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33676

Official Announcements / Re: Change to Official License Key Policy

« Last post by mouser on December 31, 2005, 01:53 AM »

yep, joel was the one that wrote the other article too - he is an interesting character we have talked about on this forum before.  his obsession with money troubles me a bit but he is very smart and insightfull on these matters.

maybe we should charge $1000 for charter membership in the site, but then allow some "coupon" that lets you choose how much of a discount you want, up to $999.

33677

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: Program to save URLs from open Internet Explorer windows

« Last post by mouser on December 31, 2005, 12:54 AM »

i think what backslash is asking for is not the same as the save windows as group feature in maxthon and netcaptor.

i may take a look at this later backslash, though ie itself does keep such a history that you can view and search, so another less-cpu intensive solution would be to read that history list rather than monitor for urls in the address bar.

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Official Announcements / Re: Change to Official License Key Policy

« Last post by mouser on December 31, 2005, 12:51 AM »

hi icfu -

some good points, and let me say i think that article is excellent and agree with nearly all of it.

(one thing i probably disagree with in the article and your post is pricing - there is some interesting and depressing data that seem to suggest that higher prices sometimes increase sales due to a psychological effect; there was a post here about it recently i think).


i do think that most of this discussion really boils down to a simple empirical question: is the license key thing helping to get more people to donate and participate in the site.

if not, we should remove it right away.  if so, then we have to ask if the inconvenience is worth the benefit.

your advice is very similar to that suggested by some people on alt.comp.freeware newsgroup, which basically comes down to: if you want to make money, make the software shareware - and lock it down with nags and limits until people pay some set amount.

this is a bit of a confusing argument to me - it basically says that it's too inconvenient for a user to get the "freeware" license, and so the "solution" is to stop calling it freeware and stop giving people a way to use it without paying!


i think the starting point for proposed changes for our site policy has to start out with the understanding that we are *philosophically* opposed to charging a fixed price for our software, and believe that people who cannot afford the software should still be able to use it fully.

we are very much interested in promoting a donation-based model of software financing where people pay what they want to, and what they can afford.

i've described in detail my experiences in the past with donationware and why i came to the conclusion that people need some motivation/encouragement to actually follow through with donating, and that's what we've tried to implement.  finding the balance for this is the hard part and what we are still trying to do.

i do appreciate the thoughts though, and i'd like to keep hearing more from people.
as i've said before i think we will try a month of making it easier and see if donations go down or up, and see what the reaction is..

-mouser

ps. regarding process tamer - if i remember, the performance querying metrics make "virtual" calls to the registry (they aren't really file reads); but maybe you could post again on the process tamer section reminding me the issue so i can check into it again if you think it might be something else..

33679

Find And Run Robot / Re: Another similar app (disclaimer: I haven't tried it)

« Last post by mouser on December 30, 2005, 02:26 PM »

i know that the mac world is gaga over quicksilver.  i think it's half just the normal mac fanaticism, but i know that quicksilver has some nice features - i'm very happy to implement them all in F+R in time, just let us know which features are wanted.  the only reason F+R 2 isn't out already is that i'm trying to revamp it's infrastructure a little, and because i'm doing some work on a new set of programs coming out from donationcoder (see contextmenu commander section of forum), which need my attention so that some other people can work on the project while i get back to F+R2, PT3, CHS, etc.

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Find And Run Robot / Re: a little progress report

« Last post by mouser on December 30, 2005, 02:23 PM »

i'm not sure how useful it would be to people to open source F+R since it is written with borland c++ builder, a commercial compiler (doesn't mean that it can't be open sourced, just that it's not nearly as attractive to open source community as a program that can be compiled with free toils). 

my other concern of course is with regard to donations.  there are a couple of apps here of mine that are open source, including a very popular irc encryption addon, which really doesn't get donations.  i'm not sure if people would be less inclined to donate to the site of F+R was open source, and if other versions were written an distributed by others.. maybe we can think about a new kind of open source license that says it's open source but derived versions should somehow redirect people to still visit this site? i'm not sute..

33681

Living Room / scary new windows security hole - careful where you surf

« Last post by mouser on December 30, 2005, 08:42 AM »

Computers can now be infected just by visiting infected web sites, or looking at images in the preview panel of older versions of Outlook. From the article: "At first, the vulnerability was exploited by just a few dozen Web sites. Programming code embedded in these pages would install a program that warned victims their machines were infested with spyware, then prompted them to pay $40 to remove the supposed pests. Since then, however, hundreds of sites have begun using the flaw to install a broad range of malicious software. SANS has received several reports of attackers blasting out spam e-mails containing links that lead to malicious sites exploiting the new flaw, Ullrich said."

http://it.slashdot.o...;tid=109&tid=172

[link from slashdot.org]

33682

Screenshot Captor / Re: Resources low

« Last post by mouser on December 30, 2005, 06:10 AM »

it's always possible.. i can do a little hunting later and see what i can find..

33683

Screenshot Captor / a tip: using screenshot captor to keep a visual history

« Last post by mouser on December 30, 2005, 06:03 AM »

just wanted to mention that lately i've taken to hitting a quick prtscr when i am filling out a form on a webpage, just in case the browser crashes or i lose some info or forget.  it can be a nice way to have a quick visual record of.  just an idea..

33684

Screenshot Captor / Re: Resources low

« Last post by mouser on December 30, 2005, 06:01 AM »

hmm...
sc really should let its memory go once you minimize it to the tray, and it doesnt keep multiple images open so it really shouldnt be eating up lots of memory..

BUT having said that.. WIN98SE - OUCH!!!
one of the happiest days of my life was getting rid of win98 and its constant lost of resources requiring reboots.

33685

Living Room / Create an Indestructible Shared PC

« Last post by mouser on December 30, 2005, 03:14 AM »

Create an Indestructible Shared PC

"Need to put a PC in a public place? A free Microsoft tool makes it easy to lock down."

http://www.pcmag.com...,1895,1892666,00.asp


[linked from OS News]

33686

Living Room / Re: Ricky Gervais new audio show mp3 (from the british version of The Office)

« Last post by mouser on December 30, 2005, 02:16 AM »

episode 4 is up!

33687

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: The GodFather - Audio File Manager with Scripting

« Last post by mouser on December 30, 2005, 02:15 AM »

i think in the future of software we should expect to see greater separation of core functionality from user interface, and the move to standardized frontends.

that is, i expect eventually all programs will come with a "core" and a "frontend" or two, the way some commandline programs already have.  and that all programs will be "scriptable" using one interface, or usable via a gui (or have multiple guis).

in fact this is of course how some crossplatform tools are already made (like a commandline mp3 encoder that can be driven with various gui frontend tools).  what i think will happen though is a move to a more standardized solution to these components.

anyway, we def. got off subject

thanks for the comments about screenshot captor and the site, glad to have you here.  no doubt that the godfather is an amazing program - especially if you need to do advanced scripting.doesn't mean it's the best tool for every user.  no shame in wanting something cleaner and simpler for most tasks.  i know i can get overwhelmed if there are too many options, and for some tasks you really don't want the most powerful tool, you want the easiest tool to use.

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ContextMenu Commander / Re: ContextMenu Commander

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 07:09 PM »

just an update: TONS of work has been done on this over the last week or two, it's really taking shape

33689

Official Announcements / mysql server crashed for a few minutes, i had to restart it..

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 02:27 PM »

i have no idea what happened yet... first time this has happened..
hopefully we can trakc it down and figure out what went wrong.

33690

Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder.com Logo Contest is Over - We Have a New Official Mascot/Logo!

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 12:29 PM »

coooool!!!!

33691

Living Room / Re: Wireless question

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 10:30 AM »

1. if you don't already have wireless built into your laptop (i don't think you do), then you need to buy a pcmcia wireless card for your laptop.
2. if you don't already have a router, buy yourself a router with wireless support, like this one: http://www.netgear.c...s/details/WGT624.php

you meantion you have a usb asdl modem.. if you are *renting* this modem from your isp, you should strongly consider buying your own - you may be able to get one with asdl modem and wireless router all in one, for example like this: http://www.netgear.c.../details/DG834PN.php  but i don't know much about that so that's just something to look at, im not saying its definitely the answer.

33692

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Splitter

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 09:41 AM »

 

33693

General Software Discussion / Re: f*cking site it's a rip offf

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 09:11 AM »

this site is all about responding to such things with kindness.

33694

Screenshot Captor / Re: IDEA: Add Commandline Support

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 09:06 AM »

it would be very easy to do - the only reason i havent is that i assume there are a lot of good commandline screeenshot capture apps already out there which are much smaller.

33695

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Windows system tray clock replacement

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 06:46 AM »

alfaclock free version does look nice... might be worth a try.

33696

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Splitter

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 06:45 AM »

there are other partition management tools as well, though partitionmagic is one of the best.

33697

General Software Discussion / Re: Drive Splitter

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 06:44 AM »

 

33698

Unfinished Requests / Re: Ad Clicker

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 05:56 AM »

as for the other idea, i don't condone using up someone's bandwidth!!!
but here is an app written for a previous request that retrieves/submits web requests on a timer: RandomSubmitter

find it here:
https://www.donation...dingSnacks/index.php

in response to this request:
https://www.donation...ndex.php?topic=211.0

33699

Best Archive Tool / Re: No offense but one of the MOST important feature is having an "OPEN FORMAT" ...

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 04:20 AM »

i find myself in rare disagreement with jibz here.
i think the closed nature of winrar is a very bad thing, and in a field like compression where there are so many good open source compression algorithms, i think it's a bad thing that the rar format has become so widely used.  it's like mp3, we get stuck in this trap of a proprietary format.

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Links to Review and Comments - Add yours!

« Last post by mouser on December 29, 2005, 03:09 AM »

From this month's Computer Power User magazine (thanks chr15 for alerting me):