Recent Posts

1076

General Software Discussion / Re: What to use to create a site-index?

« Last post by housetier on August 30, 2006, 09:26 AM »

On my site which is powered by drupal I use a module named gsitemap to create sitemaps for the google search thingie. I haven't found something similar for msn or yahoo yet.

It does not generate a viewable sitemap, it is designed to pretty up the data for the google search engine. Naturally you won't be able to use this module if you don't have drupal.

1077

Living Room / Re: Pageviews are Obsolete - cool article

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 08:48 PM »

Very interesting indeed! I must read it again when I am not so tired. That guy writes too much

1078

Living Room / Re: Excellent art

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 08:27 PM »

I find this totally amazing as well. Can't understand a word they are writing, but the images are just awesome!

1079

Living Room / Re: interesting post on possible manipulation of digg.com

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 07:44 PM »

I agree very much. I am just waiting for the next best thing...

I mostly use google search; if I need results specifically from/in German I use seekport.de. It has sponsored links but I like the column thingie when you select several types to search for: websites, images, shops...

I just do not benefit from digg as much as I benefit from google or del.icio.us (to keep on the "social" side). I don't really have strong ties with such services, so I am easy to jump onto the next, faster traintrend

1080

Living Room / Re: Best places to get information on web hosts - (Best Of Web Series)

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 07:24 PM »

For ze Germans I would like to mention ze webhostlist ja?

That is the site I turn to when I need to find a webhoster who has certain capabilities and special offers. It is in German and most likely lists only German webhosters.

1081

Living Room / Re: interesting post on possible manipulation of digg.com

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 07:22 PM »

the problem is the "monopoly" of these social sites and that they are not specialized enough. general blahblah is promoted beyond all measure. almost like "social spam"

to me digg is not useful because it is too general; I know what I want, what I am looking for. I have my own social network in place to get any information I seek. digg is not part of it. I have spent years building my social network, I have spent only months trying to convince myself of the usefulness of digg.

I think I'll cease to use digg and instead try other "social stuff". and speaking of the matter of networking, might I draw your attention to my site 

fun aside, unless digg specializes (channels?) more I dont see it still being used in 12 months time.

1082

Developer's Corner / Re: A very nice text about developing open-sourced software

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 09:23 AM »

Oh nice! I love free stuff! 

1083

Living Room / Re: Forum Feature Request: Improve qouting

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 09:19 AM »

That would surely be nice to have, especially when you can quote from different people like that. I don't know if SMF has this feature, and if not when they'll include it.

1084

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

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 09:13 AM »

This thread has helped me again

I now use

[Select]

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

to get the last 15 post on the entire forum.

The limit will most likely change though. Or maybe I'll try te feed for "all unread posts"... Anyway, I am again convinced that SMF is a very very good forum software! (Has anyone (mini-)reviewed SMF yet?)

1085

Living Room / Re: Cool Icon Signature Bars

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 09:00 AM »

very neat indeed

also it looks organized, something which my OCD-mind appreciates

1086

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

« Last post by housetier on August 29, 2006, 08:27 AM »

Super Short

Teaser	at newsforge
Full Article	at ITManager's Journal

A Little Longer

I'll just quote from the Full Article:

(...)In all cases, the confusion is frequently based on misreadings, rumors, secondhand accounts, and what is convenient to believe.

To get a sense of the most common misunderstandings, NewsForge consulted with three experts(...)

-http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/21/1659203

Does This Explain Everything?

Absolutely not.

But it might help clear some confusions and misunderstandings.


Why the lame reference to 24?

CTU here means Clearing Things Up.

1087

Developer's Corner / Tales from the Proprietary: OSS is good for your business model

« Last post by housetier on August 28, 2006, 12:17 PM »

Over there at newsforge I found an article titled Why proprietary software is dangerous for business-critical applications. This is from a site that doesn't produce new headlines every minute so I usually read their articles. This particular article is interesting (for me at least) because it shows Why proprietary software can be dangerous for business-critical applications (note: different link text, same link target).

But the real point here is that an entire medium-sized company's executive staff has learned a hard lesson about the dangers of proprietary software, and members of that staff who previously resisted open source are now ready to consider it -- and for business continuity reasons rather than as a money-saving measure, no less.

-http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/14/202229&from=rss

1088

Living Room / Re: Really interesting post about new netscape digg-clone and paying bloggers

« Last post by housetier on August 27, 2006, 07:29 AM »

This is also on slashdot now.

For me, it shows that /. is not really the fastest newsportal thingie, and that I am even less sure now what /. actually is...

1089

Living Room / Re: Math is an Attitude

« Last post by housetier on August 26, 2006, 07:13 AM »

Someone posted a lot of math jokes at the Durham University Mathematical Society. They are not all very funny, but some I liked for obscure reasons. 

(...)I'll do algebra, I'll do trig, and I'll even do statistics, but graphing is where I draw the line!

I am sure you have your favorites too

1090

Site/Forum Features / Re: setting up a secondary server for hosting member accounts

« Last post by housetier on August 17, 2006, 03:26 PM »

I didn't notice anything  

mouser, does that mean you were able to hire professional hosting services?

1091

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Alarm Clock which plays music files

« Last post by housetier on August 15, 2006, 09:45 PM »

can you sort by name too?

1092

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Alarm Clock which plays music files

« Last post by housetier on August 15, 2006, 06:20 AM »

If you use winamp the NonStep skin will give you what you want.

The search tool at winamp.com sucks big time though. The skin is called "NonStep", but when I search for "nonstep", the do not find any results. Can you say "how lame is that"? Or, they let you sort the list of skins by

• Publish Date
• # of Downloads
• Author Name
• Rating

but not Name of Skin! 

Anyway, back in the days of yore when I still used Windows and Winamp, NonStep was the only skin I liked. I never saw much of it because I set it to "auto-hide" so it would stay out of my way.

If you don't use winamp, however, then it will be completely pointless

1093

Developer's Corner / Re: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Units of Measurement

« Last post by housetier on August 14, 2006, 12:20 PM »

My physics teacher tought me to do these types of translations seperately: First figure out the units, and totally disregard the numbers. Then "do the math" without any units. 

After you have the result, triple checked you used the correct units, and moreover the correct magnitudes of the units. It seems like more work, but I found it very easy. It's variation of the principle of KISS (keep it simple, stupid), conveniently also called KISS (keep it seperate, student). 

1094

Developer's Corner / Re: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Time

« Last post by housetier on August 14, 2006, 12:13 PM »

So like the value of paperback money, the accuracy of the "time" of a computer system depends on TRUST. 

Not a bad concept. However each and everyone trusts their government differently; wouldn't that make time more or less accurate, depending on the person judging its accuracy? 

1095

Living Room / Re: Anyone know how to "escape" bb codes?

« Last post by housetier on August 14, 2006, 11:52 AM »

And by mistake, I found the cool HTML to BBCode Converter. It works quite simple: you paste in your HTML code, then select which particular BBCode flavor you want to convert to, then click "convert". Your HTML code will be replaced with the corresponding BBCode. 

The interface is a little akward, but it works. *I* would have put numbers on in, in a step-by-step fashion, and used different forms for input and result. But it works anyway, so I hope it will be of good use. 

Thank you Jeff Baker. 

1096

Developer's Corner / Re: What Every Programmer Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic

« Last post by housetier on August 14, 2006, 11:37 AM »

Here is a not-so-long aticle about problems with floating point arithmetic. I thought about opening a new thread but luckily I used my quicksearch-hack to find this thread.

...do we ever stop to think what goes on inside that floating point unit and whether we can really trust it?

I hate to cast aspersions on its good name but when I hear stories of space craft crashing, inconsistent information on bank statements and pensioners being short changed (...), I start to realise that there is a real danger of misusing floating point numbers...

-http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/08/12/floating_point_approximation/

© The Register.

I will look out for the follow-up article and hope it will be good.

1097

Living Room / Re: DC's "EVIL DEAD" Get Together

« Last post by housetier on August 13, 2006, 04:04 PM »

I hope it takes place, even though I won't be able to attend. It ought to be fun and productive.

Maybe us Yurrupee-ans should organize something like that too...

1098

Developer's Corner / The Original Open Source Company

« Last post by housetier on August 13, 2006, 01:33 PM »

As I am a little bit sceptical (lack of sleep?) about this idea, this post won't be as fancy as the other ones.

The idea for this has its roots in the idea of open source software. My concept is that the company is run by everyone, decisions about the day to day operations of the company are voted on by one ‘n all. There is no leader , no CEO no boss. Everyone as a group decides what should be done.

-http://www.compsoc.com/~cmulvey/index.html

Anyway, I don't think the idea per se is new, and neither is the actual attempt to realize it. However, this time it made it onto slashdot so it will get lots of attention.

It might actually work out. And if it does, I will regret not being part of it from the start.

It might fail totally. And if it does, I will read about the sack of rice that burst in China the other day.

You must decide for yourself and don't let yourself be intimidated by my sceptism. 

1099

Mini-Reviews by Members / EZ-search with firefox

« Last post by housetier on August 12, 2006, 03:37 AM »

VSiAQ, it works in a similar way. In FF you can assing keywords to your bookmarks. If the bookmarked url contains "%s", firefox will replace it whatever you type on the location bar.

bookmark url	http://example.com/search?q=%s
keyword	ex

if you then typed "ex foo bar" into the location bar and pressed enter, firefox will request "http://example.com/search?q=foo+bar"

1100

Living Room / Re: comparative study of international acceptance of evolution

« Last post by housetier on August 12, 2006, 03:29 AM »

should have dropped it immediately