Recent Posts

17726

DesktopCoral / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DesktopCoral- 1.08.01 - Nov 1, 2009

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 09:56 PM »

can you show what it would look like if you just made the desktop coral transparent?

17727

Official Announcements / Forum upgraded to smf 1.1.11 - please report problems

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 08:32 PM »

Forum upgraded to smf 1.1.11 - please report any problems.. i kind of rushes this unexpected update so i wouldn't be surprised if there were issues.  please let me know if you find any!

17728

General Software Discussion / Re: The DonationCoder "Superior Antivirus" Award/Certification

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 07:02 PM »

i think the rating idea is a good one -- but i'm trying not to "require" any details in this list that we don't feel are mandatory.  so we might say that the program needs to report SOME estimate of certainty in some form.  this is not going to be easy to put into a numerical form.

17729

General Software Discussion / Re: The DonationCoder "Superior Antivirus" Award/Certification

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 06:33 PM »

anyone want to try to make a nice fancy professional looking graphic logo for the page?

17730

General Software Discussion / Re: The DonationCoder "Superior Antivirus" Award/Certification

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 06:26 PM »

I'm as pessimistic about these things having any effect as anyone, if not more so.  But I also view these things from a pragmatic cost-benefit analysis standpoint.  It costs us little more than a few hours of our time to set something like this up, and a promise that any antivirus company that lives up to the standard will receive some publicity and praise from us.  Surely worth a try.

17731

Living Room / Re: Open Source Proves Elusive as a Business Model

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 06:24 PM »

Dormouse, some very good points.
And I think after several years of being involved in DonationCoder, I can confirm your comment here:

Trying to decide how much to donate, even if they're able to come to the point of deciding that they want to, is just too much; no-one wants to seem a skinflint, but no-one wants to overpay either.

The best i've done to address this is to make a joke chart, so i haven't come up with a solution -- but i do think it bears saying that i think you are right, that this causes people no small amount of discomfort, and turns off some potential donors.

[Actually it's not quite true that there isn't another solution on DC -- having a DEFAULT DONATION AMOUNT goes a long way to ameliorating this problem, though since we hit this economic crisis, the default donation amount is mostly ignored by a wide margin].

17732

Finished Programs / Re: [Firefox] [Bookmarklet] Show all comments in a webpage.

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 06:02 PM »

works! fun stuff!!

17733

Finished Programs / Re: [Firefox] [Bookmarklet] Show all comments in a webpage.

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 05:28 PM »

it might help to tell people what to do and what this bookmarklet is supposed to do.

17734

Finished Programs / Re: [Firefox] [Bookmarklet] Show all comments in a webpage.

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 05:24 PM »

doesn't seem to work for me or i dont know how to use it.. i selected the entire text, pasted it onto my link toolbar in firefox.  when i click it nothing happens.
i should note i dont actually use any bookmarklets, or havent in the past, mainly because my brain seems to just balk at the way bookmarklets are added to browser bookmark area -- i don't know why browser makers insist on making it such an ugly kludge.. if this is something we are supposed to do cant they build in a little nice support for this?

17735

Living Room / Re: Open Source Proves Elusive as a Business Model

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 04:30 PM »

All good points.

I'm sorry if i fell into the trap of presenting this as a view of FOSS as a business model -- nothing makes me more ill than reading all of these people talking always about ways of "monetizing" the web.  That term "monetizing" makes me want to stick knives into my ears.

I don't come at this from a "business model" perspective.. I come at from the perspective of someone who would dearly wish i could just spend my time coding on projects I thought were useful without worrying the slightest about money or revenue, and did so right up until i slammed head first into the very harsh reality of having to earn enough money to pay for rent and food.

So i come at this stuff from an admittedly biased position of wanting to find a way for open source / freeware coders (and musicians and artists) to be able to find a way to support themselves, even if only just barely, while doing the work they love.  What breaks my heart is that it feels to me the open source revolution is leading once again to the big corporations getting rich off the backs of the authors/artists/workers, who must by necessity only do this work as a hobby instead of their real work, because their is no money for them to do this stuff full time.

Again, you are quite right when you say that many (most?) of the people involved in open source are doing it because they love to do it, and because at the time they are working on it, they have alternate sources of financial support -- real jobs so to speak, or they are in academia where they have free time to work on this stuff.  That's wonderful.. However I've seen enough examples of coders posting how they have to stop working on a project because they no longer have the time to work on it with their real jobs demanding their time, or how they can't afford to spend the time providing support because of the need to work at a real job. I just wish we could get to a place where there is just a little more financial support for those who would like to transition from doing this stuff as a hobby to doing this stuff full time.

This gets back in many ways to my views about donationware.  If people think of software in two categories: Commercial Software that they are happy to pay through the nose for, and Freeware/OpenSource software which they refuse to donate a dime for regardless of it's quality or value to them, then we are doomed into living with this situation where the commercial entities are the only ones who can afford to spend real time on this stuff.  If the culture shifted to donating more to open source developers, than we might see a real flourishing of coders who don't care about getting rich, and suddenly have a path that let's them focus on programming (creating music, etc.) full time.   And the result would be more high quality free (donation supported) software, and less evil-giant-corporation dominance.

17736

DesktopCoral / Re: [Request] Option to lock docked DesktopCoral

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 02:40 PM »

ok that makes sense.. i'll add locking position to the todo list.

17737

General Software Discussion / Re: ghacks christmas 2009 giveaways

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 01:19 PM »

Ah I understand.. you assumed it meant that anyone who comes to the site can get it.  I suppose that could be confusing.  We use the same term "giveaway" sometimes when we really mean that we have some copies to give away for free, but not everyone will get one.

It brings up an interesting issue in terms of words though -- because "raffle" and "lottery" are not really appropriate -- they usually imply to most listeners that one has to PAY to have a chance, and this is not like that.  And a contest implies that the "winner(s)" will be chosen based on some criteria, rather than randomly.

So for the wordsmiths.. is there a term would you use to identify an event where things were being given away for free but only a few people were going to be chosen randomly to receive them?

I think in general, i've used "giveaway" for this purpose.. and *not* used it when there is an unlimited supply of something.. in the case of an unlimited supply i think one is usually more explicit and says something like "we have a free X for everyone who stops by".

17738

DesktopCoral / Re: [Request] Option to lock docked DesktopCoral

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 12:53 PM »

is it because your dock is not fully transparent that you accidentally undock it? i ask because i thought once transparent you cant really undock it, and i didn't realize anyone was using it non-transparent.

17739

Living Room / Re: Open Source Proves Elusive as a Business Model

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 12:51 PM »

From Kevin Kelly's site today:

http://www.kk.org/ne...market-is-the-ma.php

The software is free, but the manual is $10,000. That's no joke. Cygnus Solutions, based in Sunnyvale, California, rakes in $20 million per year in revenues selling support for free Unix-like software. Apache is free but you can buy support and upgrades from C2Net. Although Novell, the network provider, does sell network software, that's not what they are really selling, says Esther Dyson: "What Novell Inc. really is selling is its certified NetWare engineers, instructors, and administrators, and the next release of NetWare." One educational software exec admitted that his company's help line was actually an important profit center. Their main market was the ancillary products they sold for their flagship software, which they had a chance to do while helping customers.

This is what i keep seeing -- people are finding a way to make money off of open source software.. but the way there doing it looks something like this:

• Let open source mostly hobbyist coders write software in their free time; because it's a hobby, they tend not to spent much time writing documentation, manning support forums etc.
• Now the businesses come in and sell 3rd party support and documentation materials for the open source software.

It's kind of a vicious cycle isn't it?  The coders aren't getting paid, and the people who are getting paid depend on the software to be hard to use and without a good support system in order to make money..

17740

General Software Discussion / The DonationCoder "Superior Antivirus" Award/Certification

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 10:55 AM »

In this thread, one of many on the DonationCoder forum where we are all screaming about the harm that lazy antivirus companies are doing with their false positives, I suggested that maybe we need to do something productive to encourage these companies to be more responsible about the alerts they show.

So today I want to begin that process by asking for your help in coming up with a short and clear list of requirements that would be worthy of our recognition for a new antivirus/anti-malware standard that is focused not on the number of virus detections, but on how users are told about alerts which may be false positives, and how well they deal with false positives.

Once we've got something I'd like to make an official web page about this, and then try to contact the antivirus companies and maybe get some other websites that want to join us in this movement.  And hopefully one day in the near future we will be able to give this award out to a company and lavish them with praise, recommendations, reviews, etc.

Let me start out with my first draft of requirements for what i'll call the DonationCoder "Superior Antivirus" Award/Certification:

When a suspected malware is found, the user must be presented with a dialog that clearly describes:

• The complete file path of the suspected file.
• A description of the suspected malware (not just some cryptic name), with an easy link to search the web for more info about this virus and the file found.
• A clear indication of the date that the antivirus signature matching the file was added, with a clear statement about the possibility that this may be a false positive, and telling the user some information about the confidence that the file is indeed a real malware vs a false positive.  this should be a statement like "this is a generic rule of thumb pattern that was recently added, so the chance that this is in fact a false alarm and not a virus is quite high."
• In the alert there should be a url to take the person to the antivirus company's forum where they can talk to others about whether the problem is real or not.
• The user must be given an opportunity to not delete the file.
• The user must be given an alternative to go to a page where they can report a suspected false positive
• The user must be given the alternative to upload the file to an online site like virustotal for a second opinion.

Thoughts? What am i missing? Anything here that is asking too much?

17741

Screenshot Captor / Re: How can I get a licence key?

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 10:10 AM »

Just go to this page and it will give you one:
https://www.donation...r.com/Keys/index.php

ps. welcome to the site, make yourself at home 

and don't miss the videos showing how to get the most out of Screenshot Captor at the bottom of this page: https://www.donationcoder.com/3ds

17742

General Software Discussion / Re: academicproductivity.com (my blog on productivity) lifehacked

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 07:36 AM »

I just want to say i visited the blog recently and it's great to see it's doing really well with lots of great content! I regret not visiting more regularly, but it's on my daily watch list again.

17743

Living Room / Open Source Proves Elusive as a Business Model

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 06:25 AM »

I fret about the business models i see succeeding on the internet.  The internet was supposed to let the masses compete with the big guys.. But when I look around it seems to me like just another example where the super giants are getting rich and everyone else is scrambling to get some attention without the slightest intention of coming up with a business model for profitability, and instead is just hoping to get enough press to get them a ticket to the lottery of being bought out by one of the big guys.

There has to be a better, more widely applicable model for open source developers to survive financially..

..To Ms. Kroes’s point, there is an open-source alternative, and usually a pretty good one, to just about every major commercial software product. In the last decade, these open-source wares have put tremendous pricing pressure on their proprietary rivals. Governments and corporations have welcomed this competition... Whether open-source firms are practical as long-term businesses, however, is a much murkier question... in the last decade, open-source software has become more of a corporate affair than a people’s revolution... The larger technology companies have tended to buy these one-trick ponies for strategic purposes.

http://www.nytimes.c...2&ref=technology

Note that the article itself is your typical useless business article that seems of interest only to wall street people trying to decide which firms to invest in -- but i think any article that sparks discussion of how open source can become a more viable thriving model is worth noting.


from http://www.gadgetopia.com/post/7002

17744

General Software Discussion / Re: ghacks christmas 2009 giveaways

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 05:24 AM »

10 is more than we usually giveaway on dc, plus this is just for one day of their event -- with more giveaways throughout the month.. can't see what anyone could possibly complain about(!) yksyks you must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning

17745

General Software Discussion / Re: ghacks christmas 2009 giveaways

« Last post by mouser on December 01, 2009, 04:05 AM »

actually i dont use adblocker.. but i do use NoScript which blocks any kind of javascriptm,etc. by default.

17746

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: hamNotes (A FARR2 Plugin by hamradio)

« Last post by mouser on November 30, 2009, 06:20 PM »

Ctrl+R brings up the context menu of any item, you can then use arrows to go to the menu item of your choice and hit enter

17747

Living Room / Re: How's *that* for a false positive? And is it? (Avira AV)

« Last post by mouser on November 30, 2009, 05:09 PM »

this is another pet peeve i have, antivirus alert windows that dont show you the full filename of the detected file. these companies seem so damned determined to not let the user figure out what is going on.

17748

Living Room / Re: How's *that* for a false positive? And is it? (Avira AV)

« Last post by mouser on November 30, 2009, 05:00 PM »

And you also search for information on the reported malware found, in your case "tr_crypt.xpack.gen", and when you do you realize the "gen" stands for generic, which is your first signal that this is probably a false positive.  more info:
http://www.avira.com...crypt.xpack.gen.html

i have written over and over again, and am getting sick of repeating myself, that antivirus companies MUST STOP this ridiculous behavior where they report wild guesses as confident detections.  it is absolutely inexcusable.

17749

Living Room / Re: How's *that* for a false positive? And is it? (Avira AV)

« Last post by mouser on November 30, 2009, 04:58 PM »

What you do is go track down that file, and upload it to a site that will scan it with lots of antivirus programs, like http://www.virustotal.com/
Then you'll have a second and third and fourth opinion.

17750

Living Room / Re: New scamsites!

« Last post by mouser on November 30, 2009, 03:57 PM »

that is very evil.