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10851

General Software Discussion / Re: What to you think of RealPlayer?

« Last post by Renegade on September 08, 2006, 10:38 AM »

For what it's worth (ahem while I plug the day job  ), you can play Real and QuickTime with ALShow once you've installed the Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative codecs from the ALShow Codec Center.

(Just since it was mentioned.)

10852

General Software Discussion / Re: Any webserver-desktop-logfile-analysis-Software recommendations?

« Last post by Renegade on September 07, 2006, 10:55 PM »

Analog - Web Storming - ClickTrax - Urchin - roll your own...

The best solution is to actually roll your own. That way you get to include real business logic.

Web log analysis is at best sketchy and doesn't provide you with "true" numbers. They are only a rough guess. (Another reason to roll your own.)

The best solution is to run things on the client for detection and store it on the server in a database. You also get the added advantage of only storing what you need.

All large scale web analysis must be done this way because logs get too large to process. Even on a relatively small site (or medium depending on what you consider large) you can have log files that are GBs for a day. Very small sites have log files in the 10's of MB per day.

Most software can't keep up with that kind of volume. That's where a dataserver can solve the problem. They're optimized to deal with data processing whereas your average log analysis software just can't compare. (A lot of resources go into optimizing RDBMSs like MS SQL Server, DB2, Informix, Oracle, etc.)

But for small sites this can often be overkill. A quick over view with Analog is good for most people with hobby sites or small web sites.

I'm not a fan of AwStats. I've found it just miserable to work with.

Another thing you can do is to write a program to dump your logs into a DB then just use pure SQL to ask questions. That's a cheap and easy way, though it is a bit time consuming as you'll still end up waiting for queries. But the quality of answers you can get is VERY high.

10853

General Software Discussion / Re: IDEA: Colour matching wizard

« Last post by Renegade on September 07, 2006, 10:40 PM »

This would seem to be the job of the monitor company to include some swatches with the monitor so that you can actually get the proper colors.

However, that's just a bit too intelligent. Why would you ever make things easy for a user? Pure insanity!

10854

General Software Discussion / Re: What to you think of RealPlayer?

« Last post by Renegade on September 07, 2006, 10:38 PM »

Strange - I had stability problems with it when it was G5 or whatever - but that was YEARS ago. I've had zero problems with it in the past 3 or 4 years though.

The RealMedia format is pretty good.

10855

General Software Discussion / What to you think of RealPlayer?

« Last post by Renegade on September 07, 2006, 07:12 AM »

I've been watching the counter at s***ware.net soar for hate against RealPlayer. About half of all answers are for it.

I haven't updated RealPlayer in a while, but it just works. I've never had a single problem. I have v10.5 installed, and have no problems with it ever.

Mouser likes it. I don't know who else does.

Years ago it was horrible, but it's pretty good now.

I'd like to know what people hate about it, or like about it. That is if anyone has the time or inclination.

Cheers,

Ryan

10856

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Frustrations

« Last post by Renegade on September 05, 2006, 12:49 AM »

Dugg it and posted it to 3 blogs, one of which was my own personal one.

-app103 (September 05, 2006, 12:34 AM)

Most Excellent! Thanks!

10857

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Frustrations

« Last post by Renegade on September 04, 2006, 05:20 PM »

Could I ask a favor of a few people?

After a vanity search, I saw that a few people were Digging s***ware.net. Would anyone mind Digging it as well? Digg here. 

Thanks

10858

General Software Discussion / Re: Poser 5 - free from Sept 1st to Sept 4th

« Last post by Renegade on September 04, 2006, 11:43 AM »

It's a wicked piece of software, for free, so I'm not going to complain. I'm just thankful. I can wait for now.

10859

General Software Discussion / Re: Poser 5 - free from Sept 1st to Sept 4th

« Last post by Renegade on September 04, 2006, 11:16 AM »

The download limit was reached for me, but if you register, you'll get it eventually.

High demand... What can you say? It's free?

Speaking of free - get some cool free music

It actually really good! Kimo rocks!

10860

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

« Last post by Renegade on September 04, 2006, 11:03 AM »

Eóin: what makes ZenWalk better than, say, Ubuntu, archlinux, gentoo? There's so many to choose from...

-f0dder (September 04, 2006, 09:57 AM)

And this is the real problem with Linux... AAARRRGGHHH~! WHICH ONE TO CHOOSE???

Windows is just so darn simple.    Need a server? Gee - pick 2000 or 2003. Not hard.

Need Linux? Let the crying and wimpering being...  ???

10861

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

« Last post by Renegade on September 04, 2006, 08:27 AM »

Don't mean to be repeating myself but Ubuntu Server seems like it's exactly what you want (though haven't tried it myself for anything other than a desktop).

-Eóin (September 03, 2006, 11:24 AM)

I've been hearing a lot about it, and I have been curious. But it's just so new. Any word on how reliable it is?

10862

General Software Discussion / Re: What's the Greatest Software Ever Written?

« Last post by Renegade on September 04, 2006, 07:56 AM »

"Greatest" means what, in other words. All I could vote for would be "most useful to me" - probably IrfanView. 

-ravenlaughs (September 03, 2006, 11:00 PM)

C'mon! You're living in the past! Porn is available online in movies now and not just images! 

10863

General Software Discussion / Re: What's the Greatest Software Ever Written?

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2006, 08:44 PM »

Ummm...

I didn't really like his assessment of VisiCalc. It seems to me that ten years or so of development in Excel is bound to blow away the original. Hardly a fair assessment.

By that token, how does Mosaic get on the list? FF or IE should be good candidates there. Seems like a bit of a double standard. About Mosaic he says, "In other words, great software that opened the floodgates." Well, how does that not apply to VisiCalc?

And while UNIX (or Mac OS) may be great, it's still Windows that made computing accessible to the masses. That doesn't count?

Java? Huh? WTF? .NET is Java done right. How the heck does Java get in there?

Why not cite an example of an FFT algorithm? DSP programming drives all the really hardcore scientific applications.

He doesn't seem consistent to me. Excel wins on quality, but Java wins on innovation. Apples and oranges. Either we're talking about great quality or greatly innovative, but he's mixing them.

I dunno... Maybe I'm just getting a bit jaded with all the "Top 10" lists out there.

10864

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Frustrations

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2006, 04:30 PM »

There are a few that I like for certain things:

Music Match Jukebox - For the alarm clock
ALSong - For the playlist & lyrics
Windows Media Player - For the flexibility
ALShow - For video files, ease, and smooth playback
RealPlayer - For RealMedia files
GDT - For learning music (Gee... - Didn't see that one coming, did ya? )

There are other good ones of course. Those are just the ones that I like to use most.

10865

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Frustrations

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2006, 11:19 AM »

It's all very well buying software that's going to be of good use, but what get's me going, no sooner have you purchased it and a new version comes out although you don't have to pay the full price you still have to pay part of it for an upgrade...(Raw Deal)....

-Baseman (September 03, 2006, 10:44 AM)

Most good software publishers give free upgrades if you purchased in the last so many months. But I know what you mean... It's really annoying.

There's one piece of software that I use that I'll always pay upgrades for because the guy has awesome upgrade policies - free or 20%. I buy his software without even trying it. (I can't mention who here because this is a public forum - prying eyes and all...)

My unofficial upgrade policy is to make it free. However, if I need to cover patent royalties, I can't do that, so I can't have a "free upgrade" policy. Kind of sucks, but that's life.

oh hell yeah, let me go vote and get my licks in on quicktime.. that program annoys me.

-mouser (September 03, 2006, 10:28 AM)

Hahahaha~! Very much! I can't even run the program on my box here, but it will run in Firefox for some reason. Just wierd.

Also - I've received request for a S***ware Hardware section and a S***ware Web Sites section and they are both up

Have at it~!

Peace, Love, and Eternal Ranting,

Ryan

10866

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

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2006, 09:10 AM »

Thanks for the FreeBSD suggestion, but honestly, I just don't want to put that much effort into it, and I really want a GUI.

How's Suse? I haven't used it in a long time. The last Linux distro I used was Mandrake a few years ago. It had some really cool desktops. But I wasn't using it for a server either.

RedHat? I don't know any of the latest things as I pretty much abandoned Linux about 3 years ago.

10867

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Frustrations

« Last post by Renegade on September 03, 2006, 09:03 AM »

Damn, i think that only happens because people don't actually use QuickTime EVER!
I mean, where can you find any other player that you have to pay for to be able to play movies in full screen??

-jgpaiva (September 02, 2006, 05:18 AM)

Well, QuickTime has passed Windows Media Player now! I suppose there are some people out there that have used it

For whatever reason, I have never been able to get real player to work properly on any system I have ever owned. Maybe it just hates dialup....or maybe it hates me (not as in winME  )

-app103 (September 02, 2006, 07:06 AM)

I've always had more problems with QuickTime than with RealPlayer. But they're tied now!

Ooooh~! It's a hot race for the crappiest media player on Earth~! 

10868

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Frustrations

« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2006, 04:52 AM »

am i the only person on the planet that loves realplayer?

-mouser (September 02, 2006, 04:37 AM)

Hahaha~!

Nope - you're not the only one! I actually like it as well. It's WAY better now than it used to be. Years ago it was little better than malware, but now it's actually pretty good. It's stable now which was the worst problem with it before.

I don't use it a lot, but I keep it installed as it does come in handy sometimes.

At the moment iTunes is winning and RealPlayer is coming in second. 

10869

General Software Discussion / Re: PadGen: Pad file generator

« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2006, 04:47 AM »

Keep in mind that PADGen does not necessarily produce valid PAD files, and that valid PAD files are not necessarily accepted at various PAD-file-accepting download sites.

The PAD validator at the OISV is stringent and will not accept invalid PAD files. It's a good way to check as it is far more strict than PADGen.

Things to watch in PAD files are null entries. Often it is better to lie in your PAD file than to be truthful. For example, specify a price, even if you specify "0". Fill in other download links with the same link as the primary if that's the only one. Fill in a BS file name for the legacy support. There are others to watch out for as well. It all boils down to many sites having their own interpretation of what PAD should be.

10870

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Frustrations

« Last post by Renegade on September 01, 2006, 11:39 PM »

hardware rant section be added....

-app103 (September 01, 2006, 11:23 AM)

Done! Tell your friend to rant away

10871

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

« Last post by Renegade on September 01, 2006, 11:34 PM »

My Windows server works extremely well - no problems there. So I don't want to go mucking around with it at all. e.g. No WAMP, WIMP, or any other W??? stuff. It's very happy running IIS & ASP.NET right now

But any suggestions for which Linux distro would be easiest to work with? I do want Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python on it - just not sure of which Linux distro.

10872

Official Announcements / Re: THE 2006 DONATIONCODER.COM FUNDRAISER MONTH OF SEPTEMBER

« Last post by Renegade on September 01, 2006, 10:14 AM »

Just sent in a donation.

Honestly, you put in WAY more work than you're getting back. Hats off to you! You deserve every cent and more!

Cheers,

Ryan

10873

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Frustrations

« Last post by Renegade on September 01, 2006, 09:49 AM »

I *just* put up a poll for the worst media player... So far iTunes is winning with Windows Media Player coming in second. Place your vote here 

10874

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

« Last post by Renegade on August 31, 2006, 10:42 PM »

Heck - the server's just going to be a junk box with throw away sites. I'll try to see if I can get some automated sites making a few bucks, but nothing really serious.

For Apache, I already run IIS and don't want to bother doing a dual web server config. It can be done, but why? That stuff just works better on Linux than on Windows. (I will never install MySQL again on another Windows box.)

I just don't want to get into compiling things and all that nasty unix silliness. I just want to get a LAMP box running. If it's BSD, that's ok as long as I don't have to recompile Apache and MySQL and PostGRESQL and this and that and the kitchen sink. I don't want it to be a time waster - I just want things to work.

So, basically, how do I make that transition as easily as possible?

10875

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

« Last post by Renegade on August 31, 2006, 04:42 PM »

I like WIndows & IIS, it's just that there's some software that won't run on it. So that's why. I'd use it for playing with mostly and probably try out some different kinds of sites.

I suppose I could ask around, but most of my friends run Windows servers.

Probably my biggest worries are the 'gotchas'. I know how to solve a lot of them in IIS, but not Apache. You know those wierd situations with settings buried 50 miles deep in the software...