Recent Posts

30976

Living Room / Re: Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences

« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 12:58 PM »

from zdnet blog today:

It's official: Google launches 'Checkout' with predatory pricing model aiming to 'increase advertising spending'
As I postulated Tuesday in my “Google GBuy online payment system to lock-in AdWords advertisers and usurp consumers via discounts and rebates “, Google has officially launched its ecommerce payment service with a predatory pricing model to lock in its advertisers, increase advertiser spend with Google and attract new Google advertiser customers.
...

http://blogs.zdnet.c...kets/index.php?p=178

30977

Developer's Corner / Cody's Quest or whatever - upcoming flash click game

« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 12:55 PM »

this thread is for discussions about the flash click style game staring cody.
we need ideas, artists, etc.

this will be a game like hapland and blastoff, etc.  in other words it will be a single screen with lots of objects to click to manipulate.  you will have to figure out which things to click in the right order to win.

i think we need to start with an overall theme and puzzle idea.
will the goal be to get cody home to his nest? or recover all the coins? or defeat his twin cousin? or what?

30978

Living Room / Article(s) on Googles New Pay Service, controversies, and my experiences

« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 11:43 AM »

I think it's natural that google will be getting into pay services, especially since they have a lot of trust from people, and trust is a big part of this payment middleman provider thing.

My views on google are very very mixed.  They clearly care about hiring very smart people to create some very cool stuff and are probably more moral than most companies.  But on the other hand I think they are benefiting from a completely out of whack publicity system on the web that makes every whisper of a new service a worldwide glorious event akin to the resurrection of jesus.

And they get away with things that have to make microsoft cry every day.. this approach where they don't tell people how they decide to pay them for showing adsense ads, and this scheme they get away with by calling everything beta is a master stroke that i hope doesn't catch on.. here is the screen i got when trying to apply for google payment thing for DonationCoder:

but hey it's beta, so what do you expect 

Anyway, i still think that the new pay service might be a good thing.  Here's the cnet article:

Google on Thursday unveiled its much anticipated online payment processing system designed to offer shoppers with a Google account a quick way to pay for things.

Web sites and merchants can integrate Google Checkout into their sites as an alternative payment processing method to existing checkout and credit card processing systems, said Salar Kamangar, vice president of product management at Google.
Consumers with a Google account can type their credit card and billing information into Google Checkout once and then pay for purchases thereafter with practically one click on any Web site that features the system, Kamangar said. As things now stand, he said, "If I buy five things from five different merchants I have to fill out five different forms. This process can take three, four, five minutes" for each form. Google Checkout is meant to change that.

Once they've purchased something through Google Checkout, consumers can track their orders through the system, which will be live starting Thursday at Checkout.google.com.

Merchants using the system will be charged a processing fee of 20 cents per transaction, plus 2.2 percent of the relevant purchase price. Customers who pay for search-related keyword ads through Google AdWords will be able to process, free of charge, transactions that add up to 10 times the dollar amount of their AdWords spending, Kamangar said. Beyond that, they pay the 20 cents plus 2.2 percent. Kamangar said the regular transaction fees are less than those charged by credit card companies, which can be about 1 percent higher.
...

http://news.com.com/Google+Checkout+checks+in/2100-1038_3-6089351.html?tag=nefd.lede

30979

Living Room / Re: Fetching Cody

« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 11:00 AM »

hahaahha but...
where is cody hiding in that picture?  is he in the balloon?

30980

Living Room / Re: OfficePoltergeist - prank on your office mates

« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 10:37 AM »

hahahaahaha

30981

Living Room / Re: Satire on the web

« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 01:56 AM »

what does the new yorker have to do with satire?
(well i guess the cartoons)

30982

Living Room / Re: Satire on the web

« Last post by mouser on June 29, 2006, 01:48 AM »

I just discovered theonion has a podcast of its little news snippets.

here's one of the latest:

Aging Seeing-Eye Dog Purchases Seeing-Eye Squirrel
Tuesday, June 27, 2006

http://www.theonion....m/content/node/49854

30983

Living Room / shiny shiny - girl gadget blog

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 09:26 PM »

interesting..

http://www.shinyshiny.tv/

30984

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching Shell Extension to Filter filelists

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 06:12 PM »

all i can say is you wouldn't be the first person who said "eh, i don't see the purpose in swithing to an explorer replacement" and then came to feel they couldnt live without it after they tried - so you might want to reconsider your position

however, if you do find something, let us know.

30985

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching Shell Extension to Filter filelists

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 06:02 PM »

some file explorer replacements will do this (dir opus, powerdesk, maybe xplorer^2 also?) that might be your best bet.

30986

Living Room / Re: fun flash click-in-order game

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 05:46 PM »

ahhhh im losing my mind 

i cannot 2nd the second box in the scientists brain to turn into a color, it stays ?.. i can't figure out what else to do.. damn bastard

30987

Living Room / Re: fun flash click-in-order game

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 05:32 PM »

by the way.. it just occured to me..

isn't making a click game like this staring our mascot cody a great idea?!?

let's do it!!!

i'll bet nudone would be willing to do most of the art if someone helped think up the puzzles

30988

Living Room / Re: fun flash click-in-order game

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 05:28 PM »

wtf do you do with the chocolate!!! (hint in spoiler please)

30989

Living Room / Re: fun flash click-in-order game

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 05:02 PM »

how about giving us a little spoiler hidden hint about that colored box control thing on the bottom right.. it has be stumped.

30990

General Software Discussion / Re: Word Search Solver

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 04:40 PM »

hi glonch, welcome to the site.
i think given the nature of this site, there is almost no idea for a program that won't be interesting to at least some people. and there's nothing wrong with working on programs just for the fun of it.

keep in mind there are some powerful programs to do this already (and some papers on good algorithms for it), though i don't know any off hand.  maybe others can post some links.

so is your question about cross-platform programming tools? (you mentioned you wanted it to run on windows/linux/mac.

there are cross platform Basic interepreters (Mark0 might have some hints there).  Then there are all the scripting languages which might be a good match for this.  depends if you want graphics or not.

30991

Screenshot Captor / Re: A noobee's questions

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 04:35 PM »

I'm just working with one hand and find it nearly impossible to hit ctrl-shift-click at the same time.  Could there be an alternate way to make your capture choice, after having selected the window object?

indeed there is! the right ctrl key is treated like ctrl+mouseclick so you dont have to use mouse at all.
so normal capture of windows object is right ctrl click.  if you want scrolling window capture, first hold one of the shift keys down, then press RIGHT ctrl key.  no need for mouse.

30992

Screenshot Captor / Re: A noobee's questions

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 04:33 PM »

hi brotman.

ok first regarding text scraping - keep in mind that sc is not trying to be the best tool at text scraping.  the best tool i know for this is: Kleptomania (http://www.structurise.com/kleptomania/).

however, it should be able to grab windows error messages and stuff like that - i suspect you just aren't triggering it in the proper way.  The way to use it is not to select the window, but rather the actual text object (label, memo, etc) inside the window.

so, you triegger a windows object capture, then move the red highlight box around the text in question, and then click the gear icon. you will see one of the entries is "Capture Text to Clipboard" with a preview in the menu of what text will be captured/scraped, so you can confirm it has what you want before you capture.

having said that, the best news for you might be this:
you can actually copy error message text simply by hitting ctrl+C when an error message pops up (at least on win2k+Xp).  surprising but true

30993

Developer's Corner / Blog post: 8 Invaluable Wordpress Plugins

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 03:10 PM »

Wordpress is one of the most popular, free solutions for managing your website’s content and I am a devoted fanboy. However, whilst Wordpress in its default, out-of-the-box form can provide a good platform for your website, with a little tinkering you can increase the functionality of your site massively. And what’s the easiest way of tinkering? Plugins! Special files that you simply slot-in to your Wordpress installation to get new features. Here are 8 plugins that I consider absolutely invaluable…

http://www.pingmag.j...e-wordpress-plugins/

from lifehacker

30994

Living Room / OfficePoltergeist - prank on your office mates

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 02:56 PM »

What the heck is OfficePoltergeist?
If you're like me, then your longtime dream has been to take over all the computers in your office and make them play hysterical laughter and/or other crazy noises. Sure, there are all manner of underground "back orifice" type tools out there that can take over a computer, but until now, there wasn't something simple and disposable that you could use in your office without causing headaches further down the road when you have to uninstall some crazy trojan horse.
No... that's too much effort/risk for a stupid prank. Still, the idea of a ghost in the machine has haunted me for some time.
In that spirit, allow me to introduce OfficePoltergeist 1.1, the simplest way to terrorize the people who dwell in the cubes around you.
...

http://officepoltergeist.com/

from freewareworldteam

30995

Living Room / fun flash click-in-order game

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 02:53 PM »

this is one of those figure out how to click things in the right order flash games.
fun one!

http://www.mousebrea...es/blastoff/play.php

from the great http://flash.plasticthinking.org/

30996

Living Room / zdnet blog post: Maybe Firefox doesn't have a security edge after all

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 02:36 PM »

Ed Bott's latest column: Maybe Firefox doesn't have a security edge after all:

Kvetching about Microsoft security flaws is so 2002.
That thought came to mind today when I read a misleading and disingenuous post by Firefox evangelist Asa Dotzler. Now, Asa just got back from a trip halfway around the world. So I’m going to assume that it was jet lag that caused him to write and publish a post entitled microsoft security manager calls users stupid, which contained these fightin’ words:
...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=85

30997

Living Room / Re: Interesting article: ‘Big Brother’ eyes make us act more honestly

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 01:25 PM »

thanks for the post dajo - i love articles like these 

it's fascinating when you can find these statistical differences in subconscious behavior that are triggered by things we wouldn't have expected.

30998

Living Room / Re: Satire on the web

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 01:20 PM »

it is my belief that there is no more consistently brilliantly funny satire publication that has ever existence on the face of the earth, than The Onion.

http://www.theonion.com




ps. there are tons of books now collecting articles from theonion.  click here for amazon list.

30999

Developer's Corner / Re: Della's first Game attempt!

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 03:25 AM »

lol

31000

Developer's Corner / Re: Della's first Game attempt!

« Last post by mouser on June 28, 2006, 01:24 AM »

im attaching some pics of cody in case anyone wants to use them.