topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Saturday March 28, 2026, 11:48 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Recent Posts

Pages: prev1 ... 1212 1213 1214 1215 1216 [1217] 1218 1219 1220 1221 1222 ... 1515next
30402
Living Room / Re: Storm the House
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 08:12 PM »
ps. spacebar reloads
30403
Podcast Radio Show / Re: Podcast #4 Submission Time!
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 07:10 PM »
that's what i was hoping to hear  :Thmbsup:
30404
Podcast Radio Show / Re: Podcast #4 Submission Time!
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 05:27 PM »
mukestar and JavaJones have generously agreed to take over the podcast shows -
let's show some appreciation by sumitting segments and helping them make it a good one!  :up:
30405
well put NeilS.

Do what you can.

People can help projects in different ways, and to different degrees depending on their abilities, time, financial resources, etc.  There are lots of ways to help support a project, big and small.

Those of us who have been advocating for a donation based approach to funding are very keen on the idea of being flexible about letting users figure out for themselves how they can and want to contribute..

it's frustrating to hear someone say that its foolish to contribute to an open source project.  Different people can help in different ways - the central tennet of donationware advocates is to figure out a way to let people express their support and help a project in a way THEY choose to.
30406
Living Room / Re: IRC channel error ...
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 02:33 PM »
hurry back carol, we miss you already  :-*
30407
LaunchBar Commander / Re: v1.54.02 - file sorting is A-Z and then a-z ?
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 02:04 PM »
yes, agreed; it's on my todo list.
30408
nice take on it that i agree with:
http://haacked.com/a...FreeLikeAFlower.aspx
30409
Find And Run Robot / Re: [RFF] Key to override custom application
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 08:42 AM »
im not all that fond of such hotkeys, BUT this might be something solved with the new planned context sensitive actions ideas for v2, where you could say that files with certain extensions should have certain "actions" available to them.

then you could say that .html files should have options like "open in opera", "open in firefox", "open in maxthon" etc., and easily choose.
30410
Screenshot Captor / Re: Print Size Bug
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 08:40 AM »
hi vycon,
and welcome to the site!

try changing the default DPI in the options to something smaller:

[ Invalid Attachment ]

I think the smaller the DPI, the larger a screenshot will be considered when brought into your word processor.

You can also change the DPI of an existing image from within the SpecialFX -> Adjust color + dpi dialog.

Let me know if this solves it please :)
30411
I absolutely love jeff atwood's Coding Horror blog, but found myself in rare disagreement with him this morning.
He posted some reflections on another blog entry by Scott Hanselman on the death of the open source project NDoc.



Scott:
NDoc: The Death of a (great) Open Source Project

On a related note, it's going to take a while (6 months to a year?) for Microsoft to really get Sandcastle to the point where Kevin Downs got NDoc. Will this new tool be as rich and useful? Or will it be forgotten like HTML Help Workshop?

Recently Kevin Downs, the leader of NDoc, emailed a NDoc folks announcing that NDoc is dead. I was shocked to get this email, but sadly, not surprised. Here's an important part of his email:

Unfortunately, despite the almost ubiquitous use of NDoc, there has been no support for the project from the .Net developer community either financially or by development contributions. Since 1.3 was released, there have been the grand total of eleven donations to the project. In fact, were it not for Oleg Tkachenko’s kind donation of a MS MVP MSDN subscription, I would not even have a copy of VS2005 to work with!

To put this into perspective, if only roughly 1-in-10 of the those who downloaded NDoc had donated the minimum allowable amount of $5 then I could have worked on NDoc 2.0 full-time and it could have been released months ago! Now, I am not suggesting that this should have occurred, or that anyone owes me anything for the work I have done, rather I am trying to demonstrate that if the community values open-source projects then it should do *something* to support them. MS has for years acknowledged community contributions via the MVP program but there is absolutely no support for community projects.
...
For "base of the pyramid" fundamental stuff like Build, Test, Coverage, Docs, will we pay for them? We should. Should we have given the NDoc project $5? Did NDoc help me personally and my company? Totally. Did I donate? No, and that was a mistake. I agree with Phil. Support those 5, 10, 20 truly Open Source projects with a little of your time or money.



Jeff:
...
Open source software is at its best when you aren't obligated to do anything at all other than use it.
..
You definitely shouldn't have to pay for it.
...
Personally, as an Open Source project co-leader, I'd much rather folks who use DasBlog pick a bug and send me a patch (unified diff format) than give money. I suspect that Kevin would have been happy with a dozen engineers taking on tasks and taking on bugs in their spare time.
...
Contributing code to an open source project is a far greater extravagance than any monetary contribution could ever be. It's also infeasible for 99 percent of the audience-- those who have both the time and the ability-- which makes it an even more extravagant demand.
...
If contributing money is foolish and contributing code is an extravagance, what's a poor user to do? Nothing. Nothing at all, that is, other than use the software.
...
The highest compliment you can pay any piece of open source software is to simply use it, because it's worth using. The more you use it, the more that open source project becomes a part of the fabric of your life, your organization, and ultimately the world. Isn't that the greatest contribution of all?



I'm not quite sure where Jeff is coming from with his conclusion that "contribuing money is foolish".
Here is what i wrote in reply to Jeff:
i wrote about these issues in my article on donationware, "When Do Users Donate":
https://www.donation...icles/One/index.html

if you back up from your conclusion and simply ask yourself the question: "*IS* contributing money foolish" - i'm not sure youd often come up with an answer of yes. in fact you might come to the conclusion that donating $5 to an open source project you love, if many people did it, would enable a few developers to quit their day jobs and improve the quality, reliability, documentation, of the projects.

isn't it at least feasible that widespread acceptence of a donation-based approach to funding open source projects, if we all took it seriously, could make it possible for open source coders to spend more time polishing their software and working on some of the finishing touches that many of us bitch about (lack of docs, etc.)?

Your thoughts?
30412
Living Room / The Hive: New Long Article on Wikipedia
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 03:04 AM »
The Hive: Long Article on Wikipedia

Can thousands of Wikipedians be wrong? How an attempt to build an online encyclopedia touched off history’s biggest experiment in collaborative knowledge
by Marshall Poe
...
Several months ago, I discovered that I was being “considered for deletion.” Or rather, the entry on me in the Internet behemoth that is Wikipedia was.

For those of you who are (as uncharitableWikipedians sometimes say) “clueless newbies,” Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. But it is like no encyclopedia Diderot could have imagined. Instead of relying on experts to write articles according to their expertise, Wikipedia lets anyone write about anything.
...
Yet Wikipedia has a value that goes far beyond the enjoyment of its contributors. For all intents and purposes, the project is laying claim to a vast region of the Internet, a territory we might call “common knowledge.” It is the place where all nominal information about objects of widely shared experience will be negotiated, stored, and renegotiated. When you want to find out what something is, you will go to Wikipedia, for that is where common knowledge will, by convention, be archived and updated and made freely available. And while you are there, you may just add or change a little something, and thereby feel the pride of authorship shared by the tens of thousands of Wikipedians.
...



from http://www.dashes.com/anil/
30413
General Software Discussion / Re: SQL-based replacement for Filemaker Pro?
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 02:30 AM »
another thing to consider is something like Ruby on Rails, which has some pretty clever database management stuff that takes only a few lines of code to write.. depends how much custom scripting you want/need.
30414
LaunchBar Commander / Re: v1.54.02 - long time to read shortcuts
« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2006, 12:52 AM »
i have a good solution to this. please remind me if i dont post about it by the end of next week.
30415
great! thanks xbeta :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:
And welcome to all chinese users.

ps.
i had no idea the forum could post chinese text!
30416
Living Room / Re: Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3 - nothing but problems
« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2006, 10:49 PM »
this is slightly off topic.. but is it just me or does that look like a bootleg woodstock sitting on snoopy's nose? something about him seems not quite kosher. actually now that i look at it, snoopy seems a bit fat there too..
30417
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Template for users wishing to write a mini-review
« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2006, 10:41 PM »
i think the mini reviews dont have to be so strict - the template is reallly useful as a starting point, but writers can deviate.  i think we want to keep the idea that it should be easy to whip up a mini review without much stress. so it can be as little as a picture with 1 paragraph of opinion.  at least thats my 2 cents.
30418
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Template for users wishing to write a mini-review
« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2006, 09:19 PM »
it might be nice to have a somewhat tighter spacing and perhaps some indenting after the section headers.. maybe i can whip up a custom bbcode thing for it.

ps.
when the template is ready i will add it as one of the Preset Text template items in the dropdown field in the post form, so everyone can use it very easily.
30419
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Control Freak - living in the game
« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2006, 06:38 PM »
i really like the idea of this - maybe if you guys could hone down some more rules and display ideas based on nudone's enunciated central concepts:
my belief is that one way of getting things done is by using peer pressure or by incorporating a competitive element. so, in order to get the things done that you keep putting off for absolutely no good reason we make a kind of pact - we vow that we'll play by the rules of the game i'm about to outline and by doing so, your incentive will be to do well in the game, which is as a direct result of your non procrastinating efforts.

it might make a good coding snack and/or web scripting challenge for the programming school.
30420
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: half-qwerty keyboard with onscreen keyboard
« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2006, 05:46 PM »
give it a bit of time..
i think its just a matter of skrommel seeing the request :)
30421
Best E-mail Client / Re: The Bat! - annoying word wrap
« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2006, 04:01 PM »
the auto indenting can be annoying..

i love the inplace spellcheck though..
30422
i loved the genius of this.
30423
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: (10+2)*5 Timer
« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2006, 02:21 PM »
Josh just posted a mini review and a screencast of InstantBoss:
https://www.donation...index.php?topic=4602
30424
great mini review and excellent screencast  :up: :up:

note:
discussions about the program itself should take place here:
https://www.donation...index.php?topic=4430
30425
Living Room / National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo)
« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2006, 01:58 PM »
This is a great idea; vrgirl on our forum actually wrote her first novel during the Nanowrimo event in 2003.

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.




Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and -- when the thing is done -- the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2004, we had over 42,000 participants. Nearly 6000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time.

Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from your novel at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: Sign-ups begin October 1, 2005. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

Pages: prev1 ... 1212 1213 1214 1215 1216 [1217] 1218 1219 1220 1221 1222 ... 1515next