Recent Posts

14426

Screenshot Captor / Re: Floating Point Overflow

« Last post by mouser on February 04, 2011, 01:01 PM »

now that is strange.
how did you trigger the print image -- if you didn't do it from the menu, can you try that?

14427

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Faster boots combining hibernate and restart (Boot Snooze)

« Last post by mouser on February 04, 2011, 11:45 AM »

Boot Snooze features in CybernetNews today:

http://cybernetnews....n-standby-hibernate/

I don’t reboot my computer that often because it can be a bit inconvenient, and sometimes I go weeks without having restarted it. My reasoning is typically that I have too many apps open and don’t feel like restarting them all, but other times it’s because I’m on the way out the door and just throw my machine in standby so that it is ready for me when I go to use it again. There is a slick little app called Boot Snooze that looks to make it a bit more reasonable to restart your machine from time-to-time.

14428

Site/Forum Features / Re: Need some quick help identifying the new forum problem with character sets

« Last post by mouser on February 04, 2011, 08:14 AM »

Does anyone remember any older posts that were messed up when we first moved servers in december, but which are ok now?

14429

Official Announcements / Re: January 2011 Giveaway is open for entry

« Last post by mouser on February 04, 2011, 02:41 AM »

just a quick note that the giveaways were basically assigned randomly with a slight bump in likelyhood of winning something for nany participants.  but because of how you rated your preferences and how many of something we had to give away, and mostly because of luck you may not have won anything.  but this just makes it more likely you will win something next time, so don't get discouraged!

14430

Official Announcements / Expect some final server hiccups this weekend (2/12/11) - final fixes

« Last post by mouser on February 04, 2011, 01:00 AM »

We are going to try to finally fix the character set issue on the forum this weekend, so buckle up and expect some hiccups this weekend (2/12/2011).

14431

Official Announcements / Re: January 2011 Giveaway is open for entry

« Last post by mouser on February 04, 2011, 12:13 AM »

Results should be posted in next 24 hours i think.

14432

Official Announcements / Re: Server Slow/Load Issue - Jan 22, 2011 - search temporarily offline

« Last post by mouser on February 03, 2011, 01:58 PM »

yep, was offline for a few minutes while we were backing things up.  should be ok now.

14433

Living Room / Re: Google's overweening conceit (anti-Eric Schmidt rant)

« Last post by mouser on February 03, 2011, 04:04 AM »

you are right -- everything google does is free to consumers, and they have so far been good with privacy and really good with letting users export data.

i guess my point was simply that those pleasant facts will last exactly as long as google is able to make money hand over fist with them in place.  if/when google revenue starts to seriously slide, those pleasantries may be thrown overboard.

14434

Living Room / Re: Google's overweening conceit (anti-Eric Schmidt rant)

« Last post by mouser on February 03, 2011, 03:02 AM »

google isn't any worse than any other corporation -- largely better, but they are determined to get their hooks into everything they possible can so that they make it almost impossible for them to be displaced.  and all i can think is god help us if they ever start to lose revenue for any reason because they are going to do whatever they have to do to keep their money flowing, and they have enough of a strangle hold over all of us to twist the screws pretty tightly if they need to squeeze out some more money from us.

14435

Screenshot Captor / Re: older screenshot folders

« Last post by mouser on February 03, 2011, 02:16 AM »

Hi alma,

Sorry for delay in responding.

As you may have guessed, screenshot captor is showing you real folders in its directory, so if you delete those folders, it will delete them from wherever it is looking.  It sounds like you have it pointed to your MyPictures folder.  It sounds like you solved the problem by turning off the automatic-move-to-old folder option.  Another thing you could do is simply change the main screenshot folder to someplace else.

14436

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR v2 - Official Bug Tracking and Feature Request Thread

« Last post by mouser on February 02, 2011, 11:56 PM »

that no disk error that happens when FARR tries to access a removable disk is at the very top of my to do list for this week.

14437

Developer's Corner / Re: Choosing a CMS

« Last post by mouser on February 02, 2011, 11:55 PM »

Many dc members who have pages on our dcmembers.com site are using Website Baker and seem happy with it.

14438

Screenshot Captor / Re: Settings Not Saved When SSC is Updated in 2.89.01

« Last post by mouser on February 02, 2011, 11:35 PM »

the new version doesn't wipe out any settings, and the old ini files are 100% compatible.
something else must have happened.. perhaps causing SC to lose your old settings file.  I'm not sure what that would be though.

14439

Living Room / Re: preparing for an expedition to the treacherous land of Drupal

« Last post by mouser on February 02, 2011, 11:28 PM »

Drupal 7 is quite different from Drupal 6 -- enough that you definitely need a book made for v7.

Drupal is very powerful, and has one of the best interfaces for programmers to write modules.  On the other hand I find Drupal completely unintuitive.  Having said that, if you do need some help writing a custom module for it, let me know.

14440

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY MUGs

« Last post by mouser on February 02, 2011, 09:06 AM »

 

14441

Living Room / Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

« Last post by mouser on February 02, 2011, 12:39 AM »

I love this part:

Instead of secretly plundering the game, he decided to go to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. Srivastava thought its top officials might want to know about his discovery. Who knows, maybe they’d even hire him to give them statistical advice. “People often assume that I must be some extremely moral person because I didn’t take advantage of the lottery,” he says. “I can assure you that that’s not the case. I’d simply done the math and concluded that beating the game wasn’t worth my time.”

14442

Living Room / Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

« Last post by mouser on February 02, 2011, 12:35 AM »

Another great true life story of someone who saw a flaw in a gambling game and how they figured it out and exploited it.  God I love these kinds of articles.

Srivastava realized that the same logic could be applied to the lottery. The apparent randomness of the scratch ticket was just a facade, a mathematical lie. And this meant that the lottery system might actually be solvable, just like those mining samples. “At the time, I had no intention of cracking the tickets,” he says. He was just curious about the algorithm that produced the numbers. Walking back from the gas station with the chips and coffee he’d bought with his winnings, he turned the problem over in his mind. By the time he reached the office, he was confident that he knew how the software might work, how it could precisely control the number of winners while still appearing random...

http://www.wired.com.../2011/01/ff_lottery/

14443

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: ClipTrap

« Last post by mouser on February 01, 2011, 02:47 PM »

Thanks for taking the time to let them know about their mistake longrun -- we coders depend on users to do such things 

14444

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: ÷åì ïîëåçåí öèêëîìåí? v - that's paste instead of ?????????? ????

« Last post by mouser on February 01, 2011, 12:10 PM »

There is no reason it shouldnt work the same way as it did on windows 7.. maybe something about the NATIVE character set that the computer is set to.. I think there was a post about this on the forum in the past but i can't remember where.

14445

Official Announcements / Re: January 2011 Giveaway is open for entry

« Last post by mouser on February 01, 2011, 11:56 AM »

Awesome! That's very generous of you vlastimil 

14446

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: List Numberer

« Last post by mouser on February 01, 2011, 09:57 AM »

Is it possible with this app to remove numbers from a list?

nice idea for a bonus feature to remove existing numbers from a list at the start of operations.

14447

General Software Discussion / New (Feb 1 2011) "Starter" Editions of Delphi and C++ Builder

« Last post by mouser on February 01, 2011, 09:48 AM »

I'm a long time use of Borland's C++ Builder (formerly Borland, then CodeGear, now Embarcadero).  It's basically a C++ development tool for Microsoft Windows, that has a large number of component-based libraries and GUI widgets.  The components are shared with the more well known Delphi RAD tool (Pascal based), that has been popular among indie developers.

Borland, then CodeGear, now Embarcadero, have gone through some turbulent times.. For many of us who grew up coding during the original IBM PC days, Borland Turbo C/C++/Pascal were like gifts from the Gods.

With the future of Embarcadero and C++ Builder/Delphi still in some doubt, the pricing of the standard editions made it nearly impossible for indie developers to continue using these tools.

• This weekend the company announced new "Starter" editions of C++ Builder and Delphi, priced at about $200.

The idea of the starter editions is that you can use them commercially, but only if you are doing a small volume of sales (I think under $1000 a year); there are just a few other restrictions (you can't have both Delphi and C++ Builder starter editions installed at the same time), but unlike their previous "turbo" edition incarnations, these are the full tools and you can install 3rd party component libraries into them -- of which their are thousands of great ones.

This seems to me a reasonable price for a very powerful tool.

Many of my larger applications are coded in C++ Builder because it let's me design elaborate GUI interfaces quickly and painlessly.  Even as just a prototyping tool I think it's worth the money.  I'm still unsure about it's future, so I wouldn't recommend it as a path for coders looking to choose a path for future development and employment.

But if you are looking to do some hobbyist programming on windows, these are absolutely fantastic tools to play with.  It's without a doubt one of the fastest ways to develop full-featured windows applications, and the free 3rd party visual components available for it are outstanding.

We think an indie license is a better alternative to the traditional non-commercial license. We want to provide our latest tools for both hobby use and for developers getting started. Offering a non-commercial license would allow us to offer lower cost editions. However, a non-commercial license generally prevents a developer from earning money selling goods or services based on their work unless the developer first purchases a commercial license. This can be problematic for a developer who is not yet earning income from their work. An Indie style license allows a developer to jumpstart their career, business, or education without a significant monetary investment up-front. We want to help developers get started, and only when the developer generates revenues of US $1,000 do we require a full commercial license.

http://www.embarcade...s/delphi/starter-faq

14448

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: ÷åì ïîëåçåí öèêëîìåí? v - that's paste instead of ?????????? ????

« Last post by mouser on February 01, 2011, 09:21 AM »

I'm afraid that Clipboard Help+Spell may not work perfectly on non-english machines for unicode text. Sorry.

14449

Living Room / Re: *URGENT* Patch IE security flaw (31 January 2011)

« Last post by mouser on February 01, 2011, 05:33 AM »

Thanks for the heads up 

14450

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Download link blocked by K9

« Last post by mouser on January 31, 2011, 08:05 AM »

Thank you very much for posting about this and submitting the request to their site to reclassify.  It can get very frustrating for me as a coder when sites wrongly mark a program as harmful.