Recent Posts

17151

Living Room / Re: Yea, I won't be getting an iPad anytime soon

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2010, 01:06 PM »

Nice philosophical take on how cynical and wrongheaded the iPad is in terms of openness:

The iPhone can, to some extent, be forgiven its closed nature. The mobile industry has not historically been comfortable with openness, and Apple didn’t rock that boat when it released the iPhone. The iPhone was no more or less open than devices that preceded it, devices like those from Danger that required jumping similar bureaucratic hurdles to develop for.

That the iPad is a closed system is harder to forgive. One of the foremost complaints about the iPhone has been Apple’s iron fist when it comes to applications and the development direction of the platform. The iPad demonstrates that if Apple is listening to these complaints, they simply don’t care. This is why I say that the iPad is a cynical thing: Apple can’t – or won’t – conceive of a future for personal computing that is both elegant and open, usable and free.

http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad.html

17152

Living Room / Re: Yea, I won't be getting an iPad anytime soon

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2010, 12:35 PM »

And I thought i had issues with Apple.. some of you are foaming at the mouth.  
This release really seems to have struck a nerve with some.

17153

Circle Dock / Re: One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2010, 12:10 PM »

Here's a serious suggestion:

For such a beautiful looking tool, the webpage for Circle Dock is beyond ugly.. it's almost deliberately 1980s bad.

• http://www.markham.dcmembers.com

Don't get me wrong, the web page is functional and organized well -- just looks a bit odd.

Time for someone to revamp the look of that in Circle Dock style, with a nice screenshot on the front and maybe a quick link to some youtube videos?  

17154

Circle Dock / Re: One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2010, 01:17 AM »

8mb is not such a big file.  I don't think you should worry about any of that for now.. Let's just see how it goes for a while.

17155

Circle Dock / Re: One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2010, 12:41 AM »

don't host it anywhere without DL tracking.. you need to know how many downloads there are, especially now that we have a mystery on our hands.

17156

Circle Dock / Re: One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2010, 12:40 AM »

HELL NO DON'T DELAY IT!!!!

FULL STEAM AHEAD!!!  

(but you might want to keep your eye open for a place to put a mirror in case it brings down the member server and you have to temporarily send people to a secondary site)

We've been under-using the member server for a year -- let's push it to the limit.

17157

Circle Dock / Re: One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2010, 12:35 AM »

we dont pay more if there is more bandwidth, as long as we stay under our limits.

You (we!) can thank everyone who has donated to DC for the fact that we have a pretty big limit even for our member server.. If not for the last fundraiser we would never be able to afford it.. at the time it seemed pretty excessive for us to be buying such a big secondary member server.. now it looks prescient

but like i said.. let's see how traffic continues.. if somehow you kept up at 60gb a day we would exceed our monthly limit, and then mirrors would be needed.

17158

Circle Dock / Re: One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2010, 12:32 AM »

Let's just keep an eye on traffic continues for next week or so.. and see how it continues.. you can't possibly expect these numbers to keep up day after day.

17159

Circle Dock / Re: One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

« Last post by mouser on January 29, 2010, 12:17 AM »

Just as a comparison, the entire main DC site does about 25gb a day on a regular daily basis, and that includes the entire forum, all of the dc software, skrommels software, etc.

17160

Circle Dock / Re: One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 11:57 PM »

There is no doubt that circledock is EXTREMELY popular... and growing more so.
Furthermore gothic and i seemed to have confirmed that the bandwidth numbers are real.. peaking at 63GB of circledock downloads YESTERDAY ALONE.



The remaining issue however, is that there seems to be an enormous amount of PARTIAL CONTENT download errors.. and a chunk of that large bandwidth may come from the server failing during serving downloads, causing a kind of cascade of re-downloads, etc.

Of course this only happens if there is huge demand for the files on the server so there is no question about the large spike in # of downloads.. the only question now is really whether those numbers are a true reflection of downloads, or are somewhat inflated by failed downloads by a server struggling and somewhat failing to keep up with demand.

I mean 63gb in one day is pretty much an insane amount of downloads -- just not in the realm of what i would expect regardless of how much attention it got.  As nice as it would be if this stat was real.. it just doesn't seem possible to me...

No matter how you look at it, it's a testament to what you guys have done with CircleDock -- people can see it being actively improved and supported and are reacting positively to it.

17161

Developer's Corner / Re: Python Language Annoyances

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 08:26 PM »

Let's get real here.. like all languages, context means everything.  In python, like many languages, the + character sometimes means positive (a=+7), or it means addition (a=b+3), or it means string concatenation (a="hello "+b).  Few languages are stupid enough to allow a ++ to mean nothing (or signifiy a positive number) and not throw an error.

TEST:
What does ++---+-+7 evaluate to in python? or is it an error?

If everyone who uses Python can't immediately, obviously, and confidently surmise the answer to this (and be in agreement), then you have to accept that this is a terrible flaw in the language.

Hell even if you can, it's just plain stupid.

It's like me introducing a language where + means division and * means addition.  It may be internally consistent, but it is spitting in the fact of decades of established syntax, for no good reason, and will lead to tons of undetected errors.

Again, it's fine to break with precedent, but you need to have a good reason and make an attempt to flag likely incompatibility problems.  Python has too many of these kinds of pointless problems.

17162

Circle Dock / Re: One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 07:21 PM »

cricledock is insanely popular.. but i have lingering feeling something might be wrong with the stats -- i've asked gothic to look into it.. im not sure just seems a little high, even for such a wonderful tool.  maybe there is a way we can test by putting a copy of the file on another server like sourceforge and redirecting for a few days and comparing counts?

17163

DcUpdater / Re: For developers who want to add DcUpdater check to their apps: dcuhelper.exe

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 06:59 PM »

thanks jgp! 

17164

DcUpdater / Re: For developers who want to add DcUpdater check to their apps: dcuhelper.exe

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 06:48 PM »

anyone care to test and report?

17165

DcUpdater / Re: 1-time bug... DCU would not exit

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 06:14 PM »

Last question -- did the system go into hibernation before the last check?

17166

Living Room / Re: Optimus Maximus

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 05:47 PM »

how about some links for those readers who aren't mind readers.

17167

DcUpdater / Re: 1-time bug... DCU would not exit

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 05:46 PM »

are you using the latest dcupdater?

17168

Living Room / Re: Yea, I won't be getting an iPad anytime soon

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 01:32 PM »

I think we are in store for some really brilliant satire making fun of the iPad.  Here's one:
http://www.youtube.c...ture=player_embedded

17169

General Software Discussion / Re: Nice write-up for my HalfShell

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 01:11 PM »

very nice! 

17170

Living Room / Re: Tech Talk: Linus Torvalds on git

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 11:58 AM »

There's a nice rant against Git (and for Mercurial) on this thread:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=21512.0

17171

Developer's Corner / Re: Resources for learning Mercurial?

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 10:56 AM »

nice find qwerty 

17172

Living Room / Re: Yea, I won't be getting an iPad anytime soon

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 10:25 AM »

it will be interesting to me to see how well it sells.

i do see the gut-level appeal in a nice touch tablet -- and yet tablets have been around for many years and the practical use for them seems limited.

there are other deal breakers for me -- the lock-in the apple application store is totally unacceptable and alone would make the device something i wouldn't want to get involved in.

plus i'm holding out for a proper full-sized ebook reader with e-ink style display that is easy on the eyes.

17173

FlipSuite and Flipbook Printer / Re: Commercial Application (Flipbook Printer)

« Last post by mouser on January 28, 2010, 10:12 AM »

Email me ([email protected]).
I'm in the process of finding a buyer for the commercial rights to the software (free version will remain free for non-commercial use).  Whoever buys it will be licensing it to other event planners, etc.

[EDIT] The commercial rights to Flipbook Printer were sold in 2010; you can find more info on the Flipbook Printer web page.

17174

General Software Discussion / Re: post-screenshot editor, torn edge in between, and highlight lines

« Last post by mouser on January 27, 2010, 07:08 PM »

Screenshot Captor already has a good system for adding commandline tools which can modify files and SC will pick up on any saved modifications.
I gone this route rather than plugins mainly because there doesnt seem to be too much more a plugin would do.

17175

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Mark Selected Read not working

« Last post by mouser on January 27, 2010, 02:06 PM »

thats strange!