Recent Posts

3076

General Software Discussion / Re: If shareware prices double in 2010, can you still afford to upgrade?

« Last post by app103 on November 06, 2009, 05:06 AM »

When it comes to upgrading payware, unless the upgrade is free for registered users or there is some sort of security issue involved, I am usually lagging behind a version or 2.

It really depends on the application, how much I depend on it, and whether or not there are cheaper (or free) alternatives that I find acceptable as a substitute.

It also depends on the final price. I sort of cap my budget for how much I am willing to pay for anything, not just software, to something I find reasonable.

If an application that was previously $10 doubles to $20, I might still upgrade because it falls within reasonable price to pay and doesn't hit the cap. But if something that was previously $40 doubles to $80, I probably wouldn't upgrade unless I could obtain a discount to bring it back down to something I find reasonable.

3077

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a difference tool

« Last post by app103 on November 04, 2009, 04:44 PM »

I didn't even try Winmerge, since the Diff/Match/Patch demo did the trick. I'll try out some of the other suggestions later on when I have more time to devote towards testing out new software.

Thanks, everybody. 

3078

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a difference tool

« Last post by app103 on November 04, 2009, 03:00 PM »

Someone on Friendfeed gave me a link to this online demo of Diff/Match/Patch open-source library from Google: http://neil.fraser.n...demos/demo_diff.html

It does the trick.  

Beyond Compare v3.x can compare text that you create "on the fly"/paste from the clipboard.

-tn_dang (November 04, 2009, 02:39 PM)

I have an older version, and I am not sure if I qualify for the free upgrade, which edition I'd be getting if I did, and what exactly the difference is between what I already have and the new one I would be getting.

I remember reading somewhere that it was stated that those that took the free upgrade would actually lose some functionality in the process. It was all such a confusing mess that I never bothered to figure it out or even see if I qualified for the free upgrade.

3079

General Software Discussion / Looking for a difference tool

« Last post by app103 on November 04, 2009, 01:15 PM »

I need a tool, either desktop or online, that can show me the difference between 2 blocks of text.

I just want to be able to paste them both into boxes and click a button, rather than having to create files from them in order to compare.

It can't compare line 1 in box A to line 1 in box B and say they are different and leave it at that. It needs to be able to highlight why they are different.

• Has something been added?
• Has something been removed?
• Has something been moved or rearranged?

And it should color code the highlights so I can know what the deal is. And it can not highlight the whole line. It needs to highlight only the differences within the line or block.

I am looking for comparisons like this:

0989878677656545435798-09-9-09-0886675654543544798987978968756754654
0989878677656545435798-09-9-09-0000075654543544798987978968756754654

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
WXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV

oiuhuyeekggtdfdsfgesfddhhlkjlokuhyhgffgdfgkjnlk
oiuhuyggtdfdsfgesfdboodhhlkjlokuhyhgffgdfgkjnlk

jfchkjsjhsaflk1234jahbflkjhalkjfhalkjfnakj9000kjhdkjghkjdhgkjdhkjfdhjkd
jfchkjs5678jhsaflkjahbflkjhalkjfhalkjfnakjkjhdkjghkjdhgkjd1234hkjfdhjkd

The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.
The quick brown dog jumped over the lazy red fox.


So far I haven't found one that can do this with comparing a very long single line string to another, and without me having to make files out of them first.

3080

Living Room / Re: What's your favorite LOL joke?

« Last post by app103 on November 03, 2009, 05:49 AM »

A blond walks into a bank in Toronto and asks for the Loan Officer.

She tells the Loan Officer that she is going on a business trip to Europe for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000.00.

The Loan Officer says that the bank will need some kind of security for the loan, so the blond hands over the keys to a new Rolls Royce. The car was parked on the street outside the bank. She has the title, and everything checks out. The bank agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan.

The Loan Officer and the bank employees all enjoy a good laugh at the blond for using a $250,000 Rolls Royce as collateral against a $5,000 loan.

An employee of the bank proceeds to drive the Rolls into the bank's underground parking garage and parks it there. Two weeks later, the blond returns, repays the $5,000 and interest, which comes to $15.41.

The Loan Officer says, "Miss, we are very happy to have had your business and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled.

While you were away, we checked you out and found out that you were a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow $5,000 ?"

The blond replies...

Spoiler

"Where else in Toronto can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it still to be there when I return?"

Finally, a smart blond joke!

3081

General Software Discussion / Re: Complaint & Compliment: 3M Post-it Digital Notes vs ConceptWorld Notezilla

« Last post by app103 on November 01, 2009, 12:07 PM »

Old 3M Post-it notes was much lighter, compatible with older OS's, had ability to send notes over lan to another pc. New one is .NET, uses more resources, less features, most "improvements" that I could see were simply eye candy.

Notezilla, in comparison to 3M Post-it Notes is the superior product with a lot more useful features, less limitations, more flexibility and a much better layout overall.

There are a few things that 3M did better, like the alarm manager, but the benefits of Notezilla outweigh anything I would have got with the best of both versions of 3M's application, combined.

3082

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: In the past there was the carrot.. for NANY 2010 there is the stick..

« Last post by app103 on October 31, 2009, 12:48 AM »

Well, I am in, as usual.

3083

Living Room / Re: Reocities: the GeoCities one-man rescue project

« Last post by app103 on October 30, 2009, 04:30 PM »

My first website was hosted on AOL Hometown (also gone), primarily because it had more disk space than Geocities, unlimited bandwidth, and no hotlink protection on my files. (and for awhile, it was ad free)

I had a site that supplied backgrounds, clip art, and midi hotlink codes, for use on sites like Blogger, Live Journal, Dead Journal and Neopets, which didn't allow uploading files. This was back in the days before there were any free image hosting sites like Imageshack and Photobucket, and people had a lot of trouble finding places to host their files for use on other sites, for free.

I see that Reocities went only for the sites that had the traditional area + number urls. There was a point where Yahoo stopped doing that and site url's were based solely on username, without the area designation.

I guess all of those sites are not included in this archiving effort and it was just limited to the older ones.

Another thing that might have made it more difficult to archive these sites was that Yahoo instituted a 4mb/hour bandwidth limit. If you tried to archive a site bigger than 4mb all at once, you would end up knocking the site out for everyone and having to wait an hour to obtain more of the files. (I ran into this issue when trying to archive a friend's 10mb Geocities site)

This bandwidth limit was common knowledge and was often used to DoS attack sites by downloading them repeatedly till they hit the bandwidth limit. It was also why you couldn't submit any Geocities URL's to Digg.

3084

Living Room / Re: Reocities: the GeoCities one-man rescue project

« Last post by app103 on October 29, 2009, 07:58 PM »

Archive Team and textfiles.com managed to save the rest of it and cramned it all into a single page. It sure is a sight to behold. 

3085

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Idea Thread Skwireification Embargo Policy

« Last post by app103 on October 29, 2009, 08:46 AM »

After last year's NANY and his release of Trout, which I love so much I couldn't live without it after installing Ubuntu (it became the first app I ran in WINE) I say we let him participate.

We never know what wonderful app we might miss if we don't.

3086

General Software Discussion / Re: Any fast way to improve pr of a webpage?

« Last post by app103 on October 26, 2009, 10:53 PM »

For a blog...Entrecard. (wait till you have some posts though)

You can also get some free advertising on Project Wonderful. (place some of their ads on your site too, and you'll get traffic from that as well)

MyBlogLog...make friends with people that have blogs with similar content.

Same with Blog Catalog. Participate in discussions and/or start your own that relate to every post.

Do not try to do it all at once. Start with one and build up. You can't get anywhere overnight, it takes time and work, but once you have put in the work on each site, it pretty much takes over and works for itself. If you do too much too fast it can actually backfire on you and cause you to lose rank or keep it from going up.

One of the best ways to get free links to your site that increase page rank is to make friends with bloggers in your niche that are known for linking to other blogs in their posts. If they post about your blog on theirs, they will be sharing some of their juice with you. So talk about them in your posts, linking to them and their posts, and leave comments on their blog too. The idea is to get noticed and not try to market your blog to them. If they notice you enough they will begin reading your blog, and if your content is good, they will link to it on their own.

Oh, and give me a link to your blog.  There are some things I can do to help, too.

3087

General Software Discussion / Re: fully free software utilities for biz use - discussion

« Last post by app103 on October 26, 2009, 07:44 PM »

Thanks to tinjaw's recent post, someone on friendfeed told me about this one:

Anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-rootkit/firewall (and more) intended for commercial use.

Standard version of FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite is freeware.

http://www.forticlient.com/standard.html



And add in my recent discovery of a freeware product similar to Deepfreeze:

Microsoft's Windows SteadyState

3088

General Software Discussion / Re: Wanted: Freeware (commercial use allowed) Anti-Virus Tool For Small LAN

« Last post by app103 on October 26, 2009, 07:33 PM »

Someone on friendfeed gave me this info to pass on to you:

FortiClient Endpoint Security Suite

http://www.forticlient.com/standard.html

The standard version is free and OK for commercial use (actually better than ok, it is intended for commercial use).

3089

Developer's Corner / Re: What's your Programming Language?

« Last post by app103 on October 26, 2009, 05:35 PM »

For me, a real programming language is something you'll get an executable file from. Thus, Java is none either. 

-Tuxman (October 26, 2009, 02:48 PM)

If you would classify both Javascript and JScript as being in the same category, then you should know that it is possible to have a .NET executable (.exe or .dll) from JScript code. And yes, it does have to be compiled. (I posted about it here, not that long ago)

A friend of mine, that is a genuine Javascript junkie, is currently writing an IDE for JScript, in JScript, for the purpose of writing and compiling desktop software. 

And I personally do consider scripts to be executable files, even if they do require a framework to be installed on the computer in which one would be executing it, or if the framework is included in the executable, as in the case with compiled AHK scripts.

If you don't think so, then you probably don't believe that most executables are written in a "real programming language" and probably think the only real one is ASM. To think otherwise would be naive and/or elitist, since almost every executable requires a framework of some sort, even if that framework is already included with the operating system or is the operating system itself. Most executables can not be tossed on an empty hard drive on a machine without an operating system and be expected to be able to be run, all by itself, needing nothing else to support it.

That being said, my language of choice is Delphi. It was the first one that made any sense to me. (and I have this allergy to curly braces that kind of keeps me away from most other languages  )

3090

Living Room / Re: Solutions for blogging sketches and diagrams?

« Last post by app103 on October 26, 2009, 02:02 PM »

You could probably buy a new scanner much cheaper than a camera and you'd have much better results.

A friend of mine picked up one for about $20 not that long ago. It ain't the greatest scanner, but it does the job.

3091

Living Room / Re: Is Website-Watcher 5.0.5 infected with Win32/Induc.A virus?

« Last post by app103 on October 25, 2009, 06:33 PM »

There is a "proof of concept" virus in the wild that can infect systems that have a copy of Delphi installed.

If you don't have a copy of Delphi itself, this virus can't do anything or spread. And it can only infect certain versions of Delphi, at that.

It seems this virus has been around quite awhile (at least a few years), without anyone knowing about it because the payload is more or less harmless, even if you do have Delphi installed.

It won't infect other Delphi apps, just Delphi itself, and then get compiled into every app the developer compiles with his infected Delphi installation. Other than that, it doesn't do anything else, and what it does isn't entirely malicious beyond leaving a calling card all over the place. The goal of this virus seems to just be to leave it's mark (an "i was here") in as many Delphi apps as possible.

3092

Living Room / Re: Unauthorized Contest: Who's been the most helpful in the last 3 months?

« Last post by app103 on October 25, 2009, 11:30 AM »

Can a person  vote more than once ?   That would  skew your feedback.  Can YOU tell if a person votes more than once ?

Lew

-ljbirns (October 25, 2009, 11:15 AM)

The only thing that stands in the way of someone voting twice is a browser cookie.

3093

General Software Discussion / Re: Putting All My (Legally Obtained) Music Online

« Last post by app103 on October 24, 2009, 09:04 AM »

LaLa.com allows you to upload your collection of mp3's and then stream them from anywhere, for free.

If you use their software to upload your music, for the more mainstream stuff they have license to sell, it's rather quick, because they match your collection against what they carry, and if they have it, they just add it to your account immediately. Anything they don't have, they make you actually upload. (make sure your collection is properly tagged!)

They do have individual file size limits, both minimum & maximum. They do not have any limits to the total amount you can have in your account, though.

It's kind of "one way" though. You can upload it, but you can not download it again later. So this isn't for file backup purposes.

It's good for streaming your collection when you are away from home, without taking the collection with you. Their online player for streaming is quite nice. You just log in and keep it open on a tab of your browser and you can listen all day, every day.

It's also a last.fm style social network, where you can follow other people (I don't). And supports scrobbling what you play to last.fm.

For music you do not own already, you can purchase "perpetual" streaming rights for around $0.10 per song. And if you decide later to buy the mp3, they will credit you the $0.10 you already paid, off the price of the mp3. They even start you out with 50 free songs when you sign up (streaming only) and the first stream of any song they have is free, so you can preview it and decide if it's worth paying to hear it again.

3094

General Software Discussion / Re: Wanted: Freeware (commercial use allowed) Anti-Virus Tool For Small LAN

« Last post by app103 on October 23, 2009, 09:07 PM »

I would have to agree with 40hz about the choices being very limited. (he pretty much nailed all your choices (2) in that post)

Another thought I had was combining it with something similar to deepfreeze, so a mere reboot would be enough to make sure the systems are nice & clean. As far as what is available for free like that, the only one I could find was Windows SteadyState.

3095

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Recipe: Trout (simmered in a delicious WINE sauce)

« Last post by app103 on October 23, 2009, 05:41 AM »

Version tested: v1.0.3 build 105
WINE version: 1.01
OS: Ubuntu 9.04

First of all, I have to tell you that I am a complete Linux newbie, and it might show with some of the issues I had with WINE and/or Trout. In fact, this is the first application I have ever run with WINE and I installed it specifically to run Trout. Someone with more experience may not have these problems or they may know how to fix them.

For the most part, it worked surprisingly well. I am very happy because having Trout on my Ubuntu desktop really makes it feel so much more confortable and familiar when I am not using Windows.

A few minor issues with fonts on buttons was remedied by installing msttcorefonts (thanks scancode!)

If you try launching it from a desktop link, it will copy a bunch of crap to your desktop, so don't do that. Instead, just use a link to the trout folder on your desktop, open it, and right click the trout.exe file and select option from the menu. If you do it this way you won't end up with a mess on your desktop and it will use your existing config file for settings. (yes, you can use the one from Windows and not have to reconfigure everything from scratch) However, if you plan on using Trout in Windows, too, maybe it would be a good idea to have seperate Trout folders for both OSs, so you don't have to keep reconfiguring it every time you change OS.

some issues:

• Audible notification on new track works if configured to use a wav file and not system beep. (Don't know if tts would work, since I don't have anything capable of that installed, to my knowledge)
• Open file location will get you close, but not quite. Opens one folder higher in the tree. (it's like taking a bus instead of a taxi, you'll have to walk a block)
• Volume & seekbar sometimes likes to jump if you just hover over it. (don't use the skinned ones, they don't work)
• Dragging & dropping files on playlist window is kind of fussy. You have to be very precise where you drop them or they just don't get added. If you have any issues, try dropping them on the first available empty line in the playlist window.
• The open file & folder dialogs will not show on screen till you minimize the playlist.
• Some minor cosmetic flaws, but nothing I can't live with. I would be much more critical if the flaws were in Windows, but since this isn't a Linux app, I am willing to excuse them. Things like the minibar icon being way too big and causing a blank area beneath the bar, the horizontal separator lines in the play list not existing in the last 2 columns.

does not work (for me):

• last.fm scrobbling  
• opening pages on last.fm site, website buttons in about dialog
• Autojustify and justify columns. If you turn on autojustify, it will squash everything together next time you run Trout.
• user definable global and local hotkeys (You will have to use your mouse. Make friends with the minibar if you haven't already.)
• Playing audio CD's (trout doesn't know my CD drives exist)  
• 'Scroll left' and 'Scroll right'
• midi playback
• Can not change column order
• Double-clicking the album art just gives an error.

not tested:

• GTalk support
• tag editing works great 
• commandline parameters
• DCupdater support
• custom file manager support
• Text-To-Speech option to the "New track notification" options.

Screenshot:

3096

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 Commercials

« Last post by app103 on October 21, 2009, 08:34 PM »

1. Movie Maker was introduced in WinME.
2.  
3. Yahoo Widgets?

3097

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: When do you take a break? (when you don't have a schedule?)

« Last post by app103 on October 21, 2009, 12:17 AM »

Take a walk, alone.

You would be amazed at where your mind goes when your feet are going somewhere. Leave your house and walk about a mile. Then turn around and come back. Don't make any stops along the way, no exact destination or purpose other than to walk. This is not the time to pick up milk or drop off letters in a mailbox. You do not want to be thinking about those things on your walk.

Sometimes when the mind is in a fog of some sort, doing something physical that doesn't require much thinking can set it free. The extra oxygen is good for your brain, too. And the exercise will release endorphins that will improve your mood.

When you come back, you'll be ready to work again, often with fresh ideas you didn't have when you left.

If the weather is bad, then find another repetitive physical activity that doesn't require much thought, like sweeping the floor, washing dishes, scrubbing your tub, etc.

While there are some people that do use these kinds of activities like mouser said, to procrastinate, often when done because your brain is stuck (rather than to avoid a task), it can help fix things and make you more productive instead of less.

3098

General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic Design question: Services and prices?

« Last post by app103 on October 20, 2009, 04:41 AM »

Those aren't sketches, they're etchings. Dore earned his reputation creating those. 

-40hz (October 19, 2009, 10:07 PM)

I know it wasn't a sketch. I am quite familiar with the original process. I was just giving info on how the look can be easily duplicated, with software. 

3099

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 42-09

« Last post by app103 on October 20, 2009, 04:35 AM »

* Edited for clarity.

-4wd (October 19, 2009, 10:31 PM)

 

3100

Living Room / Re: GhostNet - The Facts

« Last post by app103 on October 19, 2009, 09:43 PM »

You'd rather they sent you a Keynote file april?

Ehtyar.

-Ehtyar (October 19, 2009, 02:30 PM)

If you are sending me files, it better be plain text...or we need to talk....and not through email.