Recent Posts

26001

Living Room / Re: Amazon to expand their payment system to compete with PayPal?

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2007, 05:15 PM »

Compare that fee struture with paypal, the cheapest reliable alternative:

Monthly Sales    Price Per Transaction
$0.00 USD-$3,000.00 USD    2.9% + $0.30 USD
$3,000.01 USD-$10,000.00 USD    2.5% + $0.30 USD
$10,000.01 USD-$100,000.00 USD    2.2% + $0.30 USD
> $100,000.00 USD    1.9% + $0.30 USD

26002

Living Room / Re: Amazon to expand their payment system to compete with PayPal?

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2007, 05:14 PM »

They are specifically allowing microdonations..

Pricing

There are no minimum fees and no start-up charges to use Amazon FPS. In addition, use of the Amazon FPS Sandbox is free of charge.

Fees are assessed on a per-transaction basis and vary depending on the payment method used and the transaction amount:
For Transactions >= $10:

    * 1.5% + $0.01 for Amazon Payments balance transfers
    * 2.0% + $0.05 for bank account debits
    * 2.9% + $0.30 for credit card

For Transactions < $10:

    * 1.5% + $0.01 for Amazon Payments balance transfers
    * 2.0% + $0.05 for bank account debits
    * 5.0% + $0.05 for credit card

For Amazon Payments balance transfers < $0.05:

    * 20% of the transaction amount, with a minimum fee of $0.0025

Qualified developers can apply for the following monthly volume discounts for credit card transactions:

    * 2.5% + $0.30 per transaction for payment volume from $3K- $10K
    * 2.2% + $0.30 per transaction for payment volume from $10K - $100K
    * 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction for payment volume over $100K

26003

Living Room / Re: Amazon to expand their payment system to compete with PayPal?

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2007, 05:09 PM »

Official announcement, it's in beta:

 http://www.amazon.co...30011&no=3435361



And long official blog discussion of it:
http://aws.typepad.c...pay-me-now-or-p.html

26004

Living Room / Re: Article: A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2007, 04:24 PM »

When you build a PC, there is a good chance everything will go fairly smoothly, and you will come out of it having had a lot of fun.  But there is also a reasonable change (25%?) that you will hit some snags and spend a day cursing out the motherboard manufacturer and trying to decipher motherboard beep codes and figure out why your system is booting.  Some people actually enjoy this experience, like playing detective.  If you are not the kind of person who enjoys this kind of thing, think twice about going down this route.

One thing that is true though, is that there is some real pride of accomplishment in putting together a pc, and it can be one of those things that gives you a closer bond between you and your pc 

26005

Living Room / Re: Some laser printers are as danagerous as cigarette smoking...

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2007, 04:17 PM »

it's a great point about 3rdparty toner vs. name brand toner, nod5.

let's also not dismiss the possibility that 3rd party toner could be less harmfull than the name brand..

26006

Living Room / Re: new PC options:-

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2007, 05:06 AM »

i am paranoid about a powersupply being underpowered just because it seems like one of those things that could cause mystery problems, it's also one of the harder things to replace once the pc is built so again i'd rather be safe than sorry here.

are you the kind of person who maybe be trying to upgrade this box in a year or two? or are you the kind of person who will not likely be upgrading this computer but instead be building a new one in a few years.  if you are the kind that might upgrade, i'd rather buy a bigger power supply now so you dont have to mess with it when upgrading.  if you're not going to do that, then it doesnt matter as much.

i would think 450 would be minimum.

26007

Living Room / Re: new PC options:-

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2007, 04:09 AM »

am i reading that right that you have specced out a 380w power supply? that does not sound sufficient to me.

26008

Developer's Corner / YouLicense.com - Site for finding and licensing indie music for your product

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 11:52 PM »

There are sites for finding public domain music, and site for buying licensed sound effects and snippets, but this is a site devoted to connecting people making music with people who want to license it to use on a project.  Looks pretty cool if you are into this sort of stuff (which statistically speaking you probably aren't)..

YouLicense is an online music licensing marketplace. We have developed a platform which enables artists and those seeking musical content to conduct business directly with one another in a safe and secure environment. Our unique search engine and standardized contracts allow for a quick and easy process.

Whether you're looking to license music for Film & Television, Advertising Campaigns, Music on Hold, Mobile Phone Content, Web Content, Audio Projects, or you are a small business in need of musical content, YouLicense is your marketplace.

The world of music licensing is known to be complex, exclusive and expensive. It is often the case that those seeking to license music have great difficulty obtaining what they need and that only a small percentage of artists and composers have the means to offer their music for licensing.

Our aim is to break down these limitations and simplify the process.

YouLicense is non-exclusive and welcomes anyone with musical content to upload music and offer licenses for sale. This allows for a large range of musical content; from ringtones to sheet music to songs and beats; and is combined with a unique search engine to increase the chances of finding the much needed musical content.

http://www.youlicense.com/

from http://www.theplugg.com/

26009

Living Room / Article: Please don't steal this Web content

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 11:29 PM »

Nice short article about the practice of automated website "scraping", where sites are created by scripts to steal content from other sites, in order to show up in web searches and get advertising money.

VanFossen isn't referring to the kind of plagiarism in which a lazy college student copies sections of a book or another paper. This is automated digital plagiarism in which software bots can copy thousands of blog posts per hour and publish them verbatim onto Web sites on which contextual ads next to them can generate money for the site owner.

Such Web sites are known among Web publishers as "scraper sites" because they effectively scrape the content off blogs, usually through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and other feeds on which those blogs are sent.
...
"It wasn't the issue of money," Leder added. "When other people's business model is based on stealing content, that's a significant problem."

http://news.com.com/...3.html?tag=nefd.lede

The article mentions an interesting search engine for finding copies of your site content on the web: CopyScape.

from http://www.sutor.com

26010

Living Room / MacOrPc Rap Music Video

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 11:22 PM »

This is actually very well done and fun..

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=Jkrn6ecxthM

from irc (shadow82x)

26011

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 10:43 AM »

i can't reproduce this armando, anyone else?

26012

General Software Discussion / Re: Best search and replace software discussion

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 07:02 AM »

welcome DV 

Do people post betas for testing round here? I will have a little something soon that poker fans might like.

certainly.  the best section is probably here: https://www.donation...ndex.php?board=172.0

26013

Find And Run Robot / Re: Hold down final key to launch first found item

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 07:01 AM »

hmm doesnt sound appealing to me..
but keep the ideas coming.

26014

Living Room / Re: Some laser printers are as danagerous as cigarette smoking...

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 02:55 AM »

ps. the original article was first described here and then picked up by cybernet: http://www.vnunet.co...ers-seriously-damage

26015

Living Room / Re: Some laser printers are as danagerous as cigarette smoking...

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 02:43 AM »

which made me wonder are they even dodgy if you dont use them much

good question. id like to know that answer too.

26016

ProcessTamer / Re: Optimization Suggestion: Adjusted Priority_Range

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 01:53 AM »

this is a good idea i think, and i plan to add it to next release, which will be soon after FARR gets released in august. finally. really. i mean it.

26017

Living Room / Re: Flash Tower Defense Game

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2007, 01:05 AM »

one thing that one of the best tower defense games did, was support interesting combinations, like when one kind of tower is next to another, different things happen.  added a whole new dimension to the game.

the game i'm talking about is Onslaught, and i consider it one of the best if not the best tower defense games:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=8183.0

26018

Living Room / Re: Flash Tower Defense Game

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2007, 11:12 PM »

Off to  very good start. I like the feel of the user interface and the nice smooth movement of the enemies and how you can run multiple waves on top of each other.

some general comments (i played normal mode):
the weapons don't "feel" all that different.  like the splash damage one -- i don't see it splashing.
sometimes my towers just stopped attacking creatures, i wasn't sure why or if this was on purpose.
when clicking an existing tower, it would be nice to remind me of its characterstics (like when you click on new tower icon).
one of the towers said "magic damange" -- i had no idea what that would help do.

26019

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2007, 04:09 PM »

thanks nod, i'll look into it. sounds like the transparancy stuff may be causing some troubles.

26020

Living Room / Re: Amazon to expand their payment system to compete with PayPal?

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2007, 03:57 PM »

i should clarify:
99% of our donations come from paypal.  I have been using paypal for many years and am *extremely* fond of it.

having said that, amazon.com honor system is our backup method, and while not perfect it does work and is much better fee than the normal shareware services.

so, to clarify: paypal is 100x better for us than the amazon.com honor system, but the amazon honor system is still good, and to the extent that the new amazon system can improve on it, it could be a viable alternative.

26021

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2007, 02:24 PM »

Still wish there was Fuzzy Search like Launchy has so I can find "noetpad", but no biggy.

can you be a little clearer about what you mean?

ah i see you want when you type noetpad for it to find notepad, despite the bad spelling, even without adding it as a special alias. i'm afraid thats not coming anytime soon, however i will probably try to add a first word abreviation thing where if you type a few letters like np it will match notepad.

26022

Best Dialog Extender / Re: Consistent favourite folder access- wow- that was hard! Office->Directory Opus

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2007, 01:04 PM »

Thanks for the report David -- I was just about to recommend the now free Filebox Extender, but I see you reported trying that above and it not working.  So the report is quite useful 

26023

Living Room / Re: Article: A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2007, 12:41 PM »

smilie aside answer

second time today I'm looking for a different smiley. I often looking for a whistling while looking innocent one.

there is such a smiley, i've seen it.  anyone have a link?

26024

Living Room / Re: Article: A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2007, 12:41 PM »

I'd get much better value for money building one.

just a warning: my experience has been that this is *not* the case.  i would highly recommend you try to build a pc for one and only one reason: because you enjoy the process.  My belief is that currently building your own will cost you more in parts, is MUCH more risky in terms of something going wrong, and puts you in a much more precarious situation should your computer need repair.

in summary: building a pc on your own can be fun -- but that's the only reason you should try it.

26025

Living Room / Article: A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2007, 12:11 PM »

The computer world has known for a long time that girls are to be taken seriously. Games can be ridiculously fun and appeal to everyone. And it's not just about The Sims and Bejeweled; girls want to grab a lightsaber or don platemail and save the world from Oblivion just as much as boys do, so what's stopping us from building our own computers?

Instead, we buy the first computer our budget allows just to get away from condescending sales people, or we accept hand-me-down machines that have been configured by someone else and are slow, buggy, and dirty. In both cases, we aren't getting our money's worth.

I have always enjoyed playing video games with my brothers. We fought each other over who gets to use the computer next. Eventually, we had new computers replace old, and we each had a machine to ourselves. Even though I was the oldest, the computers were the boys' endeavors, and I was stuck with the hand-me-down of the hand-me-downs. And when they both left for college, I had the same tattered and torn computer, only even more out-of-date.

I guess I didn't really mind, but my family took notice, and one Christmas I got upgrades. A new case, a new hard drive--and by the time it was all unwrapped, I had a completely new computer!--all in separate parts. This was orchestrated by my best friend, who then walked me through assembling and setting up my amazing, tiny (it's the size of a shoe box) computer. He didn't do any of the work, since he knew I liked to do things at least once by myself. It was terrific, and once again, I had to fight my brothers over who got to use it first. This time, I had the upper hand. This computer was all mine.

This taught me how easy it is to do, and proved to me that I could handle the upgrades from then on out. I mean, I built the thing myself. Everything else is just a walk in the park.

Truthfully, it's not too hard to build a computer by yourself. It saves a lot of money over buying one off the shelf, and it's a lot of fun to do. Once you're done, you'll know exactly how your computer is configured and what hardware you've got, because you picked out the parts yourself.

http://www.thetechlo...Own+Computer+Part+I/