixed: When uploading folders to ALPass Online, collapsed folders were expanded (Korean version only)
6. Fixed: When an ID and password weren't entered for a site in ALPass, ALPass mistakenly autofilled the ID and login with nothing then submitted the form.

10579

General Software Discussion / Re: Problem with coding on site

« Last post by Renegade on August 24, 2007, 10:38 AM »

The problem is that you have zero knowledge of HTML or PHP... Ok - That was just mean... Bad me... Bad me... (Couldn't resist it though.)

The error message is meaningless without code to look at. You'd need to post that for anyone to give you an answer.

10580

General Software Discussion / Re: Computer "virus"...

« Last post by Renegade on August 23, 2007, 05:51 PM »

How about one that monitors network traffic for keywords like coffee, coke, pepsi, juice, orange, milk, water, beer, whiskey and other beverage names then when it find one pops open the CD tray and displays a message on the screen, "Your *KEYWORD* holder is now available."

Sounds like a fun virus to me.

You could also make it a mini-keylogger to look for keywords as well. Even more fun!

As for how it spreads, well, perhaps having it install itself as a Windows service would be a fun start. That way you'd hammer people that log out but have network traffic going on when not logged in. Hmmm... What else...

10581

General Software Discussion / Re: Organizing Reviews

« Last post by Renegade on August 20, 2007, 05:49 PM »

I like the idea of a wiki.

As for funding, that's a hard question.  A few bucks from a few people is hardly enough to fund a project. AdSense? Yahoo Publisher's Network? Open up the review request to authors for a fee? (e.g. Donate $100.00 or whatever to have your application included in a review.)

Not sure how that problem could get solved best. A commercial project like this would bear significant costs...

10582

General Software Discussion / Re: Organizing Reviews

« Last post by Renegade on August 18, 2007, 08:46 PM »

So how about this as a meager beginning for a review:

1) Post about a very narrow category of software to review, e.g. Help file authoring tools
2) Include a few examples (continue with this throughout up to step 6)
3) Define the major features / categories
4) Define minor features / categories within the majors
5) Define "extras" or unique features
6) Build complete list. List has these columns:
Feature Name
Yes/No
Rating
Comments
(Columns could be tables as well, e.g. A comments table)
7) Volunteer to review a piece of software (at anytime up to here)
Post review for later aggregation

Well, that's a brief outline of a methodology.

I'm up for reviewing H&M...

10583

General Software Discussion / Re: The software awards scam

« Last post by Renegade on August 18, 2007, 03:25 AM »

Rather than being just a bad thing, I think it will be nothing but good.

-app103 (August 18, 2007, 02:59 AM)

I thought that for a moment, but then thought again to myself that no matter what, another opportunity for spammers just isn't a good thing at all.

Moreover, they will devalue sites that actually matter for software authors. Not a good thing.

Somebody is going to pipe in that these kinds of sites are just garbage anyways and don't matter for authors, but I'm going to have to disagree.

I've got a lot of log data and gone through it. These millions of "nothing" sites do matter. They're the "long tail" where you always get a good amount of traffic after aggregating those sites results. Been there. Done that. They do matter. They might not be great sites, but they matter. "Everything Counts in Large Amounts..."

10584

General Software Discussion / Re: The software awards scam

« Last post by Renegade on August 18, 2007, 01:04 AM »

I posted my thoughts on this at JoS. It's dangerous... I think a can of worms has been opened and there're going to be some real problems.

10585

General Software Discussion / Organizing Reviews

« Last post by Renegade on August 18, 2007, 01:02 AM »

I'm splitting this from a previous topic...

You know I'd love to see a more organized process on this forum where a small group of people could agree to do an organized, exhaustive, frenetic testing of programs and try to come up with some consensus of best tools for a task.

In other words, it would be nice if we could take a thread like this and have a few people just go out and try every help file maker they can find and winnow down the list of top candidates.  Not only would that be helpful but we could then go and try to get some discounts on these, as well as provide some guidance to the non-top authors on how they could improve their programs.

-mouser (August 18, 2007, 12:19 AM)

Just one consideration...

I'd like to throw in "not-testing"... For these kinds of things there are people that use the software in real-world production and can contribute that real-world experience.

One of the problems I find with a lot of reviews is that they are little more than "feature lists" with no real commentary on how the application truly performs in real life.

I simply don't have the time to go out and download, install, then test a bunch of software, but I can certainly contribute for those applications where I really know them very well from real world experience.

I say "real world experience" because there's a VERY big difference between running a simple test for 5 minutes, and using an application on a daily basis.

Of course feature lists are important, but adding in something about the performance would take a review from being a "review" to being "authoritative".

Ok - That's all. Let the ideas start flying on how to get this organized... Perhaps we should start with a list of goals. I'll go first:

GOALS:

1) Make the reviews authoritative and reliable for readers
2) Exhaustive reviews of individual pieces of software
3) Exhaustive comparisons between pieces of software
4) Relatively easy to contribute to the process in a structured way, perhaps "templated" - this would require a metadata type structure
5) Not sure... Please continue...

Cheers!

10586

General Software Discussion / Re: how do you write a .chm file?

« Last post by Renegade on August 18, 2007, 12:51 AM »

or if like me you like the easy life

-katykaty (August 17, 2007, 02:26 PM)

$459.00  
The easy life seems to be an expensive life!

-Curt (August 17, 2007, 07:50 PM)

Not really... $459.00 is quite reasonable considering what it delivers... The question is whether you need that power or not.

The ability to produce CHM, HLP, PDF, XML, RTF, and other formats all from the same source is so worth it. Here's why...

You have a help file where you're creating a CHM. But you decide that you need it done for the web. The help is say 100 pages long. How long does it take, and how much is your time worth? Remember that you need to do this manually each time...

Next, you need it in PDF format... Same as above...

Now you need to do this all for every release! OUCH! You just screwed yourself for time if you didn't plan ahead and get a solution like H&M.

It's all about saving time and being more productive. Tools like H&M are always expensive for a very real reason. They save money and pay for themselves.

However, a lot of people don't need them. I don't use H&M for GDT's docs because they're short and I don't need that much power. At the dayjob, I really need it badly.

Besides - Alexsander is a fun guy after a few glasses of wine!

10587

General Software Discussion / PC Hate

« Last post by Renegade on August 16, 2007, 07:05 PM »

Check out this PC hater.

That's a lot of time & effort to spread PC hate... The worst part is that the videos are pretty clunky and this guy is a 'video pro'.

Ah well... I guess everyone needs a hobby.

10588

General Software Discussion / Re: Google now includes StarOffice as a free download!

« Last post by Renegade on August 15, 2007, 12:06 AM »

Hmmmm...

Google is truly becoming the 800 lb Internet gorilla, and their business practices are no better (and often much worse) than whatever MS has been accused of.

I don't think people shoud be chanting, "cool!" Quite the opposite, I think people should be VERY wary of what Google is doing. They're reading your Gmail already (context sensitive ads) and God only knows what else.

The Google mission to "organize all the information in the world" includes YOUR information. This is VERY scary... Now that they're sticking their nose even further into your desktop should be a cause for serious concern.

10589

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Dot Net Preacher Show - Interview with Grant Frisken from Infralution

« Last post by Renegade on August 13, 2007, 09:22 AM »

This week's .NET Preacher sermon is an interview with Grant Frisken from Infralution.

Infralution produces .NET components for developers and has some great solutions to some tough problems.

Also in the interview we talk about Infralution's new Globalizer.NET solution for software localizaton.

Enjoy~!

10590

General Software Discussion / Re: Top 3 programs you use

« Last post by Renegade on August 11, 2007, 06:37 PM »

looking at these programs it seems to me you need to change the question a bit.  I find it unlikely that anyone, except perhaps mouser, actually uses FARR for more than a few seconds at a time, yeah sure its a convenient way to launch a program but wouldn't what's launched be of more interest?  Maybe if you had a few categories, Favourite launcher, file/directory explorer, browser, other utilities, and most used program apart from those categories.  Just a thought.

-Grorgy (August 11, 2007, 06:02 PM)

This makes sense, but then... How many categories?

It could be simplified to the top necessary things - browser, email client, Windows Explorer/replacement - then go on to very broad categories like "background programs or programs that mostly run in the background", utilities, applications.

e.g. FARR would be a utility, an alarm clock would be a background program, something like a music player *mostly* runs in the background, while an audio editor is clearly an application.

That would limit the number of categories to a very small number.

Depends on the info that the OP wants/needs.

10591

General Software Discussion / Re: Top 3 programs you use

« Last post by Renegade on August 09, 2007, 06:53 PM »

Hmmm... Grrrr...

Ok - 1 problem with this thread - Browsers & Email clients - They're always going to be in there and not very interesting. I wish the topic were "Top 3 programs you use Plus your Email client & Browser..."

So, mini-rant over... errr... Almost... Opera and Outlook Express and Outlook and Firefox and IE... I hate having to use them all and wish I could settle on just one - not possible unfortuneately...

Oh - 1 more thing - Windows Explorer or replacement. It's not possible to use Windows without it. Ok - it's "possible", but very difficult... I use Windows Explorer... Too lazy to bother testing the trillions of replacements out there. Ok - there - mini-rant is 100% over.

Soooo.... Top 3 that I use:

1) Editplus - For everything!
2) Visual Studio Professional - For programming of course!
3) ALSong - I listen to music all day long, everyday!

10592

General Software Discussion / Re: What is a good freeware Vista Firewall ?

« Last post by Renegade on August 07, 2007, 11:40 AM »

The Vista (Windows) firewall is good enough for most people. Unless you're running a lot of network software, I can't see much of a reason to get something else unless you're looking for a prettier interface that's easier to use.

10593

General Software Discussion / Re: Favorite ZIP/RAR application?

« Last post by Renegade on August 07, 2007, 01:21 AM »

...
Of course, i'll give alzip a try
...

-Nxqd3051990 (August 06, 2007, 10:23 PM)

Yeah! That's what I like to hear!

Make sure to drop me a PM or email me (or use the form above) if you like ALZip and want a license for it. (Not necessary, but it removes the cute little info banner at the top.)

10594

General Software Discussion / Re: ALSong - New Release :)

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2007, 09:08 PM »

You can copy to another system, but you won't have the registry settings that are done during the installation.

To fix the language, save the following as a *.reg file then run it. You can also simply make the registry change yourself in regedit:

[Select]

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESTSoft\ALSong]
"Language"="English"

If you look in the "C:\Program Files\ESTsoft\ALSong\Language" folder, you'll see the actual language resource DLL.

Let me know how that goes or if you need any other help.

I really like Kimo. It's strange when you think of ukelele, but man - He just SMOKES!

10595

Developer's Corner / Re: C++ Development: win32 or .NET?

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2007, 05:13 PM »

C# (or VB.NET) are really fast to develop in.

The way I see it, development is less and less about making great code from scratch, and more and more about assembling the best components to do that work for you as you design an application to solve a problem and make people's lives easier.

It's rare that you would need very low level languages like assembler to get a job done. Most likely you can just use an existing component that's been around and is proven. So there's no need (usually) to write all that stuff yourself.

The obvious answer then is to go for productivity and speed. .NET fits the bill there.

Also, programming languages are becoming much larger and what there is to know is growing all the time. A single developer can't keep up with everything, so going with those tools that make life easier is a more natural progression. C/C++ are more difficult. They have a place, but that space will shrink over time.

10596

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your music player of choice?

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2007, 05:04 PM »

...

So: When are ALTools gonna launch a genuine media player (ALLPlay)  ???   
- I cannot be the only one longing for this version!?   

-Curt (August 06, 2007, 09:59 AM)

Well, I can't say that there will be a single media player... A lot of people use ALShow for their music player because it plays most audio files as well (MP3, OGG, etc.), but it's not really geared towards pure music.

Both ALShow and ALSong are specifically purposed towards video and audio (respectively), and their feature sets, the way they work and their UI design are likewise specialized. e.g. Video playlists aren't generally as large as music playlists, and the ALSong playlist reflects that.

But who knows? They may be merged at some point, but I'm kind of doubting that.

Regarding Subsonic, at first glance I was thinking, "WTF? That's a programmer's tool... How'd that get into this thread?" Wrong Subsonic!

10597

General Software Discussion / Re: WYFCA?

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2007, 04:49 PM »

I'm using quite often RTFM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rtfm), but people seldom care... Because of PICNIC! 

-yksyks (August 06, 2007, 01:30 AM)

Those people can FOAD

-f0dder (August 06, 2007, 04:42 AM)

Hahaha~!

10598

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: ESTsoft Releases ALZip v7.0 Beta with New Speed Extractor Options

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2007, 04:19 AM »

looks nice.. great job, Renegade.. as mentioned elsewhere, i already have ALZip. however there were some trivial requests i made at the ALTools forums some time ago. so here i am just wondering if it would be implemented..

• http://www.altools.n...w/topic/Default.aspx
• http://www.altools.n...w/topic/Default.aspx

-lanux128 (August 05, 2007, 10:30 PM)

Sigh... Yes - it's been a while...

Well, for the customizable buttons, that's coming in v8, but not to start. ALZip v8 is going to be a radically massive improvement over v7, but some of the new toys will need to wait a little bit before they make it in.

For the USB thing, I'm guessing that it will be in v8 as well. Don't hold me to that, but given the nature of v8, it makes sense in there (but not for v7).

I'll make sure to nag the PM about the USB thing.

Cheers,

Ryan

10599

General Software Discussion / Re: Software to record in MP3 format

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2007, 03:58 AM »

LAME is a codec to save as MP3, no recorder itself.

-AbteriX (August 05, 2007, 01:07 PM)

I plead guilty to drinking & posting... 'Spose that would be a PUI offense.

Quite often sound cards are packaged with this kind of software. You might want to check there. Better soundcards often include higher end software packages as well. I just got an Edirol outboard audio device and it included Sonar LE - quite a nice piece of software.

10600

General Software Discussion / Re: WYFCA?

« Last post by Renegade on August 06, 2007, 12:45 AM »

I've never heard that "PICNIC" one before - very cute! I like it!