Recent Posts

26426

Official Announcements / Re: July 2007 Software Discounts and Giveaway

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 08:11 PM »

Once again, Carl, thank you so much for organizing these things for us.  Great set of discounts 

26427

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Dr.Explain Mini-Review

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 07:20 PM »

Wow, very nice 
Now this is what we call a "mega" mini review 

26428

Mircryption / Re: tcl error handeling won`t work after using mircryption for eggdrop

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 07:09 PM »

yes, definitely.. just keep in mind mircryption gets slow development attention.  After many many years of heavy development, it's just moved onto a slower stage.

26429

Living Room / Re: Google in Sicko Storm - Welcome to democracy google style

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 06:57 PM »

I'm seeing an interesting phenomena happening with google..

Last year i got a call on my answering machine from google, wanting to talk to me about "an opportunity for a collaboration between google and donationcoder"

When i called back, very curious to hear about this collaboration, i discovered that the caller was a google salesperson and the "collaboration" idea was to put adsense ads on our site. hah! what an exciting collaboration.

What is happening with google is that it is becoming 2 companies in one.  A part of the company is developing cool technical stuff, and probably couldn't care less about advertising.  Then there is the huge machinery of google advertising, whose job is to game the rest of the google machine in order to make huge revenue from advertising sales.  Basically the google sales people are doing the search-engine optimization tricks in order to try to get advertisers ads *on google* to have higher placement, etc.

I guess television and magazines have the same kinds of pressures between their advertising and editorial divisions.  It just seems more dangerous to me when it's happening on our internet, and when small changes in the kinds of results google returns for searches can have such a huge impact, and it means their are huge internal pressures for google to favor sites that advertise with them.

To me it feels like a conflict of interest.  If a company is going to so completely dominate the web search gateway we all use, they shouldn't be profiting from sending you to specific sites that run advertising with them.  Note that I'm not suggesting their should be a legal rule against this, only that I don't think it's ethical or a good idea, and I'd prefer to use a search company whose profits do not depend on sending me to sites that pay them money.  The only problem is that the entire web is more and more moving to an advertising-revenue system, and it's just become accepted that nearly everything on the web should be free and make money by creating a ton of users and selling them advertising.

Question for the economists: Is it possible that one day in the near future there will be no more actual products to buy, and everything just becomes free and funded by advertising?  i.e. your computer and monitor are now free, but have ads on the side of them?  Or does there eventually have to be at least one object in the universe that you have to buy in the end?  Maybe in the future each person will have 1 and only 1 thing to buy in their lifetime, a "uniwidget" and all other things are free but come with advertising for uniwidgets?

26430

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.121 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 1, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 06:20 PM »

glad to hear it 
slowly the bugs are melting away and version 2 public release is imminent.

26431

Find And Run Robot / Re: Another FARR similar app - Executor

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 06:13 PM »

all in the help file already.
If you havent checked out the "Related Apps" section of the FARR help file, it's worth a look, i've listed dozens of similar apps that have come out since FARR's release in 2002.

26432

Word Processor Roundup / Re: 3rd Party Tools like Bibliography Addins

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 04:45 PM »

I've always loved ProCite, and will never forgive the people behind endnote for buying it out and letting it die (Endnote seems to be by far the most maintained product).  I still use ProCite.

26433

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 04:29 PM »

welcome to the site Ralf, glad to have you here. 
And thanks for clearing up one of the mysterious of life -> yes, smurfs to go to war sometimes.  gargamel is lucky he never ran into that one!

26434

Living Room / Re: Google in Sicko Storm - Welcome to democracy google style

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 12:29 PM »

I need to clarify something -- i shouldn't pick on google.

google is probably the most ethical, most interesting, and most technically exciting mega corporation, whose entire business model centers around dominating the web and making trillions of dollars by putting their advertising on everything.

(sounds sarcastic but i'm serious).

26435

Living Room / Google in Sicko Storm - Welcome to democracy google style

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 11:38 AM »

This is one example of the future of the internet and democracy, google style.  And it's one more reason why i don't consider myself a fan of the company.

"Does negative press make you Sicko?" asked Google health account planner Lauren Turner. She was referring to the new documentary by left wing demagogue Michael Moore about the US health provision.

Turner used the corporate blog to condemn his use of "isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst". Why couldn't the media concentrate on the positive aspects of the system such as 44m uninsured Americans er, "the industry's numerous prescription programs, charity services, and philanthropy efforts."

This segues neatly into a plug for Google's core business, as she goes on to explain:

Many of our clients face these issues; companies come to us hoping we can help them better manage their reputations through "Get the Facts" or issue management campaigns. Your brand or corporate site may already have these informational assets, but can users easily find them?

We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company's assets while helping users find the information they seek.
...
"Advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue," she urged.

http://www.theregist.../google_sicko_storm/

So.. got a few million dollars of advertising money? Then you too can participate in democracy and buy yourself some relief from pesky bad press and a bad reputation.  If you get caught behaving unethically - use your democratic dollars to buy yourself an advertising campaign that can neutralize those pesky investigators.  It's all about advertising.

Here we have the advertiser's/lobbyist's middle-man game, telling each side they had better quickly get out their checkbooks and starting buying millions of dollars of advertising to try to quickly dominate the message and shout down the other guy's message.

My apologies for the semi-political rant..

26436

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.121 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 1, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 11:02 AM »

tip:
try typing helpfarr or listfarr.

26437

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.116 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - June 30, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 10:55 AM »

I've created a special section for preview release download urls, accessible currently to supporting members only, but we will add people who request.  The download link for the alpha of FARR is now posted:

https://www.donation...ndex.php?board=217.0

26438

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Excellent 3-page series -- but missing some word processors for creative writers

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 10:39 AM »

Welcome to the site Tom -- your blog looks fantastic 

26439

Living Room / Re: New iPod ad says it all ...

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 09:54 AM »

what i want to know is, how can we, the consumer, buy some large hand painted images of these ad campaign photos?  I mean sure having the ipod in one of these boxes is nice, but then you have to store the enoty box away in a safe.  What I really need is some artwork for my wall featuring these boxes, so that I can have them on display at all times.  And am I the only one not satisfied with just a full frontal picture of this box? I'd like a set of portraits viewing it from all sides.  Surely the back of the box is just as sublime.

26440

Living Room / Re: New iPod ad says it all ...

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 09:06 AM »

this is exactly the thing that makes me have a visceral negative reaction to everything apple. 

26441

General Software Discussion / Re: Excalibur 32-bit

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 08:38 AM »

i do find RPN to be a beautiful and elegant solution to handling parentheses.  The stack-like process should warm the heart of any programmer.

maybe rpn was originally used on calculators (i had it on my hp 48cv) because it made parsing expressions with parentheses much much easier.  very easy to implement a stack on a primitive calculator.. not so easy to implement a calculator that can accept very long expressions with ( and ) and then report unbalanced parentheses errors, etc.

26442

Find And Run Robot / Re: Trouble saving aliases

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 08:30 AM »

just remember if you move it, youll get a new copy on update in the old directory.
so your best bet is:
1) copy the alias file to your custom directory and rename it.
2) uncheck the old official one in farr so it is disabled and never used again.

26443

DcUpdater / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DcUpdater - 1.12.05 - JUN 30, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 08:22 AM »

thanks for the report, that's definitely not on purpose, i'll file the bug report on my todo list.

and thanks for the nice comments.  as soon as i add some features to dcupdater i think it will become very useful, as  a more generic updater able to support pad files, and make a little helper util which should really really make it simple for users to add updater support to the programs.

26444

Living Room / Re: Go on Scoble show, get yourself fired!

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 08:10 AM »

My two previous posts about Robert Scoble and his blog:

• https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=4890.0 - "Does being so over the top in terms of being self-absorbed, name-dropping, self-promoting, self-hyping, etc., really help people in business?  Personally I find it almost unbearable."
• https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=6425.0 - "Most of the time you should focus on talking about yourself and the big shots you know.  But sprinkle these posts with discussions reflecting on how cool it is that you spend most of your time takling about yourself and the big shots you know."

26445

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR newbie - need help for alias creation

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 08:06 AM »

another approach is to make one alias, let's say "myahk", and drag and drop all your favorite ahk files into it as results. then when you type myahk you will get a list of your favorite ahk files which you can launch.

26446

Find And Run Robot / Re: Trouble saving aliases

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 08:03 AM »

the reason its read only is because it will be replaced on update.
so dont edit the file manually.

if you want to modify the entries though, there is an easy solution, you can move or copy the file from the Installed alias subdirectory to the custom alias subdirectory and then it will be under your ownership and not overwritten during update, and you can modify it.

26447

DcUpdater / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DcUpdater - 1.12.05 - JUN 30, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 07:58 AM »

yes, very good idea and not hard to do.

26448

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« Last post by mouser on July 02, 2007, 12:37 AM »

Integrates nicely with FARR - just add your RoboForm directory to FARR and you can launch automatic logins directly - a massive timesaver at work where there are passwords for almost every system.

ooh, cool tip!

26449

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Requesting good alias files

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

I'd even like help just finding/collecting icons for adding to the core aliases.. so if you go to the farr v2 alias group tab and check out the core alias file, what i want is a dif icon for each of the results in each alias.  many of the alias results (for keyword search for example), are websites, and so we should use an icon for that website.

any volunteers?

26450

Living Room / What Makes a Content Management System? Nice Essay on Gadgetopia.com

« Last post by mouser on July 01, 2007, 11:26 AM »

This is a surprisingly good essay about content management system (CMS) features, and various features that are essential or merely nice extras.

It doesn't talk about specific products but it's a must read for anyone who has thought they might need a CMS for their website but weren't sure, or really don't have a great grasp of what a CMS brings to you that a simple static set of web pages doesn't.

If we look at content management functionality as a continuum, there’s a graduated scale between the two. On the one side, you have something simple — an “articles” table with a couple of password-protected pages to update it. On the other side, you have a commercial CMS that you paid $50K for with all the bells and whistles. Specifically, how are the two different?

http://gadgetopia.com/post/5940