Recent Posts

2001

Living Room / The Life-Changing $20 Rightward-Facing Cow

« Last post by app103 on October 05, 2011, 12:05 PM »

The past year has been one of the strangest ever in the life of game designer, lecturer and author Ian Bogost. It started with the launch of the most successful game he's ever developed, and ended with him bringing it to a strange, cathartic end.

That game was Facebook title Cow Clicker, a now-infamous satire against social games. For its creator, though, it's been more complicated than that. As his friend, I confess to being a little relieved it's over with.

This is the story of a person whose joke project became more successful than the one on which he lavished love and intellect, the climate that caused that to happen and how ultimately he decided to learn from it instead of becoming upset.

Ian recently sent me an IM to share some correspondence with one of his users: "Hi Ian," writes one. "I've noticed that the Cowpocalypse has happened and users have to pay to see their cow. Do you have a goal or timeframe of when this will be set back to normal?"

"There's no way to pay to see your cow," replied the designer. "The cows got raptured."

Like any dissatisfied customer, the user said he'll no longer play, as Cow Clicker is "not a very fun game" any longer. Answers Bogost: "It wasn't very fun before "

Cow Clicker was never supposed to be fun. It was supposed to be silly, insultingly simple, a vacuous waste of time, and a manipulative joke at the expense of its players-–in other words, everything Bogost thought that Facebook games like the Zynga-made hit FarmVille are. In Cow Clicker, players get a cow, they click it, and then they must either pay to click it again or wait six hours; an embarrassing, joyless labor that to him represented the quintessential aspects of the games that were flourishing all over the social network.

http://kotaku.com/58...rightward+facing-cow

2002

General Software Discussion / Re: You're only as free and private as the network YOU control

« Last post by app103 on October 04, 2011, 07:02 PM »

ADSL over a POTS line (self-installed) is more the norm.

-40hz (October 04, 2011, 03:20 PM)

That's what I have here in suburban northern NJ. And I have an old PC with a 33.6k X2 data/fax/voice dilaup modem. It's kind of retired now, but I can boot it up if/when it ever becomes necessary.

2003

Living Room / Re: How many slaves work for you?

« Last post by app103 on October 03, 2011, 07:01 PM »

The site isn't working quite right. There is the side panel that pops out so you can fine tune it. I fine tuned everything it would allow, to be as accurate as possible. That means I adjusted it to show that I do NOT own a BR/DVD player and disks for it. Nor do I own a game console with 5 games (I didn't count the Atari that was bought second hand back in the 80's, and I don't think that's what they had in mind when they made the site)

And the pillows I use are made by ME, from recycled materials (am I a slave to myself?)





I also don't think that it takes into consideration where I live when analyzing my answers for "What's on your plate?" I think it just records that I live in the US, and not really where in the US. I live in the Garden State and it is called that for a reason. Local produce is cheaper than imported, and cheaper than produce from other states. Most of the farms here are small family owned and members of farming co-ops. If they are using slaves, it's likely they are exploiting their own family members. And I don't see that as any different than expecting your kids to do chores around the house or a pizzeria owner having one of their kids make boxes and the other take phone orders after school, unless they are overdoing it.

That said, my score was 21.

2004

General Software Discussion / Re: Blogger has a new Dynamic View

« Last post by app103 on October 02, 2011, 12:00 PM »

While these new template views may be fun and fresh, they do not take into consideration that blogs are not nothing but a series of posts. They do not consider sidebar and footer content such as blogrolls, link lists, custom widgets, and advertising (unless you are using Adsense inserted through Blogger itself).

I thought about switching a few of my blogs that have a heavy reliance on images to one of these new views, but then decided against this when I realized what I would be losing. I would have to convert a lot of stuff to pages in order to retain the features, and some of that stuff wouldn't work well as pages.

I tried all my blogs with their little tool and some I was pleasantly surprised at how well most of the new views worked for them, but others that were more text or video based didn't do so well. And older blogs from the pre-Google days fared even worse, since most of the images were uploaded to an external site (Pyra didn't allow uploading) and their thumbnails do not show on older posts (only images uploaded directly to Blogger will show). I would have to go back and edit all those posts, re-uploading all the images, or thumbnails would abruptly stop showing before a certain post date.

By the way what facebook has to do with blogging ? 

-mahesh2k (October 02, 2011, 08:22 AM)

For a lot of people, Facebook is an alternative to having a blog, and it is blogging in the same way having a LiveJournal is blogging. In fact, many of the original members actually came from LiveJournal because Facebook offered the same kind of privacy controls they had become used to, that would allow them to control who got to read their posts. Facebook also has a Notes feature that allows longer form posts, with a little more control over text formatting.

2005

Coding Snacks / Re: structured plaintextfile based note taker

« Last post by app103 on September 28, 2011, 11:53 AM »

I am not sure if you would be interested in this, but it does give you an app with a tree structure that translates into a folder structure on your hard drive, with sets of plain text files. It is very easy to add/remove files from it without even running the application.

It's meant for source code snips and formats them according to file extension, but it works well for normal .txt files, too. It also has graphical support for all your image based diagrams.

One of the reasons why I use it is because I don't want all my code snips jammed into a database. It is much faster and easier to share one by grabbing the file and uploading it to a webserver when necessary.

Developer's Tips & Tricks

2006

Skwire Empire / Re: Release: sWeather (tray-based weather app)

« Last post by app103 on September 27, 2011, 06:05 PM »

You know, I recently stopped using Weather Watcher because it developed that feature on its own (sort of). The first time it did it, while it was about 49F here in NJ, it was showing 88F and feels like 100F. It had magically changed my weather station to Noi Bai Airport in Hanoi, Vietnam. About a week or so later it changed my station to somewhere in Iraq. 

2007

General Software Discussion / Re: Glad It's Not Just Me Department - FF6 memory leaks

« Last post by app103 on September 27, 2011, 07:47 AM »

There are things besides memory leaks that can cause this that can be difficult to track down. Keep in mind that I am running FF3.6, so I do not know if these still apply in the latest version. If any of these issues apply to you, and you also have an issue with a memory leak, the problem could be made much worse than if it was just a memory leak. It's worth it to at least considering the possibilities.

There are some add-ons (and settings in certain add-ons) that save enormous amounts of data to the places.sqlite database.

Disabling the add-ons doesn't remove it, so it won't fix the problem if this is what is causing it. First you have to identify which add-on is doing it, which can be very difficult and will require a fair amount of web research in many cases. Then you have to create a new profile and not use that add-on or disable the setting in it that causes the issue. If you just create a new profile without tracking down the add-on causing it, the problem may go away, but return a few weeks or months later.

For example, the Google toolbar has a start page setting that causes it to save a screenshot thumbnail of every page you visit to the places.sqlite database. This database can easily grow to over 1 gig in size in a few weeks if you are visiting a lot of pages. You have to disable that start page to prevent issues.

There is another issue that can cause the intermittent freezing and unresponsiveness, also related to the places.sqlite database, and that is empty space causing it to become fragmented.

Vacuum Places Improved is a great little add-on that will automatically take care of that. I have not had a problem with this issue since installing it. I have it set to automatically clean after every 25 starts.

2008

General Software Discussion / Re: Cnet's Download.com and the installer scam

« Last post by app103 on September 25, 2011, 08:26 AM »

Nothing tucows does surprises me. I do not bother adding my software there anymore. 8 months until they manage to approve a submission? The outrageous review fees (that apply to freeware too)? The offer to create a 30 second video review for several hundreds USDs? Tucows is a dying money machine. Let's ignore them...

-vlastimil (September 25, 2011, 06:16 AM)

It doesn't really surprise me either, but I figured I'd add the info to this thread for the benefit of others. What Tucows has become is very sad. They used to be a great site about 10 years ago.

2009

General Software Discussion / Re: Cnet's Download.com and the installer scam

« Last post by app103 on September 25, 2011, 04:59 AM »

Softpedia still provides a clean mirror for downloads at this time.



I normally don't get my files from download sites, but the developer's site is currently unavailable, so I went looking for a mirror to get the program.

2010

Living Room / Re: Question to Everyone: Setting aside the technical meaning, does Donationware...

« Last post by app103 on September 25, 2011, 04:51 AM »

If Pay what you want includes the option to pay nothing, it's no different than most people's definition of donationware.

2011

General Software Discussion / Re: Cnet's Download.com and the installer scam

« Last post by app103 on September 25, 2011, 04:12 AM »

Tucows is now doing this crap too.

2012

General Software Discussion / Re: The False Positive and Improperly Rated Site Epidemic

« Last post by app103 on September 24, 2011, 07:38 PM »

This has nothing to do with anyone's feelings about OC. It's about focus and what is best for this project at this time. There may come a time in the future where that focus may change, but right now is not it.

Even if I shared Renegade's views on OC I would still hold the same position about not focusing on misclassifications at this time.

And Renegade knows I do not hold anything personal against him. I consider him my friend, both here and outside of DC, and not just merely a fellow DC member. If we lived near each other and I was the type that liked to drink, we'd be drinking buddies. 

2013

General Software Discussion / Re: The False Positive and Improperly Rated Site Epidemic

« Last post by app103 on September 24, 2011, 03:48 PM »

I have been talking quite a bit with db90h and it is very likely that I will be assuming the role of community relations for this project.

The purpose of this project is to identify and address the issues of false positives. It is not to identify and address issues with misclassifications. We are going to stay focused on false positives. We are not going to address misclassifications unless a website is misclassified as containing something it does not.

For example, if Wikipedia were misclassified as a phishing site and it resulted in it being blocked, that would be acceptable to file a report of a false positive, since there is nothing on the site that could be considered phishing. But if they were hacked and code injected that popped up a form asking for someone's banking info, then that wouldn't be a false positive until they cleaned up the site.

Feel free to start your own similar project to address misclassifications, if you wish, if you can not accept the idea that we will not be addressing them.

A detection of OC is not a false positive unless your software or installer does not contain OC. If it contains OC you may not file a report of a false positive. If it does not contain OC then you may file a report. It is as simple as that. That will be the rule going forward and there will be no compromising on this.

You can argue about it all you want in a million ways, but the fact remains that OC is being detected as OC and if it is malware or not isn't the issue here. So whether you feel OC is malware or not is irrelevant.

Now, Renegade, does your installer that is being detected as containing OC actually have OC in it, or not? If it doesn't, you may make a report about a false positive. If it does, then you may not.

2014

General Software Discussion / Re: The False Positive and Improperly Rated Site Epidemic

« Last post by app103 on September 24, 2011, 01:40 PM »

It would be far more productive in the long run if 1000 developers of 1000 different products would stick to reporting false positives in their products and not reporting a false positive in some 3rd party bundled product like OC.

Because it is a single false positive and the problem is with OC and not 1000 false positives with the 1000 different products.

It would be far better for those 1000 developers to bang on OC's door and complain about it, then let OC handle the issues with their product.

You, as the developer of one of the 1000 products bundling some 3rd party adware are not in the position to make any changes to that 3rd party software to comply with any requirement that might be needed to resolve the issue (other than removing it from your installer), while OC is in a position to change their product and resolve it. They are the ones that should be complaining if they are upset by what they believe to be a false positive.

And I do not see something containing OC being detected as Adware:Win32/OpenCandy as a false positive. It was identified correctly as OpenCandy. If it were being identified as a Trojan:Win32/Vundo, that would be a FP.

2015

General Software Discussion / Re: The False Positive and Improperly Rated Site Epidemic

« Last post by app103 on September 24, 2011, 11:58 AM »

Was that what was happening? I saw 2 of my 3 posts were removed, so I got pissed at being censored, deleted my remaining post and deleted my account.

I was informed the company we were discussing (Open Candy) likes to sue people. I got freaked out, removed the posts. Sorry... The new policy is: NO DISCUSSION OF BUNDLED PRODUCTS.

If you don't want the false positive, don't bundle with that software. You CHOSE to bundle with that software.

I do not mean to be harsh, I just have to set some limits. There are more egregious and clear examples of harm. Mentioning FPs with bundled software just confuses the issue and defeats our purpose.

Anyway, the site is under new management now and being moved as we speak, so maybe you can talk them into allowing it.. I no longer am in control.

OTHERS: Would you agree this is a reasonable policy? If we allow BORDERLINE cases, or cases of debate.. then we confuse the whole issue and defeat the purpose. I personally consider all bundles deceptive as they rely on those users who accidentally miss the checkbox. I, personally, don't want the bundled crap, and imagine others feel the same. Can someone back me up?

I mean NO OFFENSE.. but to get things done, we can NOT allow borderline cases like this.

-db90h (September 24, 2011, 11:39 AM)

I tend to agree on this, and here is another way of looking at it:

If you choose to bundle with anything, and your installers are getting flagged because of what you are bundling with, it's not your software that is triggering the false positive if there is one.

If it is not your software, then it's not your battle here. Your battle is with the company in which you are bundling their product.

If it is OpenCandy, you need to either cry to them about it or stop bundling their product.

If OpenCandy feels that it is a false positive, they can come and complain about it themselves, since it is their product that is getting flagged.

2016

Living Room / Re: When good tech ideas go bad

« Last post by app103 on September 21, 2011, 09:48 AM »

If you really want a treat, archive.org has an old episode of Computer Chronicles, showcasing the Amiga 500 & 2000.

http://www.archive.org/details/amiga_2

While watching this, consider the capabilities and cost of what else was available at the time...a PC with MS-DOS 4 or Windows 386/2.1 ($5,000) or a Mac with OS2 ($4,869). The Amiga was under $1000. It was so much more affordable than just about anything else in current use, that the entertainment industry embraced it and used it for things like the early episodes of Babylon 5. The entire first season's special effects (and about half of the 2nd) were done exclusively on a network of Amigas.

2017

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: Trout (audio player)

« Last post by app103 on September 20, 2011, 11:31 AM »

is there a way to have a random play of the full playlist, meaning that each song in the playlist is automatically played exactly once in random order before being played again?

-Exilas (September 20, 2011, 10:37 AM)

If you use Remove track after playback (found under List menu) no matter what you use, random or shuffle, you won't hear the track again. When the playlist is empty, just reload it. Even if you add or delete items, you still won't hear the same track twice unless you add it back to the list after it is played and removed.

2018

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by app103 on September 20, 2011, 12:16 AM »

I did indeed recognise it as a symbol of medicine/healing - e.g., as used to designate the several corps of the Army Medical Department of the U.S. Army (AMEDD) - who I suspect may need to be told that they are using the "wrong" emblem.

-IainB (September 19, 2011, 07:08 AM)

While it was used by medical personnel, it wasn't meant to be a medical symbol.

Hoff was far too scholarly and intelligent a man to commit the blunder of 'confusing' the caduceus with the serpent staff of Aesculapius. The sign of Mercury was deliberately adopted, as I have heard him state, because it was the emblem of the merchant and hence the emblem of the noncombatant. In junctures when it was necessary for a vessel to proclaim its nature, it was customary for a merchant vessel to indicate its noncombatant status by flying a flag which bore the emblem of Mercury, the God of the Merchant. The caduceus, in our use of it, is not distinctively the emblem of the physician, but the emblem of the whole Medical Department. The enlisted men of the medical department outnumber the physicians of that department. Besides the ambulance wagons, many vehicles are employed in field service in war which are not distinctively medical, but which are used for medical purposes. Both the enlisted men and the vehicles of the department (not to mention many other objects), should bear some sign of neutralization for protection. It seemed to Colonel Hoff and to the board that the Geneva cross, which in addition to its use as an emblem of neutrality is also the emblem of the Swiss Republic, there might well be substituted an emblem which is not the emblem of a foreign country, and the caduceus was selected, as the emblem which for many ages has served to indicate the noncombatant.    ”

—William K Emerson, Encyclopedia of United States Army Insignia and Uniforms

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus_as_a_symbol_of_medicine#Adoption_by_the_US_military

2019

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by app103 on September 18, 2011, 07:54 AM »

You might recognize it as the symbol of the medical profession, healing.

-cmpm (September 17, 2011, 05:45 PM)

That's the Caduceus of Mercury, frequently mistaken as the symbol of medicine. It actually represents merchants, gamblers, and thieves and is the symbol of commerce and negotiation. Any doctor that displays this symbol is either in it solely for the money or doesn't know the symbols of his own profession.

The Rod of Asclepius is the symbol of the medical profession, a single snake wrapped around a staff, with no wings, as depicted in the flag of the World Health Organization:



The EMS Star of Life:



And the American Medical Association (old & new logo):

2020

General Software Discussion / Re: Advice Needed: Fixing Pentium 4 PC with Conficker virus

« Last post by app103 on September 16, 2011, 11:54 PM »

Say that I wind up formatting his desktop's HDD.  Virus gone: *POOF*.  But will I then be able to access the CD-ROM, or will I be missing the drivers necessary to do that because I just formatted them out of existence?

-kyrathaba (September 16, 2011, 08:01 PM)

The only time I ever needed drivers installed to use a CD drive on a PC with no OS was when there was a controller card sitting between the CD drive and the motherboard, and it wasn't CD drivers that were needed, it was for the controller card.

If you wipe it and can't get the CD drive to work, it's most likely a bad CD drive.

Consider when building a brand new computer that has never had an OS, never had any drivers installed on it. Once you have finished putting the hardware together, you pop in the CD to install the OS and it works. Some interesting magic if it needs to have drivers installed in order to work, huh? Where would you have them installed to if you don't have an OS? And what media would they come on...a CD? That would create a hell of a catch-22 where you need the CD drive to work so you can install the drivers, which require you to have an OS installed first, but you can't install the OS or the drivers because the CD drive won't work.

Optical drives are standardized for just this reason. They don't need drivers except maybe for extra features that deviate from the standard, which you wouldn't be able to use until you had an OS installed any way.

2021

General Software Discussion / Re: XP "Automatic Update" / "Restart Later" super annoying dialog

« Last post by app103 on September 16, 2011, 04:33 PM »

Hehe.

However, aren't there cases where a count down will be triggered after a while and you computer will restart anyway ? Maybe not... but I think I've experienced that in the past.

-Armando (September 16, 2011, 04:30 PM)

I have never had that happen before.

2022

General Software Discussion / Re: XP "Automatic Update" / "Restart Later" super annoying dialog

« Last post by app103 on September 16, 2011, 04:14 PM »

Another solution is to not click "Restart later" and just use PS Tray Factory to hide the dialog in the tray. 

2023

Living Room / Re: The Boozernet...

« Last post by app103 on September 16, 2011, 11:07 AM »

I don't often drink. I can count the number of times in the last 15 years on one hand. And I get drunk even less than that. And I have a firm belief that computers and booze don't mix*, so there will be no drunk coding, posting, gaming, online shopping or anything else from me...ever.


*You aren't supposed to operate heavy machinery while under the influence. Since I can't lift it over my head with one hand I have never regarded my computer as being particularly light.

2024

General Software Discussion / Re: Case of the missing partitions when downgrading from W7 to XP

« Last post by app103 on September 12, 2011, 08:26 AM »

It depends on the order in which you installed the different versions of Windows.

If you installed XP first, to the first partition, Stephen's approach would be exactly what you would have to do.

BUT if you installed Win7 first, removing it might make XP unbootable. It would remove the boot.ini file.

You should probably make a full backup of the xp partition (win7 too if you want to keep anything from it), format the entire drive to wipe the whole thing clean, then put XP back on it in the right place...the first partition.

Make sure you have a working boot.ini file for booting xp on the first partition, though, or it will not boot. If you do a fresh install of XP you should have one. But if you mirror what you have now you might not.

2025

General Software Discussion / Re: True Clock Utility

« Last post by app103 on September 11, 2011, 05:33 PM »

http://www.crossgl.c...s.htm#cgl_surf_clock

Personally I would go for the 1.7MB uncompressed version, because the 615KB version was compressed with UPX, which still can cause problems with some safety programs.

CrossGL's clock is really nice: 
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Curt (September 11, 2011, 02:16 AM)

If you don't find that clock visually appealing, they have TON of others here: http://www.crossgl.com/vcl_overview.htm