Recent Posts

31901

Site/Forum Features / Re: Podcast Audio Radio Show Question - submit your online answer

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 03:07 PM »

free recordering software:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/

31902

Site/Forum Features / Re: Podcast Audio Radio Show Question - submit your online answer

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 03:04 PM »

damn that thing!!!!
maybe this is why we've had so few submissions 

31903

Living Room / Re: Little Gromit Mine (teh funay video)

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 01:41 PM »

by the way,
that little grommit song is in my head now and keeps repeating 

31904

Site/Forum Features / Re: How to Change Forum Privacy Options (and Block Our Newsletter Emails)

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 01:39 PM »

Ugh.. someone just pointed out that the "Notifications and Email" option was not visibile to non-donating members.  It is fixed now.

Why didn't someone point this out to me before? 

I apologize to all of those non-donators who wanted to turn off our wonderful newsletter emails for some reason and found these instructions impossible to follow.  Please remember you can always email me ([email protected]) if you have any trouble with something on the website.

31905

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: No eMail Notification When Using QuickReply

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 01:37 PM »

i'm looking into the quick reply notification thing, i don't kknow why it wouldn't behave just like regular reply.

as far as notifications and email under profile&membership,
it seems i did not enable this for non donating members, but i have now.

actually i need to say that this is crazy that this was not enabled because it meant it was impossible to follow the instructions about how to disable the newsletter for non-donating members, which was not my intention 

31906

Site/Forum Features / Re: Podcast Audio Radio Show Question - submit your online answer

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 01:02 PM »

i'm so sorry deozaan - i didn't even think about the danger of losing a recording..
everyone please feel free to test submit a blank one to test it before wasting time.

and please feel free to record your message using any program you want and either emailing it or using anonymous ftp upload to ftp.donationcoder.com.

please record another 

31907

General Software Discussion / Re: Open Source, Free Software, Closed Source etc. discussion

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 10:25 AM »

I guess my general advice about how to decide if you want to make your program Open Source is to view it from a zen perspective.  Make your code open source when you are ready to give it away.  Prepare it as best as you can so it will get along well with others, and then enjoy it however it's used or not used as the case may be.  If it forms the basis of someone else's masterpiece, you can sit back and enjoy the knowledge that your code is living on and working hard doing it's job, whether you get the credit or not.

31908

General Software Discussion / Re: Open Source, Free Software, Closed Source etc. discussion

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 10:20 AM »

I have a few open source projects; few have garnered enough interest from other programmers to make these issues relevant.

A very common thing I hear from new programmers is that they run out of time or energy to work on a program and plan to make it open source, expecting that when they do a swarm of programmers will pick it up and start extending it..

The hard truth is that you only have to browse through SourceForge a bit to see the immense graveyard of unfinished Open Source projects.

The steep learning curve involved in using someone else's code means that a project usually has to be well developed and fully funcitonal before it will attract other coders.

I think often people open source code when they really don't want to see it die but can't work on it anymore.  In this case, seeing someone else pick it up and breathe life into it can be very fulfilling, no matter what they do with it.

But for those coders who are still actively involved in it, it would take a special person to not be bothered to see their code forked and then renamed and becoming famous.  But then, the Open Source world is filled with such special people who have a very strong ethical and emotional commitment to free software.

Once again it also comes down in large part I think to the stresses of a winner-take-all capitalist marketing system, where many of us have to worry about earning money to the extent that it would be a real financial hurt if a program we were working on were to become the foundation of a popular program for which we got no credit or reward.  That could really eat you up inside.  Wheras if you had an independent safe income stream you might just say que sera, sera.

31909

General Software Discussion / Re: help....need a tool/utility to Auto terminate a process

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 10:10 AM »

Actually, although it's not it's main function, ProcessTamer can be told to do this by adding an explicit KILL rule for the app:
https://www.donation...proctamer/index.html

31910

General Software Discussion / Re: Big List of Programming Games

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 09:44 AM »

battlefield game of course, where people can have code-driven entities compete.

31911

Find And Run Robot / Re: Grouping folders? Ie. c:/music c:/movies = Media. ~~ Select group before search

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 06:51 AM »

this is a major feature planned for version 2.
i think we have been calling this "modifiers" so you could have a keyword that said "only search in these folders".

so it is coming.

31912

Site/Forum Features / Re: Podcast Audio Radio Show Question - submit your online answer

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 01:59 AM »

still a few days left for you last minute stragglers - but please hurry.

31913

Podcast Radio Show / Re: Podcast Audio Radio Show - Upcoming Show Planning

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 01:27 AM »

so true.  welcome to the world of lawyers.

31914

General Software Discussion / Big List of Programming Games

« Last post by mouser on April 27, 2006, 12:32 AM »

http://www.aiforge.net/game-links.htm

This is a big list of programming related games like Core War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Wars).

I'd love for us to invent one here at DC.

31915

Podcast Radio Show / Re: Podcast Audio Radio Show - Upcoming Show Planning

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 10:53 PM »

Legal guide to podcasting which discusses such legal issues:
http://wiki.creative...dcasting_Legal_Guide

31916

Living Room / Re: The greatest candy in the history of the world!

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 08:48 PM »

to me, the kit kat bites come pretty close to perfection..

31917

Developer's Corner / How to Price a Project - really nice article on doing contracting work

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 08:07 PM »

Really nice article on how to come up with a price for a contracting project.

Today we are going to break an unwritten rule for agencies, we are going to reveal an important page from our playbook on how we price a project. What is somewhat ironic is that we think it's a pretty bad rule, that one of the last things we think anyone should hide from a potential client is how your pricing works.

http://www.blueflavo...ricing_a_project.php

from lifehacker

31918

Living Room / Re: Coffee vs. Tea

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 05:33 PM »

lol 

i still prefer tea.. and i ordered some of my favorite secret tea to be given out to the standout audio podcast participant..
still time to enter: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3316.0

31919

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Discounts at Windows User Group www.wugnet.com

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 12:45 PM »

great find patteo!

31920

Borland C++ Builder Contest / Quick minireview of translation components tools - my initial experiences

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 12:31 PM »

Warning: This post reflects my personal views after a preliminary look at localization components for c++ builder (all are for delphi as well).
I may try to do a more extensive review after I've had more of a chance to try them all.

I've recently been looking for some components to make some of my c++ builder programs localized for different languages.

I've looked at all the solutions I can find.  There are quite a few including:

• Dklang - free - http://www.dk-soft.org/products/dklang/
• dxgettext - free - http://dybdahl.dk/dxgettext/
• korzh localizer - commercial ($150-$300 normally) - http://devtools.korzh.com/localizer/
• sicomponents tsilang components - commercial ($150-$300 normally) - http://www.tsilang.com/index.html
• multilizer and other super expensive tools

The free programs Dklang and dxgettext are quite impressive but after playing with them all for a couple of days my feeling was that two products stood out above the others for c++ builder development: korzh localizer and sicomponents tsilang components.

They both offer very elegant gui form translations, and extraction of string resources in your source code.
They both come with free translation tools you can make available to translators, and they both support external language files that can be loaded at runtime.

To me they had the best balance of power, features, price, and ease of use.  That's my personal opinion, and i should say it's only after a day or two of experimenting - not after heavy use.

The good news is that both companies have decided to offer a 50% discount to people planning on entering the bcb contest - which is fantastic.  These tools really can go a LONG way to making it easy to translate your bcb and delphi programs into other languages.  I would definitely recommend checking these tools out.

Now the bad news:
I really cannot for the life of me figure out which of these 2 components I would recommend.  Both have trial versions so you're best bet is to try them out and see which one you like best.  I look forward to hearing your opinions to help me decide as well!

They both have different strengths and weaknesses:

• I like how tsilang supports plaintext translation files as an option.
• But I prefer how the korzh localizer stores translated constants in a separate file and used human readable constant strings in your source code.
• I like how easy it is to do runtime autodiscovery and switching of language files in korzh localizer.
• But I think the tsilang translator are more polished.
• I can't figure out if I prefer the approach to using an IDE addon (used in localizer) or the non-visual form component used in tsilang.
• Both seem regularly updated by enthusiastic and nice developers.
• Both have active forums.

So as you can see - it's hard to decide between them.  But then on the other hand, I think you probably can't go wrong with either of them


You can find the discount in the Discount Code child board of this section.
If you don't have permission to view that section and you are interested in participating in the C++ Builder contest please email me ([email protected]).

31921

General Software Discussion / Software to help you quit smoking?

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 10:45 AM »

I have never smoked, but i came across this freeware program while browsing the author's free programming components.
Anyone know any other quit-smoking helper programs for those that need them? Anyone tried one? Did it help you?


http://www.xarka.com/freeware/index.html

Quit Counter v1.2
3,07 mb

Utility to help quit cigarette smoking. Keeps track of various statistics, friends and also congratulates the user with many different graphics on reaching various milestones. Can also copy statistics to the clipboard.

All texts and milestones can be customized.

If you smoke, read the texts at the site below.

You will see that you can stop smoking without magic and money with the simplest method - cold turkey!

WhyQuit is a valuable resource for education and motivation when quiting smoking and staying quit. Because smoking is not just a bad habit, but an addiction to the drug - nicotine.

31922

UrlSnooper / Re: Any plans to crack Flash binary URLs

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 10:15 AM »

yeah this is tricky, and i think mostly going to be the job for a program that tries to record the video rather than url snooper.

31923

General Software Discussion / Re: AutoHotkey fund idea - split donation with AutoIt?

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 10:11 AM »

This thread has really goteen a lot of interest; hopefully it will serve to make people think and not aggravate people.

Let me take a minute to summarize what I've gathered from reading the autohotkey and autoit forums and my reasoning behind the idea of making a donation to AutoIt.

Autohotkey started out as an open source clone of AutoIt v2.  It was developed by a person who was involved in the autoit forums and includes substantial code from autoit (whose source was freely available at the time).

The two projects began to diverge and now are independent projects.  But autohotkey still uses quite a bit of the free code and tools developed by AutoIt developers.  Both are still free programs (though i think only Autohotkey is formally open source).

There are some hurt feelings on the part of the AutoIt developers and users.  I think mainly because Autohotkey seems to have benefitted from the hard work of the AutoIt developers; many AutoIt developers/users seem to feel that not enough credit was given to AutoIt by Autohotkey developer, and that Autohotkey was making a concerted effort to post about ahk on autoit forum an elsewhere in an attempt to get autoit users to swtich to autohotkey.


I guess I can empathize a bit with the AutoIt developers. I have a few (not very popular) open source projects and I can see how hurtfull it would feel if while I was working actively on the code someone came along and made a new fork of the code and began work on a new project that was meant to be a replacement for my original program.

I would wish, as the autoit people seem to have wished, that instead that programmer had been helping to make my program better rather than branched off into a competing product.

That's not at all to say that the Autohotkey person did something wrong at all by making autohotkey.  there are tons of reasons why makeing a new product might be better for everyone, including the fact that autoit may not have stayed free, wheras autohotkey is formally open source, and the fact that the Autohotkey developer obviously was extremely active and wanted to pursue new features without having to get permission and have his decisions go through the approval proccess by autoit developers with whom he might not always agree.

I think the active development of autohotkey has proved that the developer of ahk deserves a huge amount of credit, and reading both forums i get the feeling that the people behind both programs are good, honorable, smart people who both deserve support from their users.  And that everyone has benefitted from the work on both products.  They probably both spur each other on and keep each other from resting on their laurels.

My desire to give a donation on the behalf of DC to AutoIt developers reflects the fact that, for a variety of reasons, Autohotkey has become known here on this forum, while AutoIt has not.  And I think AutoIt deserves some recognition from us, as it has received from Autohotkey developer, as being an important part of the development of Autohotkey.

I understand that people here who use Autohotkey want to support that program.  And it makes sense that AutoIt users should support their program, so in general it seems like it will work itself out.  But in this case I think fairness dictates that in the spirit of this site we make an attempt to recognize through our donations the contributions of AutoIt.  If AutoIt was a profitable company then I might not feel this way, but given that AutoIt is also a free/donationware program I think it deserves some recognition in the form of a donation from us.

It doesn't make sense to have an autoit fund because so few people here use autoit, which is kind of my point, that we should in fairness make an attempt to recognize that autohotkey uses pieces of autoit and so autoit deserves some of the credit given to autohotkey.

Maybe a matching donation is not quite right since their aren't many autoit users here.  Let's do this, when the fund reaches $100, then your donations will be made to autohotkey on behalf of the dc members.  then dc itself will donate half as much $50 to autoit in recognition of the work of the autoit developers.  I don't see how you can go wrong with that.

31924

General Software Discussion / Re: AutoHotkey fund idea - split donation with AutoIt?

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 03:14 AM »

i'll leave the thread open of course; however it's problematic to change the fund now that people have already pledged money to it and objected, which is why i think we found a good alternative solution:

DC itself will donate to autoit (i guess a dollar-for-dollar) matching donation. so both developers will get a donation.

I think this is merited based on the acknowledgement by autohotkey developers that ahk uses substantial work from autoit developers. From help file:

Acknowledgements
A special thanks to Jonathan Bennett, whose generosity in releasing AutoIt v2 as free software in 1999 served as an inspiration and time-saver for myself and many others worldwide. In addition, many of AutoHotkey's enhancements to the AutoIt v2 command set, as well as the Window Spy and the script compiler, were adapted directly from the AutoIt v3 source code. So thanks to Jon and the other AutoIt authors for those as well.

31925

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Dream Host maximum discount $97 Off promo code

« Last post by mouser on April 26, 2006, 02:47 AM »

$22 a year for that plan seems like a great deal to me.

HOWEVER one BIG caveat to consider:

if you are really saving $100 a year, but it only lasts for 1 yr, then your going to be in for a giant increase in costs when the year is up.  Will your costs then go up to $120 a year after that?

That may cease to become such a great deal.

It is not fun to move hosts! make sure you get something you are comfortable keeping for several years.