Recent Posts

35526

Living Room / Re: Free VersionTracker ?

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 02:07 PM »

don't forget that at some point for some aniversary we plan to return to all the companies that have offered time-limited discounts to our members in the past and try to get them all to offer discounts again for some limited period.

35527

Living Room / Re: Free VersionTracker ?

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 01:04 PM »

a lot of us use a web page change monitoring tool for exactly this purpose - to keep an eye on new updates, etc.
see the donationcoder.com review of such tools:
https://www.donation...bWatchers/index.html

35528

Living Room / Re: Free VersionTracker ?

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 12:43 PM »

well, it would be hard to do with 100% certainty, but probably wouldn't be very hard to do with high accuracy.

as i see it there are 3 parts to the issue:
1) identifying which software you have on your machine that you want to check for updates

2) assigning a web page for each such program where the author announces new version
(this is mostly a matter of maintaining some kind of master list matching programs to websites; not hard, but time consuming and could benefit from a community effort).

3) figuring out a way to detect new version announcements on this web page.
(this really shouldn't be too hard to do with fairly good accuracy).

35529

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Opera goes FREE!

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 10:49 AM »

very cool news.
having multiple browsers can only be better for all of us.

an interesting thing - opera statement of why Opera is now free:
http://www.opera.com/free/

"Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today's milestone an achievable goal."

cough cough - nothing to do with firefox and ie being free - cough cough

35530

Screenshot Captor / Re: bug in v2.00.09: does not remember window size/position

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 10:29 AM »

sorry i haven't fixed it yet - just wanted to get stefan's clipart released.
i will fix in next version.

(settings are kept in the .ini file in the programs directory).

35531

Living Room / Re: Help! - serious weirdness

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 09:02 AM »

memory stick issues are notoriously unpredictable and irrational.

i put together a machine once and i had to remove and reseat the memory like 10 times before the machine would start, but after that it was the most stable computer i ever used.  go figure.

what you could do is simply try reseating the memory sticks in different slots, and see if you can get it to work well.
you could also try checking the bios and making sure you don't have the speed settings too agressive, but i'm afraid that such settings are beyond me and i have no idea how to figure out what these should be set at.

35532

Living Room / Re: ad-free version of Opera,one day only!

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 08:59 AM »

cool!
i'm sure it was a hard decision for opera, but given the competition from firefox and ie, i guess they had no choice.
well let's wish them luck!

35533

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA - On task termination perform an action

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 08:58 AM »

this sounds like something i should add to process tamer..
i'm currently mulling over adding a kind of special scripting system to it.

35534

General Software Discussion / Re: Macro programs - advice sought...

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 08:54 AM »

hi eros -
thinBasic looks like a really fun project.  very nice looking website too!

35535

Screenshot Captor / Re: Please add print button on the toolbar

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2005, 08:51 AM »

good idea - i will add it.

35536

Living Room / Re: Help! - serious weirdness

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 08:52 PM »

i'd put video drivers and memory problems at top of the list of potential culprits.

35537

Screenshot Captor / Re: Save JPG b/w only

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 12:00 PM »

strange.. i'll check it out.

35538

General Software Discussion / Re: Would you pay for WinZip?

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 11:21 AM »

one thing i want to make clear-
i don't begrudge shareware authors trying to make a living from selling software -
in fact what i'm troubled most by is how impossible it seems to be to survive in this game by taking a middle ground.
it's depressing beyond belief that marketing plays such a huge role in sales; if you are a big rich company, then you just get richer because you can dominate the advertising and marketing.  it's hard for the little guy to break through.

wouldn't it be so nice if there was enough support for donation-based software that donation-based authors could actually spend their life coding software and survive on the revenue?  note i say survive - no one who wants to become rich is going to choose a donation-based approach, and that's fine.  but if we could get to a time where a software author could make enough to actually survive and pay pills and be even at the poverty line, i think you'd find a whole new world of programmers who would be more than happy to do that with their lives. and who would be quite satisfied having a community of users to interact with.

35539

General Software Discussion / Re: Would you pay for WinZip?

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 11:11 AM »

thanks for those comments m_s -
i should say that there are tons of people making their software available for free without fanfare, and of course tons of people devoting their lives to helping people.  i don't want to pretend like what we are doing here is some great thing.  if i could afford to work on this site and not ask for money, i would so much prefer to not have to deal with money at all.  i don't much like it, or capitalism, or all of the corruption and greed that this society seems to fetishize. my only desire is to be able to do what i am good at in a way that does not make this world worse, and to be part of a community.  i don't have any fantasy about making enough money from my software and this site to live on - that's probably never going to be an option - i'm just hoping that people continue to respond to the site in a way that will offset some of the work involved, and that we can grow the site and the community and be a resource for users and coders who want to try to make a go of this approach to software.  and i do want this site to be an example of the idea that maybe if your goal is not to extract the most money from people's pockets, in the fastest way possible, then maybe there are alternative ways to do things..  so i really do appreciate your comments.  and i do view you guys+gals as equal players in this experiment - and i expect you to help keep this site honest and on track with these aims.

veign - thanks i appreicate that - and i will be taking you up on that offer for assistance.  the one thing that we still have to do before i think we are justified trying to get people to take note of our site, and we are slowly making progress on this front, is bring more software authors to be part of this site in a more official capacity.. it might soon be time to revisit this issue and have another round of discsussions on the best way to do this that would benefit everyone.

35540

General Software Discussion / Re: Would you pay for WinZip?

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 10:34 AM »

it is *very* hard to get people to donate - it's just ingrained into all of our heads that some software is free and some is commercial, and it's very hard to get into a mindset where you give money when you don't have to.

i think this site is already making progress towards building a community of users and coders who support each other, but clearly we have a long way to go.

35541

Official Announcements / WinRAR GIVEAWAY - INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO ENTER DRAWING

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 10:01 AM »

DonationCoder.com will be giving away 5 copies of WinRAR in the next week (the winner of our best archive tool review http://review.donationcoder.com).

The free copies will be given out in one week (on september 26).

To enter your name in the drawing to win a free copy of WinRAR, send your forum name + email to:
[email protected]

and put the word winrar in the topic so its easier for us to keep track.

NOTE:
you must be an honorary or donating member to be elligible to win one of these giveaway copies.
If you've already received a copy of another piece of software from us in a previous giveaway you can still enter again but we'll probably do something to make it more likely that new people who haven't had a chance yet will win.

Thanks to zaine for the review that brought about these donated copies, and to WinRAR for donating them to us.

35542

General Software Discussion / Re: Would you pay for WinZip?

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 09:47 AM »

a warm place in my heart still not gonna get me to pay any yearly subscription fee for anything but a constantly updated security app.

35543

General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic soft additions

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 09:13 AM »

brilliant idea to have color history.
am i the only one who has noticed that veign's apps always have at least one brilliant unique feature?

35544

Google Boomerang / Re: Hilarious!

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 08:57 AM »

reminds me of engrish.com (http://www.engrish.com):

Q. What is Engrish?
A. Engrish can be simply defined as the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design.

warning - they are doing some kind of vulgar language special thing this week, so those upset by curse words should skip it.

35545

General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic soft additions

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 08:11 AM »

hahaha - who knew that microsoft had a magnify utility built into windows!!! works well too! cool.

colorcop rocks.

35546

Living Room / Re: scrubbing downloaded utilities

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 08:08 AM »

carol, i think what momonan was asking, which i think would be kind of useful if you have the energy, is a more detailed description of the steps you listed, in terms that a newbie could follow.

35547

Living Room / Re: scrubbing downloaded utilities

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 08:06 AM »

thanks mark0, i've never heard of sandboxie, it looks very interesting.

35548

General Software Discussion / Re: Would you pay for WinZip?

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 08:04 AM »

that would be wonderful ryan!

ps.
am i the only one who has a warm place in their heart for winzip?
i mean historically, were they not the first to get the archive interface down right ? (ie right click unzipping into separate folders, explore zip files like directories,etc.) and one of the first companies to say that even after the expiration time of the shareware it would still run?

35549

Screenshot Captor / Re: v2.00.10 and extra downloads

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 07:53 AM »

good idea, i will do it.

35550

Screenshot Captor / Re: [Poll] SC settings questions

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2005, 07:53 AM »

i will fix these.

the only one im not sure about is the "auto save changes" - are you saying just that you think that the *default* setting for new users should start out set to "confirm on file replace" or are you saying there is some bug where it is automatically switching to "auto save changes?"