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1751

General Software Discussion / Re: Google says goobye to Internet Explorer 8

« Last post by app103 on September 24, 2012, 10:21 AM »

It just smacks of the same thing we saw with the whole go dark for ie thing.  Elitism.

-wraith808 (September 22, 2012, 10:48 PM)

...or making the world a better place :-)

-f0dder (September 23, 2012, 11:26 AM)

Normally I would consider this to be another case of browser bigotry (and you know how I hate that!), but we are talking about Google Apps and not some smug elitist web designer that just doesn't feel like fixing his CSS to look right in some older versions of IE.

There is an issue of what is and isn't supported by some versions of IE...some newer things like HTML5, which is not purely aesthetic. If Google has plans on incorporating more HTML5 stuff into their Google Apps, things not supported by IE8 and older, then it could make perfect sense not to support browsers in which these things will not work.

And IE8 has hit a stage where no new features will be added, only security updates, so this will not change. What IE8 supports is pretty much set in stone at this point.

And while they won't be cutting off IE8 users from using Google Apps (yet), the message displayed telling them to upgrade their browser, I think should be more accurately stated as "Buy a new OS, or perhaps a new computer."  

1752

General Software Discussion / Re: Want to send a Batch file - but gmail & prob AV dont...

« Last post by app103 on September 24, 2012, 09:45 AM »

I found that sending things like that in a .rar file always seems to slip through. ;-)

1753

Living Room / Re: $10 for a Facebook Post? Huh?

« Last post by app103 on September 24, 2012, 12:57 AM »

What renegade is referring to is news feed position of a post. Facebook has 2 sort settings, most recent and "top stories". No matter how many times you select most recent it will always revert back to "top stories" after a short while....and this is intentional.

Promoting a post makes it a "top story" that out ranks the more popular posts appearing in someone's news feed. When people have a lot of friends, and therefore a lot of news feed posts to read through, and maybe play games with a lot of game posts in their news feed, too, they are more likely to miss stories that are a lot farther down the page. Being a "top post" will put it near the top of the page, where they are more likely to see and notice it.

All it does is make sure your post isn't buried waaaaaaay down at the bottom when subscribers log in and view their news feed.

This is why I said what I said about commercial posts and number of subscribers dictating whether or not the $10 is a good deal.

It'd be nicer if they actually said how much people is certain to actually see the post.

-jgpaiva (September 23, 2012, 03:46 PM)

It not based on impressions, like ads. There is no real way of knowing how many will see it. No way of knowing in advance how many of your friends will log in and visit their news feed page on any given day. And it's also possible that some of your friends might even be blocking your posts from appearing in their news feed. (I have a few relatives I have done this to, that post a lot of stuff that I find personally offensive) It's more comparable to a search engine ranking position on an endless page of results. You want to go natural and be a few miles down the page or pay $10 to be within the first 10 on the page? Even if you pay to be #10, there s no way of knowing in advance if people will close the page after viewing the top 3.

1754

Living Room / Re: $10 for a Facebook Post? Huh?

« Last post by app103 on September 23, 2012, 09:35 AM »

Actually, that's not that bad of a deal, if the post is commercial in nature...and you have over a million subscribers.

1755

Living Room / Re: Kids E-Book Ideas?

« Last post by app103 on September 23, 2012, 02:54 AM »

Mouser created an interactive audio story game engine, way back in NANY 2007, and was quite upset that nobody ever recorded any MP3 stories for it, other than Della's, which was included with the app as a demo.

You could say it's the "audiobook" version of the "choose your own adventure" genre.

1756

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: DonationCoder.com on an iPad is Kinda Weird

« Last post by app103 on September 23, 2012, 02:24 AM »

I can't remember which browser/OS combo it was, but I did see similar behavior awhile back. I remember having to make sure my mouse wasn't over the post box area in order to scroll. I had to keep my mouse in the page margins, otherwise, as soon as it hit a post box, it would stop scrolling, or scroll a bit in the opposite direction....and it only happened on this site and a few others.

1757

Living Room / Re: A Unified theory of Superman's Powers

« Last post by app103 on September 23, 2012, 01:57 AM »

I would provide some pictures, but though the ideas are first-class, the pictures are art-school-dropout grade.

-Arizona Hot (September 21, 2012, 09:21 PM)

With a little more practice, you could become a graduate of the Ed Emberley School of Art.

1758

Living Room / Re: For XKCD fans

« Last post by app103 on September 22, 2012, 10:37 PM »

There is something very Cricket/Wizard of Op about this thing. 

1759

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Program which runs a program then shuts down the computer

« Last post by app103 on September 22, 2012, 10:18 PM »

Check this out, built into windows. You might need to install the group policy console.

http://www.trishtech...own_in_windows_7.php

-Josh (September 22, 2012, 04:03 PM)

Something tells me that policy isn't quite what he wants.

I am not trying to run the program every time I shut down so I don’t need a scheduled task.

-pschroeter (September 18, 2012, 12:14 AM)

1760

Living Room / Re: For XKCD fans

« Last post by app103 on September 21, 2012, 12:58 AM »

Don't be afraid to dive down the holes in the ground. Fun to be had down there, too.

1761

Living Room / Re: Shit Apple Fanatics Say

« Last post by app103 on September 16, 2012, 07:39 PM »

In fact my last phone was an iPod Touch, which can't make calls.

In fact, I wonder if smartphones will eventually find a way to take "phone" out of the name, since making calls is probably a tiny fraction of what people use them for nowadays.

-daddydave (September 14, 2012, 05:28 PM)

Wouldn't that be going back to the old school PDA? (I have and still use an 11 year old HP Jornada 540 through wifi)

1762

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: DC Mug/TShirt Designs that would be nice to have an artist for..

« Last post by app103 on September 08, 2012, 08:29 PM »

This was an image I made for the banner for my new project, that I kind of altered to insert Cody. It's the right size for a mug if mouser would like to use it for that.

The whole thing is a Paintshop Pro vector, including Cody. Yes, I know he seems to be "missing" something. It's a complete recreation of him done from a trace, without all the shadows and shading. I thought it better suited the simple style of the rest of the image and he would look less out of place. 

Attached in the .zip is the vector of Cody by himself, in case there are any Paintshop Pro users that would like to use it in some of their own Cody tribute art. It will work just fine in any PSP version from v.7 and up. (the ninjas can be found here)

Because it is a vector, it will be very easy to move or remove the coin without messing up the whole image. You can even change the colors, replace them with gradients, or pose him, if you want. Every object is clearly labeled, so you can easily tell what is what.

1763

Living Room / Re: Apple v Samsung Verdict is in

« Last post by app103 on August 27, 2012, 12:02 AM »

The irony in all of this is that Apple sued one of their major component suppliers for iPhones and iPads, then made this statement as their final rebuttal in court:

“No one is trying to stop them from selling smartphones,” he said. “All we’re saying is: make your own. Make your own designs, make your own phones, and compete on your own innovations.”

-http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/08/22/apple-v-samsung-closing-arguments-make-phones-v-apple-trying-mislead-you/?awesm=tnw.to_b3lw

Maybe Apple should do the same and start making their own iPhones and iPads from their own parts? Apple considers themselves both a software company and a hardware company, but they don't make any of their own hardware...their competitors do.

So guess who will pay for this lawsuit in the end? Apple's customers, of course. The natural course will result in the cost of goods produced by Samsung rising to cover the costs of this lawsuit and verdict, and Apple paying more for parts, and passing that on to their customers. Already, 26% of the cost of an iPhone or iPad goes right to Samsung to cover the costs of parts supplied by them.

So basically, Samsung has 2 years to suck as much money as it can from Apple, a company that is doing $11 billion in business with them this year alone, to cover the costs of this whole drama...which won't be difficult, considering the deals Apple is making with them, for all of Samsung's innovative new products that will end up in future iPhone, iPad, and Macbook models.

1764

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of...Wordpress star ratings plugin

« Last post by app103 on August 26, 2012, 03:33 AM »

I am afraid, my reply won't be helpful, but have you considered using something simpler than a 5-star rating system? As recently mentioned on DC https://www.donation...topic=32014.msg29749 people have problems rating on a 5-step scale. Facebook's Like is a friendlier alternative, even youtube dropped star ratings and adopted  I have used a 5-star rating system on my web for years and there are indeed problems with it - each person uses the scale differently - some only give 5 stars and 4 stars, others only give 5 stars or not rate at all, trolls just give 1 star to everything they see, others give random number of stars...  If I had the choice now, I would choose a simple like button instead (and possibly also counted number of impressions to be able to compare likes/impressions ratio).

-vlastimil (August 25, 2012, 04:09 AM)

First of all, this isn't for visitors to let me know if they like my posts or not. This is more of a book review system, where they are rating the books, for the benefit of other visitors. Personally, I could care less what they rate them, the info isn't for me. I tried allowing visitors to leave book reviews as comments, but that didn't work out well. I think I only had one actual review in the 6 years the site has been running on Wordpress. Nearly everything else was spam, requests for pirated books, and thank you messages.

While it might be true that people may have trouble rating on a 5 step scale, they have even more trouble bothering to write a paragraph or 2 to express their thoughts and feelings about a book. 

It's also kind of hard to move from a 5-star system to a thumbs up/down system, transferring previous stats to a new system. It's easy going from stars to stars, though, which is what I wanted to do.

I only tried it to test, didn't actually use it on a live site

http://wordpress.org...gins/wp-postratings/

-rgdot (August 25, 2012, 04:59 AM)

Thanks! Gave it a try and it seems to be perfect. Less than a minute to install, configure, and add it to the template...and a settings tweak allowed me to be able to attempt to duplicate the old ratings/number of votes before commenting out the JS-Kit code. Now as long as it doesn't break every time I have to upgrade/update Wordpress, I am all set. 

1765

General Software Discussion / In search of...Wordpress star ratings plugin

« Last post by app103 on August 25, 2012, 01:23 AM »

I need a good simple 5-star ratings plugin for Wordpress, to allow visitors to rate posts without requiring that they sign up, log in, leave a comment, etc.  Something that they can just click and go.

I used to have comments open on the blog but found that most visitors responded better to a simple star rating widget, requiring nothing more than a single click to leave feedback. After reviewing a few years worth of comments and finding that 95% of them were spam and the rest useless, I closed comments and hid all existing comments on posts.

I am currently using an old offsite 3rd party service (JS-Kit) to insert the ratings system into the posts. JS-Kit was sold and they no longer offer this service to new blogs. I don't have much faith that this service will continue in the future and I'd like to find a replacement for it, that doesn't rely on a 3rd party offsite service.

Do any of you have any experience with any of the many plugins available, to guide me in the right direction to a plugin that works well, is actively developed and supported, in which documentation, faq, bug reports, etc. are not hidden behind a paywall? Bonus points if I can manually set the initial ratings level individually for each post (about the only way I could possibly import existing ratings).

I was considering trying GD Star Rating, till I noticed that the developer deleted his site and the original free user forum with all the documentation for it and hid most of the content behind a "pay for support" forum, in which you can't even gain read-only access, without paying. From what I understand, it's a rather complex plugin and not documented very well, difficult to get working properly without having access to the additional material that used to be available for free on the developer's site. Sure, I could access some of the original content on archive.org's Wayback Machine, but there is no way of knowing if any of the info is outdated or still applies to the current version of the plugin. Also, any documentation of newer features would not be there. For this reason, I have low confidence for this plugin and will not consider it.

1766

Living Room / Re: Google Stabs You in the Back...

« Last post by app103 on August 21, 2012, 07:17 AM »

Again, not taking sides... but how is this doing otherwise?  If their search results are still based on relevance, but they also have a shopping results tab, then it seems like its two different parts of the service.

I'm just not feeling the righteous indignation here...

-wraith808 (August 21, 2012, 06:45 AM)

Because the plan is that only merchants that pay will be listed. Payment won't guarantee that one will rank well for any particular search terms, but without payment, you won't be listed at all. Free placement is being phased out.

I am sure that I don't have to tell you that before Google came along, that's pretty much how most search engines used to work. What Google is doing is taking a step back in that direction with their Google Shopping service. I think what people fear most is them not stopping with just Google Shopping and going ahead with that same kind of "stone age days of the internet" paid inclusion model with their regular web search.

1767

General Software Discussion / Re: Audio Destortion during Video Playback

« Last post by app103 on August 20, 2012, 07:08 AM »

artwritesyou is a long time friend of my daughter's. When he posted about this issue on Facebook, I had some thoughts about what the problem could be but wasn't sure how to give him advice about troubleshooting and fixing it, beyond the obvious of rebooting, trying another browser, closing all unnecessary programs, and so forth.

Not sure, but it could be a sound card driver. Try updating yours to see if that helps. (It's rare, but happens.)

-Renegade (August 19, 2012, 07:00 PM)

That was one of the possibilities that I thought of. I also thought it could be a clash between ATI graphics drivers (the sound portion) and those of his sound card. I didn't actually ask him if he has an ATI card though. I have a Dell with an ATI card and updating the drivers cause some issues with sound back when it was fairly new. Ended up having to call Dell's support line to get help fixing it (can't remember what they had me do, though).

I also thought it was possibly a hardware issue...maybe early sign of a hard drive problem? (I remember about a month before my daughter's laptop hard drive died, she started having audio problems that caused it to sound distorted) I didn't want to tell him anything that would make him have an unnecessary panic attack, so I didn't mention this to him on Facebook. If this is a real possibility, you guys could probably give him better advice than me about how to find out and what to do if it is the problem (safely and quickly backing up his data, etc.)

I also thought it was possible that Flash was causing an issue with high CPU/RAM usage, which can also cause the audio in videos to sound distorted.

Also the possibility of a codec issue, maybe?

I sent him here to consult with you guys, the biggest collection of PC smarts and experience that I know, knowing you'd probably know more than I do on how to figure out what is wrong and fix this.

1768

Living Room / Re: Is having everything available in "real time" where we really want to go?

« Last post by app103 on August 20, 2012, 05:19 AM »

I had an interesting discussion with my daughter tonight. She is at the age where she is giving serious thought to finding someone, settling down, and starting a family.

She is having some anxiety over the idea of becoming a 21st century parent, and it is mostly being driven by what the internet has become and how socially integrated it is into the lives of today's kids.

Gone are the days when a kid that was being bullied at school could come home, shut the door, and be safe from the bullies. Now we have cyberbullying, which brings it right into what should be the safety of your own home.

By the time she has kids and they get to be school aged, it will be considered normal for 5-7 year olds to have smart phones on them at all times, always connected to everyone else in the world, in real-time. She is concerned about this, and concerned also about setting up her kids to be social outcasts by saying no. She doesn't want to raise kids that are that connected almost from birth, but at the same time she also doesn't want her kids to be the only ones in town without smart phones and end up getting picked on because of it.

She knows that being a parent isn't easy in any age, but thinks that my generation and earlier had it much easier, because we really didn't have to worry about this kind of stuff....there wasn't an internet, or wasn't much of one, when we were raising our kids. She remembers the drama on Live Journal when she was a teen, the crap in the AOL chatrooms, the stuff her and her cousin was exposed to online, and she really doesn't want that for her kids, and sees things getting worse and more dangerous the more that everything becomes available in real-time and the more kids are so deeply connected at younger and younger ages.

It's enough to give her second thoughts about the whole idea of being a parent.

1769

Living Room / Re: Go dark for IE - October 26, 2012

« Last post by app103 on August 18, 2012, 08:05 PM »

Imagine my horror in 2008 when I woke up to find that my main PC had died a horrible death, leaving me with nothing to use but something built in 1997, something incapable of running the latest and greatest. Imagine my horror when I discovered that one of the sites I used for email locked me out because I was using IE6. Imagine my horror when switching to the latest version of K-Meleon didn't help me gain access to my email. Imagine my horror when I couldn't just run out and buy another computer. Imagine my horror when I had to use that old computer for almost a year.

I hate browser bigots. I hate when people propose punishing those that are less fortunate than themselves for their misfortunes.

I kind of put it right up there with the idea of beating up a one-legged man till he "upgrades" and grows another leg.

I don't care what you do, black out sites, cut off users, bomb them with popups and other notices, if they can't upgrade their browser, they can't upgrade their browser. If they can't upgrade their hardware, they can't upgrade their hardware. Nothing you do, short of buying them a new computer is going to change that.

I think a much better proposal, if you hate older versions of IE that much, would be to stick a form in the faces of users of outdated versions of IE that if they fill it out with their shipping info, you will send them a brand new computer. That would go much farther towards eradicating old versions of IE than just being mean to people who might not have a choice.

And why the hell does everyone choose to do these kinds of organized bigoted acts whenever I find myself forced to use an older computer? Anyone that doesn't like the fact I am currently not running the latest and greatest can fix that by going here and putting their money where their hatred is.

1770

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: DC Mug/TShirt Designs that would be nice to have an artist for..

« Last post by app103 on August 17, 2012, 12:45 AM »

My understanding is that the design should have few colors

-sword (August 15, 2012, 11:11 AM)

Not entirely true...

Cafe Press, which is where the DC mugs and T-shirts come from, does great full color printing. The only real issue is the color white on most things that have a base color. Instead of coming up white, it lets the color of the item show through. I have a gray sweat jacket with the left half of this Cody image on it (from 2008), and everything that is white, including Cody, is gray.

1771

Living Room / Re: Why Linux sucks (and how to fix it) VS. Linux doesn't suck (and I can prove it)

« Last post by app103 on August 14, 2012, 02:04 PM »

"Windows 8 is just a web page."

LOL!  

You obviously didn't watch the videos...

The kind of suckage he is talking about has nothing to do with the benefits of one OS over another, but things that affect the Open Source movement, philosophy, and community as a whole.  The points he makes apply to the BSDs as well as Linux.

-Edvard (August 14, 2012, 12:09 PM)

Some of his points apply to Windows, too. Things that affect OS and software development of any type, not just open source. 

1772

Living Room / Re: "Magic Pig Powder" May Heal My Wife

« Last post by app103 on August 14, 2012, 11:12 AM »

Wow...really sorry your wife is having to go through all of this. I really hope you guys get the miracle you are hoping for.

Tell your wife I said Live Long and Prosper.

1773

Living Room / Re: Win XP emoji font needed

« Last post by app103 on August 13, 2012, 12:31 PM »

I also found this Chrome plugin to enable viewing: https://chrome.googl...ifhkabdbodaghlhfcbbd

Seems to work on Twitter by replacing the chars with small images, but not on Wikipedia.

1774

Living Room / Re: Win XP emoji font needed

« Last post by app103 on August 13, 2012, 12:14 PM »

After installing the Symbola 7.02 font from this page, I had no issues seeing all the characters in the latest version of Firefox. Still couldn't see them in Chrome, IE8, or Opera though. (WinXP)

This page seems to indicate it might be an issue in Chrome that goes back at least 3 years.

And my guess is the chars are just not supported in IE8 and probably never will be.

So, if you want to see the chars, your best bet is probably to use Firefox.

1775

Living Room / Re: Typing Speed Competition!

« Last post by app103 on August 12, 2012, 07:25 PM »

Challenge defeated!

-Josh (August 12, 2012, 03:09 PM)

You still haven't defeated me, yet!