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151

Developer's Corner / Re: Copy/pasting code and the last line effect

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 09, 2015, 07:40 AM »

Happened with me many times. ...
I think the mind really gets 'tired' of repeated... work and starts registering 'Oh come on, it is done' before the last line ends. 

-anandcoral (December 09, 2015, 02:01 AM)

And it's not just programming, I'll expand it to tedious anything. So in the physical world besides if there's muscle fatigue, you risk injuries from getting sloppy on the last "thing to do".

And just at the end of a big project, when you're checking little stuff, all over the map, even if it's not the same thing, that last couple of things are the ones where an error creeps in.

Heh and it happens in Chess! "Hurry up and resign already I've won... oh $hit ... I just dropped a piece and now I'm about to lose!!"

152

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 09, 2015, 07:15 AM »

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Is this the latest update of Windows 10?

-Arizona Hot (December 09, 2015, 03:27 AM)

I think my dear ol' workhorse can hang on for a few more months, and I forget if MS participates in CES (Consumer Elec Show) in January these days, but besides getting past Christmas pricing mania, somewhere around spring feels like a good time to think of buying and checking timelines, possibly right before end of First Quarter Earnings where without Christmas to boost them companies struggle to get stuff in all the branches of finance all lined up in the "dead quarter".

Devs have more time to begin to adapt, news reports might come out about progs disappearing, end of quarter sales, and not sure of this next one but possibly some new tech in the desktop hardware world, and I like to buy once, get it right, and then follow the aging curve out.

153

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 09, 2015, 07:11 AM »

Between Iain and App "taking front runner" and I'm sure bunches of the other smart gang here have done variants on all that strategy. I've done a limited variant of Iain's.

- Let programs install into C/Programs even if they offer options to go somewhere else, because then with my poor memory when I need to go look for something, I can do a Directory Read on C/Progs and save it as a text file and it has (most) of the installed files.

- "Option C". Even with an option to install somewhere else, it feels like there's less risk of the programmer doing a "Last Line" type goof of not fixing a bug when you put it somewhere that suddenly doesn't parse for random reasons.

- The non-install programs (with like only a couple exceptions) go somewhere into C/docs/user/Desktop/Somewhere, so with the same idea, when I copy my Desktop Down over, that carries all the non-install (and I'm starting to get convinced by Portable if available!) onto backup and/or new comps.

- Happy Accident remove cruft? This dear ol' workhorse has in Steve Austin's words "given me everything it's got until it's starting to break down bit by bit in every way", and that includes a lot of surveys/studies/trials, so my C/Progs is a disaster of legacy mess. So with a little bit of study, I can look over say the thirty programs I remotely think I'll need and leave the other 300 (Sparta!!!) to wither away.


Plus it's far from clear which devs esp single or small teams have fully grasped the strange things going on in Win 10. So that may need some time to jell.

154

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 09, 2015, 07:03 AM »

Heh You almost made me search for some xkcd comic (gotta catch up on those next!) with some joke about "sample size of one".


I'll try a "fragment of a theory" that MS is just doing variants of its usual "drag feet, drag drag, oh my gawd hurry!" thing, this time in Christmas for "Rush! People might be getting comps for Christmas, push whatever you have out there so it's live by next week across people's machines for Christmas!".

It could have just happened yesterday was Tuesday; I vaguely remember some of the pre-builds were back to back as well.

I'd say you'd need about three Tuesdays to begin whispering of Patch Tuesday (with conspicuous LACK of activity on other days.)

155

Developer's Corner / Re: Copy/pasting code and the last line effect

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 08, 2015, 06:36 PM »

I dunno, I might disagree with this line:
"Not because they are tired..."

I think the joy is *because they are tired* because depending on how many blocks they did, they are tired of tedium rather than being creative solving a new problem, but instead are cranking out copied blocks with mods.

If it was just a 4 line program, it wouldn't happen. But it's probably after a lot of OTHER hard and/or tedious stuff, and then they just get disgusted.

156

Find And Run Robot / Re: Portable version of find and run robot slower or same speed as installed?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 08, 2015, 03:32 PM »

Thanks for the quick reply… I'm happy to hear that. I wish more programs these days were portable… It would make transitioning between machines much easier. Thanks for making awesome software. Almost time to donate more btc

-Saturday24 (December 08, 2015, 02:40 PM)

I'm starting to believe in this, I just hooked up my backup drive today (I knew I had it for years) in first step prep to copy my data over.

So then what are the downsides / dev problems of portable apps?

157

General Software Discussion / Re: Fixing File Associations (PDF)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 08, 2015, 03:26 PM »

Skipping Win Media Player, re file associations, I've found that apps "grab" file associations sometimes even when there's no button for "set as default". So I wonder if this all goes on with PDFs.

158

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 08, 2015, 11:45 AM »

Oh, I'm starting to get tired, I saw on
https://savethelink.org/listen
"in 48 hours a plan is about to be published" and I thought that was the same as passing it.

159

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 08, 2015, 09:44 AM »

If we're so far down Rabbit Holes this is even about to be passed, what is a "mere" 9000 responses going to do? "First Name Last Name Email" ... Oh look! It's a list of people to "mysteriously" harass!



Copyrighting Weblinks!? Without reading the whole bill, to start with the three behemoths, what does that EVEN DO to Google, Facebook, and Twitter!?



Exactly what are they doing about it?
"Search for Wheat" (on Google).
"No responses found. Monsanto copyrighted them all. To view them, it's 0.1 cents per link."

And I have an eye for Chain Logic. In the US, "If it is created, it is copyrighted". So maybe Google has copyrighted them all if their link is the typical link garbage. Poof! The link has been created, therefore it has been copyrighted. You do *not* have to register stuff with the US Copyright Office. (And what are THEY saying!?)

What about the Fair Use clause as a loophole for at least the US (and other countries versions!?) to spite this? Lots of links are commercial, so THAT gets ugly ...

160

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 08, 2015, 09:39 AM »

I don't know if there is any reality to this report, but the idea is certainly unpleasant:

http://www.techsuppo...s-without-asking.htm

Windows 10 users are reporting that programs they've installed have disappeared (apparently uninstalled) with the latest Windows 10 Fall update, including one case where the software that AMD's graphics cards depend on (AMD Catalyst Control Center) was uninstalled and replaced with Windows 10 graphics card drivers. The two other programs that have been mentioned as being uninstalled are CPU-Z and Speccy.

-Jibz (November 26, 2015, 10:31 AM)

Wandering back to this for a bit, I did notice a bunch of other stuff that had quietly gone missing after the last upgrade. I have a group of small no install utilities I've always kept in C:\Program Files\Mini-Tools really just to keep root C cleaner since they had to go somewhere, and I didn't want them to be scattered about. When I went looking for one of them this weekend, I discovered that the entire Mini-Tools folder was missing/had been skipped during the upgrade. It was still retrievably in the Windows.old folder, but why the upgrade took it upon itself to deem that unworthy of migration is rather perplexing.


Now here's the weird part ...

-Stoic Joker (December 07, 2015, 07:09 AM)

I'll stay with this first part...

Properly copying something is one of the X core entire concepts of computing. We wouldn't give any other program the 'benefit of the doubt" like Windows. (Or one of the other OS's).

Put it bluntly:
User: "Copy the contents of Folder A into Folder B."
Comp: "No."
User: 

161

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 08, 2015, 03:48 AM »

Personally I like this "Miles-stone"! I wrote a lot of assembly code for my Atari on the 6502. I fondly recall a whole library of string handling subroutines in hand-assembled relocateable code, stuffed into short characters strings that I could call. Ahh, those were the days! :-)

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-x16wda (December 07, 2015, 07:00 PM)

Heh I was kinda thinking that too, it's a spinoff of our theme, but I recall snips that the 6502 was one of THE core cpu's in that early 80's growth spurt. Commodore was using it too.    : )

162

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 07, 2015, 05:45 PM »

Doctor Who Shows Just How Much Hard Work Goes Into The Doctor’s Easy Victories

-Arizona Hot (December 02, 2015, 09:39 PM)

A question for the Who fans.
Giving the Doctor twelve transformations / or in total (or something) was a brilliant concept when it started because it "In story" built in when an actor had to / chose to leave the role, as well as the adjustment period of each switch.

But now we're on the 12th incarnation, is the series hitting "franchise fatigue" like Star Trek did and need a rest, or should they make an "explosion of exposition" and find a way to just add more? How will the core fans deal with the break in mythos?

163

General Software Discussion / Re: MilesAheadSoftware source only future? / Web Hosting by a DC User!?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 07, 2015, 05:25 PM »

I got a complaint from my web hosting provider today about a download showing as malware.  I tried recompiling it with the latest version of AutoIt3 stable release.  It still trips VirusTotal.

Going through the list of zip files on my site it seems that quite a high percentage run afoul of one or more of the scanners that glom onto VirusTotal.  This leaves me with the choice to either chase my tail registering programs as false positives, in which case another scanner can just pop up out of the woodwork to make me endlessly submit this crap. Or I will have to only post source code.

The trouble with source code is include files.  If I use any routines written by someone else, now I am in the predicament of being dependent on their code availability, updates, breakage etc..

So the short of it is the handwriting on the wall seems to indicate the direction will be posting utilities in source code only written by myself that can be contained in a single file.

Since most people want to download things and use them, this will likely reduce to a fraction those who will use my programs.

Alternatively, I can continue to put stuff on Softpedia, and just chuck the web hosting.  But then I have no site of my own to point to.

Such fun giving stuff away ain't it?

It looks like as far as my own page goes, it will likely be that the surviving downloads will be single file source code in AHK.  I don't relish endlessly rescanning every executable I have hosted to see what passes VirusTotal that day.  More and more it seems the web is more hassle that it is worth.  It's nothing more than a shopping catalog it seems. 

-MilesAhead (December 07, 2015, 08:35 AM)

Why don't you talk to Seraphim? He was my final choice for original co-winner of a project I did years ago of a "fantastically obvious metric that worked stunningly well" for free host quality. He's here because I suggested DC to him a while back. That metric was started on FreeWebHost.net and included one metric: "Stay running." But you'd be amazed because that was overrun by twerps who burst into view with Time Square grade sensory noise, only to fold like 2-8 months later.

And he's smart enough to know what a macro program is and help you figure ideas out.

The era of free web hosting is fading because people don't make their sites much anymore, they just glom onto "social media". But you're dead center of his original mission. He told me he's keeping at least a server or two around no matter what, so he has capacity, and he has decent tech skills to trouble shoot. And while "free" isn't a valid model anymore, since he's stuck with a sunk cost situation, I finally got a paycheck out of a project a lil' while back so I'll be sending him a little cash soon.

And because he's got the highest integrity etc, it might be worth mouser co-partnering him or something to make him one of maybe a couple "official" site "affiliated" hosts of DC just in case people don't want to put "half baked / ultra-pre-alpha" stuff on DC prime. Asudem, I'm looking at you! And it might make him happy to know at least a few users have a vetted free host source they can use. And he might get say five more users, and then his sunk cost server will have a purpose. And Deo, depends on how big your needs are, talk to him, unless you need wild cloud-y stuff, he will be willing to negotiate WAY less than what you were offered on your other host!

164

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: "Good enough" and NANY proto-components!?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 06, 2015, 10:34 AM »

Bumping this because Asudem likes some of the stuff and I have a bug request into Mouser.

Memo to self
(To find the path look at the C drive read in Super Resources, then type "turbo")

165

General Software Discussion / Re: Thread for trouble with IRC

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 06, 2015, 06:24 AM »

It seems back now. Not too bad of a response. But I still think the thread is useful.

166

General Software Discussion / Thread for trouble with IRC

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 06, 2015, 06:14 AM »

I'm starting this as a place where we can post notes when suddenly things start to go sour with the IRC.

I haven't been able to reconnect for a bunch of minutes now ...

(Using the web client)

Other net stuff and the main board are fine.

Update:


Ouch.
Server Error: 500 (Internal Server Error)
What does this mean?

Something went wrong on our servers while we were processing your request. We're really sorry about this, and will work hard to get this resolved as soon as possible.

Perhaps you would like to go to our home page?

 

167

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Continued software?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 04, 2015, 01:15 AM »

And killswitch aside, it's not about legal action, the guys are right that unless it's *public domain* it's copyrighted and needs that license, you can't just decide "oh well, it sat there". If there was a license to mod it, that's why I was asking, but without one you're stuck, and killswitches in programs raise a WHOLE OTHER mess related to security.

168

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Continued software?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 03, 2015, 09:29 PM »

Sure, have at it, all I wanted to do was post a quick caution note because just because a dev "mysteriously stops", he might come back one day.

So good luck!

169

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Continued software?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 03, 2015, 08:58 PM »

Greetings,

I have found some dead, open-source, software and wish to carry on the program's development. When I announced that I would be continuing the development, I got a much bigger response than I anticipated, and many wished to donate to the cause. I was looking for some sort of pay-what-you-want-model software site, but nothing but videogames came up. I managed to find this site and believe this would be the perfect place to post the software and continue it's development by user generated feedback.

My question is, am I allowed to do this here because it's not my original code?

-Asudem (December 03, 2015, 08:40 PM)

My question is for the experts here. My instincts say please give us some info on exactly what the original licenses are, because if you're going to use funds to continue development I've heard of some chain-of-ownership problems even if it's "dead" (Coma?) and when you switch from "labor of love" to any kind of funded, sometimes things get weird.

170

Living Room / Re: A long time ago in a galaxy far far away

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 02, 2015, 11:14 AM »

None of this works for me and the second link gives me a 404.  : (

171

Living Room / Re: Is Excel the most dangerous software in the world?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 15, 2015, 10:50 AM »

I think what I'm missing here is that "on my better days" I was trained for my couple diff variants of accounting that every now and then you do a "sanity check" - a very fast and ugly-dirty approximate second calculation just to look for these kinds of random weirdness, plus intuition.

So if something begins to feel off, you smash out a "piece of paper and calculator guess" just to see if the results sorta make sense.

Maybe that's beyond the human mind at the big bank level, but "just believing" forever feels risky. So Excel itself isn't exactly the most dangerous software, it's just so generically useful in so many ways and the problem could be the operators maybe stretching the limits of what a mind can intuitively hold.

172

General Software Discussion / Re: Best REAL Program to use for AVCHD video format conversion

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 12, 2015, 01:04 PM »

I can tell you that whoever wrote their webpage does a great job of seeming to be trying to convince you that "Theirs' is the Greatest" .. BUT ...
then they proceed to issue and even BIGGER WARNING about reading the EULA with your attorney present, a thing that always manages to rattle my nerves.
Do you know what they mean by that?   

-questorfla (October 10, 2015, 12:05 AM)

That's a new wrinkle!
I normally expect Eula/installers to include about four things, sometimes copyright grabs of your content, installing weird stuff, and "don't sell our program" and your choice of a fourth.

But having an attorney present ... yikes!
At the meta level what does that even mean?!!

173

N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY 2016 Pledge - Popup Contactlist

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 11, 2015, 05:36 AM »

"targeted for .NET 4.0 so it'll still run on Windows XP"

I think this is important, just by how the computing world shook out.

I think MS is getting a little aggressive on how they are versioning stuff, So I don't know how to say things with the proper mood, but XP was where all of Windows Computing sat for like six years until people decided they didn't like Vista, Win 7 was okay, Win 8's were a mess, Microsoft decided they didn't like the number 9 while donating milliions to schools... So making tools XP compatible helps those of us who know it's the endgame but don't have migration plans yet.

174

Living Room / Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 09, 2015, 10:06 PM »

RIP Grandma.

But if we *slowly* analyze the remarks *word by word* they almost make sense ... word by word and not as "biz speak to be ignored".

It's a strange case of "if we take every word to be literal" it almost works.

We're involved on several layers of Meta-Guessing, but AS IS, the "words almost work".

Let's make up a product. Firefox Blaze edition. Screams on Video, recaptures bad mem allocations on the fly every hour, frees up 200k per hour, 22% faster on other stuff, checks for FF clones, warns about mem overloads, or something.

If they actually DID that, then every line of the blog falls into line. "By the way, you're running two FF clones, two copies of Plugin, and random other stuff, so that might be why your sys is struggling."

That's research. But it would take a brand new product to do it, and then that data stays LOCAL to that project and doesn't get sold to 44 other groups. (Where our distrust half comes from).

175

Living Room / Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 09, 2015, 09:52 PM »

Well lain, remind me to hedge my bets if you are ever opposite me in a debate competition!

But then we might be on to a fantastic discussion with you on the other side.

Crucial to my point: If they actually used the *English words as a guide* and not some of any of eleven ways to "not do what they said".

That is all too often what happens. Then your comments kick in full power.

But "what does that even mean"? ... If they DID IT, it means lots of cool things.

The prob is we don't trust them to "do what they say". That's the real problem. The statement, when read in cold hard English, almost works. It's the "Let's ditch it" factor we don't like.

Well Tuned Language. Besides it comes off slick (which it is), it weakens even further progress by the Mock factor.

If they *actually* wanted to make "products blah blah", I am DYING to see that Ad Dropdown bar. But they won't. So mock all you want, just slightly change the vector of the mocking.