Recent Posts

10801

General Software Discussion / You Should Pay Me to Read This Post (It's worth it...)

« Last post by Renegade on October 22, 2006, 11:19 PM »

A while ago I was teasing some people about why I know such awesome ways to make money on the Internet. That's actually very true. I know a lot of ways, and many of them were learned in a Sith temple over a nice warm cup of Jedi blood...

Ok - but seriously - there are good, clean, wholesome ways to do it as well that are legal, ethical, and good for everybody involved.

TrialPay is a new system for software authors to give away their software for FREE and still get paid.  There's no spyware, no toolbars, no tricks. It's all straight forward. You sign up for some service online like a dating site, or complete some transaction like buying some product, or getting a credit card, then you get your software for free.  There are lots of different offers and even some games there as well.

The system is in beta now, and I've registered and uploaded a product that I've just released - the Renegade PayPal Batch Encrypted Button Generator. Check out the page and look for the TrialPay buttons. Click one to go to the TrialPay page and have a look around.

I've also blogged in more detail with screen shots in a step-by-step way. See TrialPay - Good for Customers and Software Authors.

There are many other ways of course, but that's a very cool one.

So - now that you've read this post - you've got to pay me!  Anyone need an American Express Platinum Card or Discover Gas Card? 

10802

Developer's Corner / Re: PayPal Batch Encrypted Button Generator

« Last post by Renegade on October 22, 2006, 10:27 PM »

...fairly limited target audience...

-mouser (October 22, 2006, 11:43 AM)

Yep. That's putting it mildly

It's a tool that I basically needed/wanted. I HATE web interfaces, and the PayPal interface is no different. Combined with needing a lot buttons, that adds up to a lot of PAIN.

I then found out that what I really wanted wasn't in it, and you can't do it through the PayPal web interface, so what's up there now, v3, has it - the "notify_url" parameter. (v1 was internal. v2 was released with only web automation.)

There are still thing that need get into it, so v3.1 will be coming out shortly or when I get time - one of the two. v4 won't be coming anytime soon as there's some major coding that I would need to do first, and I just can't afford that time right now.

But the program works well and does what it says it does - help you create PayPal encrypted buttons in large batches - a process that is either tediously painful or just not possible without a lot of development.

Oh - I really do need to post elsewhere (the general forum)... There's something very cool that I've wanted to post here as I was teasing people a bit before... Got to get some prep done first though... This is really good, so I don't want to spoil anything - i.e. wait

10803

General Software Discussion / Re: Playing FLV files

« Last post by Renegade on October 22, 2006, 10:17 PM »

I think I've managed to convince the guys at work to add FLV playback for ALShow. It looks like the next release will include it.

Man... There's so much that I really wish I could say... It's kind of frustrating sometimes when you can't just blurt things out.

10804

General Software Discussion / Re: Two New Internet Explorer 7 Reviews

« Last post by Renegade on October 22, 2006, 11:13 AM »

Ok. I'm sold on IE7. It's getting regular usage from now on.

Check the memory footprint. It's WAY lower than Firefox. Massively! At the moment I'd expect to use about 150MB or so in FF, but IE7 had me clocking in at a cool 30~50MB of memory used!

Nice!

10805

General Software Discussion / Re: Two New Internet Explorer 7 Reviews

« Last post by Renegade on October 22, 2006, 11:03 AM »

Hello Darwin,

Well, Seoul is still Seoul. Good and bad. But things are pretty good everything considered. I was out with a friend a few times as his life went from mere "train wreck" to "World Trade Center". Yep. Bad beyond comprehension. So in light of that, man... Things are hunkey-dorey here for me!

But really, Seoul is a good place to be.

Does Maxthon use shodocvw.dll and MSHTML.tlb? (I thought it did. Need to double check though.) Or if I install it will it still use Trident? (That's the IE core.) If I do try it, I'd like to be still using the IE7 core.

I installed http://www.ysgyfarnog.co.uk/utilities/mousegestures/ and so far it seems ok, but I've only used it like 5x or so.

But on the IE topic, I just releasea a mini-app that I created for myself that uses IE automation, and things went perfectly smooth once IE7 was installed. Couldn't be happier on that front. No additional coding required. I'll post details in the appropriate place for that though once I have time. (It's 1am now )

Cheers!

10806

General Software Discussion / Re: Two New Internet Explorer 7 Reviews

« Last post by Renegade on October 22, 2006, 09:14 AM »

Well, so far so good. I like a lot of what I'm seeing in IE7, but I'm not liking the lack of mouse gestures.

Does anyone know of a decent add-in for IE7 that does mouse gestures? I do miss that a lot.

10807

General Software Discussion / Re: Two New Internet Explorer 7 Reviews

« Last post by Renegade on October 21, 2006, 10:17 PM »

Well, I'm off to finally upgrade to IE7 now. I'm hoping that it really lives up to what I've heard about it.

The thing that I think I'm most looking forward to is seeing IE7 kick FF's butt and shut the "IE is insecure" crowd up. The reporting on security issues has been so horribly lobsided that I'm sick and tired of hearing the anti-MS crowd chanting their mindless mantras. And most if it basically comes from the FOSS/OSS or Apple camps.

If nothing else, I'd just like to hear some more intelligent reporting. I'm hoping IE7 helps push things towards that. I'l start my mantra now, "Let's have some balanced and honest reporting... Let's have some balanced and honest reporting... Let's have some balanced and honest reporting... "

10808

General Software Discussion / Re: New Winzip will open rar archives

« Last post by Renegade on October 21, 2006, 12:28 PM »

...Those wishing more, go for WinRAR. It's the leader without discussion, and I suspect it'll be forever...

-Lashiec (October 20, 2006, 06:32 AM)

Grrr... (That's not directed at you - long story.) Not if I get my way... I'm still hammering away for features I want at the day job. (And I've been hammering away for a long time, but it looks like I've finally made some people "see the light". Time will tell.)

10809

General Software Discussion / Re: New Winzip will open rar archives

« Last post by Renegade on October 19, 2006, 08:24 AM »

I'm tired of WinZip implementing proprietary compression algorithms, like the ones implemented in the ZIP specification on WinZip 10

-Lashiec (October 19, 2006, 07:00 AM)

Amen! It was a bad idea to extend the ZIP format like they did. For most purposes, the standard zip spec works perfectly fine. There are other formats that can handle very large archives (ALZ, RAR) so that was covered. Adding AES encryption... well... There were already other solutions to the problem of file encryption.

They broke compatibility for a standardized open format, and that just creates pain for users.

It was a different case when RAR was extended because that's a proprietary format. RarSoft is perfectly suited to extend RAR. Joe Blow isn't in a position to extend a well accepted standard. If anyone were to do it, PKWare should have been the one to release a ZIP 3.0 spec.

But when you're big, you get to pretty much do what you want to do. Look at MS and how McAffee and Symantec and Adobe are whining about them. MS gets to do what they want. Nah. That's a bad example. MS is right and the whiners are wrong. GO BILL~! (And Ray and Steve too!)

10810

General Software Discussion / Re: CNET: Last hurrah for PC-based software?

« Last post by Renegade on October 16, 2006, 10:41 PM »

AJAX actually works by transferring *more* of the load to the client-side.

-JavaJones (October 16, 2006, 09:34 PM)

Good point!

10811

General Software Discussion / Re: CNET: Last hurrah for PC-based software?

« Last post by Renegade on October 16, 2006, 08:40 PM »

There may be browser integration, but you just can't have real applications running on some sort of 'web site'. You need a real application server and you still need to off-load everything that takes CPU power onto the client anyways.

I can see more applications using push/pull, but they're not going to run on the server. XML is where it's at for data interchange. But you're never going to do any kind of compression, encoding, decoding or math intensive stuff on a server unless it's an application server for a company. Nobody wants their data in anyone else's hands. That means Web 2.0 will still be the same thing as things are right now, but just with a few minor technology upgrades.

Then there's the reliability issue... Nobody that's sane will trust a third party for important things. Like some one mentioned above, do you want to wait for the network (wireless or whatever) to get back up? Ummm... I need to work NOW - not later. My time is valuable and downtime wastes money. This is why companies buy UPS units. You can't do that for a network though (well, you can, but that's still a bit dubious).

10812

General Software Discussion / Re: CNET: Last hurrah for PC-based software?

« Last post by Renegade on October 16, 2006, 08:03 PM »

Did anyone notice that "Browser-based Software" really just boils down to BS?

It will never happen. Nobody will trust anyone else to store their porn. Err... I mean files.

It's a stupid idea and nothing more than the Dot Com Craze all over again.

So get in. Tell your lies. Then steal as much money as you can.

What will happen is that there will be a lot of people burned when they wake up and see that it's just BS (see above) and that they've been royally screwed.

In the meantime, SaaS will be thick clients pulling content and receiving pushed content.

Application architecture will move exactly where Microsoft has laid the framework - to XML based apps. i.e. Web 2.0 in the end will just bet .NET 2.0. Ok, well, 3.0+ or whatever but it just seemed to follow nicer like that

Thick clients are fast. Thin networked clients are just slow in every way.

I really hate this entire Web 2.0 BS.

Now. Can I interest anyone in a hit on the ol' crack pipe?

10813

General Software Discussion / Re: Thunderbird forks to become next Eudora?

« Last post by Renegade on October 16, 2006, 07:41 PM »

Hmmm... Interesting... Let's hope that works out.

I use Thunderbird at home, and I'm about ready to switch to something else now (critical bugs in TB). I tried Eudora a long time ago but just didn't like it.

I might just go back to OE. Or maybe try out TheBat again... Heck. I don't know. As long as it isn't Outlook...

10814

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista RC2

« Last post by Renegade on October 15, 2006, 10:43 AM »

I can see how that would be a pain (WiFi). The new box will take me at least 1~2 weeks to setup the way I like things, then I'll be able to upgrade to Vista when the final release is out. 

I've heard good things about Vista RC2, but still curious to hear from others.

The new box is an Intel E6600, so it's pretty quick. So far things are looking ok but I haven't even install Visual Studio yet (or anything else for that matter).

10815

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista RC2

« Last post by Renegade on October 15, 2006, 09:43 AM »

Being able to actually edit a poll is pretty cool. Wonder if that's in Vista

Actually, I'm pretty impressed so far. Haven't done anything much, but it's looking very cool. Jury is still out...

10816

General Software Discussion / Vista RC2

« Last post by Renegade on October 15, 2006, 08:42 AM »

I just got a new box. Not the one that I really wanted... But that's 10k too

Anyways, I'm slapping Vista RC2 on it and curious as to how people have found it (if you use it).

Cheers,

Ryan

10817

General Software Discussion / Re: Outlook Nightmares...

« Last post by Renegade on October 15, 2006, 08:37 AM »

just a friendly reminder to people that you might consider giving out credits when people post something helpful to you (remember you can give someone as little as 1 cent!).

-mouser (October 14, 2006, 11:08 AM)

Honestly, it's just such a very cool system that I sometimes forget about. I need to use it more. Thanks for the reminder.

It's just that this is the ONLY place that has it. I should mention this to Bruce at WWF. Or better yet, you should mention it to Bruce as it's your idea mouser.

10818

General Software Discussion / Re: Outlook Nightmares...

« Last post by Renegade on October 14, 2006, 11:05 AM »

That's the one I bought - the MapiLab one. It worked ok, but not perfectly. I ended up having to use it a trillion times as the multifolder option didn't clean things quite right.

Anyways, after 4 days I got Outlook back to a semi-manageable state. I ended up deleting around 90k emails. Not fun.

10819

General Software Discussion / Email Server for Windows Recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on October 12, 2006, 02:48 AM »

Hello All,

I'm looking for a new email server for Windows.

The email server I'm using now works fine for small volumes (up to about 2,000 or 2~3 per second on a sustained basis) or regular email. When I need to send out a newsletter, I can only send single threaded (maybe 2 or 3) or else it crashes the service and I have to get my hands dirty to get things up and running again.

Then there is the bounceback issue...

The news letter has about 40,000 subscribers, so the email server needs to be able to handle a good load. The mailer I'm using can handle 25~50 threads with no problems, and I'd like to take advantage of that so that the emails get sent quickly.

I'm not interested in a stand-alone mailer. They just don't work with a lot of ISPs that require reverse DNS and PTR records.

So, any recommendations for something that can handle a large email volume for a newsletter?

Thanks in advance for any recommendations. (Experience or direct knowledge please - not hearsay or Google searches.)

10820

General Software Discussion / Re: Outlook Nightmares...

« Last post by Renegade on October 11, 2006, 04:10 PM »

someone posted recently about some outlook duplicate killers, i'll try to find the post if you cant.

-mouser (October 11, 2006, 03:40 PM)

There was one that I found, but it was for removing duplicate contacts.

10821

General Software Discussion / Outlook Nightmares...

« Last post by Renegade on October 10, 2006, 10:31 PM »

I've used Outlook, and I know what it feels like to be buggered with a razor wire baseball bat...

Holy mother of mercy! HELP~!

Outlook crashed on startup 100%. Got that fixed. Now I have 10's of thousands of duplicate messages. (About 40k or so.) And the duplicate remove I've used has only helped moderately.

I still have about 15k messages that are unread. I keep meticulous track of my messages, and now they're all polluted.

Personally, I'd love to murder the entire Outlook team at MS then do the same to the guys that chose Outlook as the company email software. But as I like my freedom, that's out of the question. (Shouldn't bad IT decisions be grouped in with the 'justifiable homicide' category?)

Does anyone have any advice on how to fix a totally screwed inbox? I don't want to read 15k messages... Again...

The Basic Problem: My inbox now has duplicates of emails that I've already read or responded to. I don't want to delete those. I want to delete the unread ones. And the software I used just doesn't help to fix things.

10822

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: DotNetNuke Keep Alive Utility

« Last post by Renegade on October 08, 2006, 04:30 PM »

Hahaha~!

DotNetNuke is an ASP.NET CMS (Content Management System). Think of Joomla or Mambo.

The ASP.NET process keeps web applications in memory for only so long, then recycles them (drops them from memory) and unloads all the DLLs (this is what the garbage collector does).

The result is that the application is no longer in memory and when you go to load it up again, ASP.NET needs to load the DLLs again and get the web application up and running. This takes time so there's a massive performance hit and the first page takes a long time to load.

New sites or low volume sites suffer from this problem.

I built the application for someone else who has a new site that he's building in DNN. I then just polished it up a bit and released it. I'm thinking of doing a pro version for any ASP.NET applciation, but I've already got way too many things on my plate right now. I need to get some of them off first. (Or let my ADHD kick in and get distracted with it!  )

Cheers,

Ryan

10823

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / DotNetNuke Keep Alive Utility

« Last post by Renegade on October 08, 2006, 04:51 AM »

I just released a mini-utility to help keep DNN installations alive and out of the garbage collector. You can find it here:

DNN Keep Alive

It's free.

Cheers,

Ryan

10824

General Software Discussion / Re: Bad news for Firefox: Hackers claim zero-day flaw in it

« Last post by Renegade on October 02, 2006, 01:51 AM »

This really ticks me off. I hate hearing all the anti-MS BS about how IE is "not secure". Pure silliness. FF has problems too. I just wish people would be a bit more level headed and not run off spouting lies about IE. (But yeah - I still use FF - but NOT because of security.)

The last round of FF problems were really bad. Multiple exploits that allowed full control. They both have problems. But that doesn't mean that either is more secure than the other. There have been no REAL security studies (that I've seen or heard of) that show any relationship between security and the two browsers.

Ok. That was a rant... 

But it's kind of silly to expect someone to turn in an exploit that gives you a computer for $500. Mozilla needs to give it's head a shake. Really. Think about it. You've got some people that put in the time to find these things, and they can make a fortune selling it to spammers. Why would they turn it in? For $500? Doubtful...

In other news, has anyone noticed a rise in porn spam?

10825

General Software Discussion / Re: New App - Floating Ruler - Feedback?

« Last post by Renegade on October 01, 2006, 02:38 AM »

I like the form border...a lot. Keep it in there. It's like having an extra set of guide lines. Can you make resizing possible by dragging the border?

-app103 (September 30, 2006, 10:32 PM)

Not without either changing it to a regular border/title bar, or overridding the base and adding in all that stuff, which is really more than I was prepared to do for it. There's something funny going on with the form and it won't resize properly or expose the resizing arrows. It was something that I just shuffled under the rug.

Is there any way you can have normal controls on the titlebar? I'd like to be able to use FileBox Extender's extra buttons when needed, but without the min-max/restore-close on the titlebar I don't think I can. I can't access a menu when right clicking the taskbar button either, for toggling FileBox Extender's always on top or roll up options.

-app103 (September 30, 2006, 10:32 PM)

Same as above. 

It would still be nice if it were 2 forms, one for the rulers, and one for the settings...that way you can move the settings panel out of your way and work in the upper portion of the screen if you need to. Right now you can't without entering negative numbers into the Y pos, which has the potential to cause the undesired effect of not being able to get the settings panel back without ending task on the program and restarting it. Having 2 separate forms would solve that problem. And the extra form for the settings doesn't even need to be always on top like the rulers.

-app103 (September 30, 2006, 10:32 PM)

I noticed that when I was extending it that I'd done it the wrong way and that it really needed two forms like you've mentioned, but I was quite frankly too lazy to do it right. I'll have to hack it up and redo it or just start from scratch (most likely).

The more I play with this, the more I can see this easily becoming a favorite tool. 

-app103 (September 30, 2006, 10:32 PM)

Glad to hear that! I won't get to redoing it for a bit, but I'll definitely get back to it in the near future - probably this week. But I'll get the next version done right. (It will be in .NET 2.0 though.)

One thing is certain though - It's pretty hard to get a design flaw past you. 

Cheers,

Ryan