Recent Posts

26901

General Software Discussion / Pidgin 2.0 Review (updated open source instant messaging client - formerly GAIM)

« Last post by mouser on May 05, 2007, 06:34 PM »

After months of development and numerous beta releases, Pidgin 2.0 is finally ready. A significant improvement over the current 1.5.x series, Pidgin 2.0 includes several compelling features and usability enhancements. Last year, we looked at the second beta release and concluded that much work still needed to be done. Many of the problems we discovered in the early Gaim 2.0 betas have since been resolved. The official Pidgin 2.0 release, available for download from the Pidgin web site, provides an impressive level of quality and reliability.

http://arstechnica.c.../apps/pidgin-2-0.ars

from http://www.osnews.com

26902

Living Room / The Citicorp Building Repairs: A Tale of Engineering and Ethics

« Last post by mouser on May 05, 2007, 12:49 PM »

Nice long entertaining account of the secret mistakes and repairs in the construction of a skyskraper, and lessons in ethics for all of us who build things..

What's an engineers worst nightmare? To realize that the supports he designed for a skyscraper like Citicorp Center are flawed--and hurricane season is approaching...

http://www.predesign.org/citicorp1.htm

from http://www.gadgetopia.com/

26903

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.82 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - APRIL 26, 2007

« Last post by mouser on May 05, 2007, 10:50 AM »

wow that sure is a bug.. thanks for the report, it's at the top of my todo list.
(ps i've said it before and i'll say it again, thank you for everyone testing and reporting bugs. you are life savers.)

26904

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by mouser on May 05, 2007, 10:28 AM »

I think onyx and broken85 make some good points.

I wouldn't want to be taking traffic away from the small little sites who are managing to make some money from ads on their pages.  I really want these small sites to survive and do well.

Even if i might be happier with a more community-involved micro-donation funding system for them, i'm not at all opposed in principal to sites making money from ads.

Actually i don't find most google ads on pages particularly annoying.

It's not the ads per se that i'm trying to avoid.

But i am keenly interested in the idea that google has its own little "wink and grin" secret ranking algorithms which they don't want to explain or justify, and entire industries of seo trying to find ways to squeeze their sites to the top of google ranked results to make more money, content be damned.

So the idea of empowering individuals to bypass this ranking system and "re-rank" results based seems intriguing.  Now having said that, i agree with broken85 that in fact google does (and has always done) a damn good job of ranking results.  That's one of the reason they beat out the competition is that they do such a damn good job of putting relevant finds up top.  So i'm not sure if such a tool is needed YET.

On the other hand, the temptation for google to start messing with result rankings to increase the scores of pages containing adsense, etc., and if they ever go in that direction, it would be nice to have a way to counter it.

26905

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by mouser on May 05, 2007, 02:58 AM »

You know this thread has suggested a really interesting idea.
What about a web service or local browser addon/tool which simply did this:

when you type in a search, it lets google do the search, and then collects all of the results,
and then re-scores and re-ranks them based on a scoring heuristic that you can tune.

i would suggest that one of the most interesting scoring heuristics that i would be interested in configuring for myself is to penalize the scores of all pages/sites with ads on them.

now that would be a generally useful and fascinating thing, and you wouldn't be discarding sites as much as you would be simply re-ranking them, in case you don't happen to believe that google's algorithm is god.

26906

General Software Discussion / Nature Studio - Cool Shareware Program

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 10:21 PM »

This is a shareware program (which i usually don't post about), but it looks pretty fun if you have some suitable pictures..

"Transform your real-world photo into an animated nature scene by adding a wide array of water, weather and sound effects to your own photos and images
...
The best thing is that you can share your excitement with others. You can create a screensaver and present it as a gift to your beloved or friend, publish it on your website and let your guests or customers download it for free.
...
Nature Illusion Studio provides you with a point-and-click design environment. In just a few clicks you can add various water effects, weather effects like snow and rain, and background sounds that recreate natural phenomena with much realism and accuracy."

http://www.nufsoft.com/naturestudio.php

from www.betanews.com

26907

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.82 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - APRIL 26, 2007

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 08:02 PM »

well if the cursor is blinking in the edit box then it has focus and that's not the problem.

26908

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.82 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - APRIL 26, 2007

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 07:33 PM »

is it possible that what's happening is farr is coming up but is not focused?
do you see the cursor blinking it its edit box? if you put the cursor in the box and click does it work?

26909

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 06:55 PM »

just a clarification: i don't pretend not to care about money -- my student loans make it impossible for me to last more than a few days a month without worrying about it.  i just don't think the goal of life is to get filthy rich; if i can find a way to make enough money to get by i'll be satisfied.  i get frustrated sometimes with how hard even that can be, and that's when i start getting upset when i see how hard it is for some of us to just get by, and how random or automatic it can be to accumulate money once you have enough of it - where it seems to grow overnight in the bank (much like my student loan debt grows when im not looking).

furthermore i don't really think google is doing bad stuff now.. i just look at the incentive system inherent in it, and the direction that is likely to pull things, and more and more i'm realizing what an gigantic potential conflict of interest it is to be selling ads to websites, and at the same time be the arbiter of deciding which websites to send people to.

26910

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 05:01 PM »

i think nudone might be onto something.
in fact you could even imagine a tool that specifically tried to "undo" the biases of these commercial search engines by penalizing sites with advertising from the search engine company, etc.

ie. imagine retrieving the ranked list of results from google, and then RE-RANKING by penalizing each page based on their relation to the search engine company.

very interesting idea.

26911

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 03:53 PM »

I should point out something that may not be obvious -- it's not so much the ads on side of the results that concern me about google, it's the fact that they use secret "algorithms" to decide which pages should be ranked higher and more likely to return to the user for any given search.  i.e. google decides how good a page/website is and that effects whether the page will be ranked #1 for various searches, or #99,999.

Google tends to do a very good job of "properly" (in terms of giving you what you are looking for up front) ranking search results -- that's partly why they got so popular and remain the search engine of choice, but that still doesn't do much to allay my concern that the entire weight of their corporate model is pushing them to give higher ranking to their own pages and pages of people who advertise with them [see some of the recent essays on how google has upset people by leveraging their pages to suggest people install their toolbars and tools in ways that many see as unfair to the competition -- something they originally said they wouldn't do].

26912

Official Announcements / cthorpe has agreed to be Discount Coordinator: thank you!

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 03:29 PM »

Carl Thorpe (cthorpe) has very generously agreed to act as Discount Coordinator at DC for an indeterminate amount of time (until he gets sick of it).

If you have a program you'd like us to inquire about getting a discount on for DC members, feel free to send Carl a message through the forum, although i think it's always more helpful to make a post about the idea and then contact carl separately, that way he can see if there is additional interest in it.  Feel free to remind him of past discount requests that never materialized.

And if you are a software author who wants to offer a good discount to DC members, carl is now the person to talk to.

Three cheers for Carl, let him know you appreciate him volunteering his time 

26913

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 01:28 PM »

In case it wasn't clear, i was being sarcastic and suggesting that yes, a search engine is one of those things best funded by citizens and kept out of the grand game of trying to maximize profits.  App may be right, that the alternative to a privatizes money-gobbling corporation running search engine is worse, i just can't help but think that some things are best taken out of this game of maximizing profits and just funded by the citizens for the benefit of the citizens at large.

26914

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 12:43 PM »

you know what would be a cool idea, have a kind of organization which collects a little bit of money from everyone and then funds major infrastructure projects like this, which are dedicated to serving the people, rather than turning a giant profit.. hmm it's an interesting idea.. we could even elect representatives to this crazy organization which would represent us..  if only there were such organizations in this world..

26915

Living Room / A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 11:36 AM »

I'd like to suggest an extremely simple principle..

Shouldn't we want a web search engine which doesn't have huge financial (or other) incentives to send people to certain pages?

I mean, it sounds insanely obvious and yet the #1 search engine on the planet, by far, has it's entire business model based on people visiting pages with its ads on it, and is increasingly creating content and services that it benefits from sending traffic to.

I would concede that Google is one of the more ethical giant corporations around, but that isn't saying all that much.

Don't we need to find and switch to search engines which don't have such an overwhelming financial incentive to send us to their pages and pages of people that pay them?  Is that even possible in this world?

note: one of my oldest friends and someone who has more integrity than anyone i know works for google; this isn't really a knock against what google is currently doing as much as it is a comment about what i view as an inherent and unacceptable situation in search.

26916

General Software Discussion / Re: Program to string together series of images into an animated gif

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 11:17 AM »

Make sure to read this thread: https://www.donation...index.php?topic=8040

26917

General Software Discussion / Re: Program to string together series of images into an animated gif

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 11:16 AM »

Here's a program that will make animated avi from images:
http://www.aswsoftwa...avi/imagetoavi.shtml

but you should check out Wink for more elaborate movies out of screenshots: http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

or else one of the more pro screencasting tools: https://www.donation...enCasting/index.html

26918

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Configuring user tools

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 11:11 AM »

ill check and report.

26919

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone know any good cheap, easy to use software for interior design stuff?

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 09:13 AM »

Nice find, Maggy. 

26920

PHP / PHP School - Advanced Student DC Task

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 09:07 AM »

See this post for an assignment which will get you extra credit

https://www.donation...24.msg60026#msg60026

26921

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Memory Usage

« Last post by mouser on May 04, 2007, 07:55 AM »

Thanks for pointing this out -- I will add a feature i add to most of my programs that let's you choose whether you want them to release their working memory when minimized. 

26922

Official Announcements / Re: Cody's (Internet Citizens) Club Begins!

« Last post by mouser on May 03, 2007, 08:56 PM »

Cody has informed me he has some gifts to send to his Cody Club members who have completed all tasks.. but before i can send them i need a helper script.

Any php coders want to write a fun little helper script for cody club?
Contact me at [email protected] if so.

The idea of the script is to list all forum members who have completed all tasks, and let users mark checkboxes for each task they have completed.

I can handle all the integration with forum to retrieve users name, so the script should:
1) be called with a person's user id #
2) read a text file and show an entry for each line in the file.
3) show a list of all users who have complete all tasks
4) present a form to the user with checkboxes for each task (line in file), which has each item they have already completed with a check in it.
5) let them modify the form and re-submit.
6) should use a mysql database to store data.
7) should be compatible with php4.

bonus 1 - write a function that automatically will return the % of tasks that a given user # has completed.  this will be used to show badges for cody club in member profiles.

26923

General Software Discussion / Re: Transfer OS and APPs. from one laptop to another

« Last post by mouser on May 03, 2007, 12:27 PM »

i have succesfully made an image of my entire system (xp) on my desktop, and restored it onto the laptop, with great results.

so rather than "moving" apps and stuff, i suggest making a complete drive image of your laptop hard drive onto an external usb drive. and then you can restore it again if you need be.  A good app for drive imaging is Acronis True Image, but there are others (see https://www.donation...ckUpGuide/index.html).

by the way i think your instinct to back up your entire drive before sending it to be repaired is a very good one, definitely do it.

26924

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.82 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - APRIL 26, 2007

« Last post by mouser on May 03, 2007, 11:33 AM »

But wouldn't it be more consistent to have directory exclusions on the same page as directory inclusions, rather than on the page with pattern scoring?

yes, i will think about doing this. it would make it more efficient too.  in this thinking, each directory listed would also have:
1) checkbox for saying whether to search recursive, and perhaps a recursion depth limit.
2) list of sub directories to exclude

26925

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.82 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - APRIL 26, 2007

« Last post by mouser on May 03, 2007, 09:41 AM »

Or is it smart enough to do that when it sees the above pattern exclusion?

right exactly. it wont go into that directory at all -- BUT!!! -->
don't do "d:\winnt\temp\*" or "d:\winnt\temp\*.*"

as that WILL confuse it into looking into the subdirectory before eliminating.