Recent Posts

401

Developer's Corner / Re: "competitive upgrade" - is it ethical?

« Last post by worstje on January 14, 2011, 02:37 AM »

So. Just me thinking. But is it illegal to publicize an example order-confirmed page, or example invoice on your webpage, then post that over a place where your competitors potential customers gather?

'Hey, check out my software, but in the case you don't think it fits your needs, please have a look at these invoices and such to get the product of my competitor. They make a somewhat nice product and offer special discounts if you buy my software, and I don't mind supporting them one bit.'

They can't tell fake confirmations from the real ones which you of course could, and then they'll either end up having a lot of cheap sales or they'll end up withdrawing the offer.

Maybe it isn't a super nice tactic, but hey, might as well let their own competitive pricing bite them in their butt, yes?

402

Living Room / Re: Cute jokes' thread

« Last post by worstje on January 13, 2011, 11:33 PM »

Haha, that was awesome.

403

Activation/License/Language Help / Re: A piece of Sh**

« Last post by worstje on January 13, 2011, 06:29 PM »

My name is Steve Anderson.

I give up!

Please remove my name and email address from your records. I believe you don't give 'free' keys. You just want to hassle us. NO PROGRAM is worth that!

-a.steve.a (January 13, 2011, 06:06 PM)

I am sad to hear you don't like whatever program you downloaded. As the above individuals have said, linked and everything but shown, it is trivial to request a free key.

No need to reply. Please don't. I will remove your program from my computer.

-a.steve.a (January 13, 2011, 06:06 PM)

I am likely saddened that you find it necessary to post an angry message, yet not wait for replies to help with your issue.

Now, the following is my very personal opinion that does not reflect anyone elses opinion at all, and I'll get rather annoyed if it is to be taken as anything close to such.

DonationCoder programs are indeed free, and that while people around here are very willing to help, we are not a 'company' nor required to put up with disrespectful demanding 'customers'. We are a forum with people who put in their free time trying to make the computer-life a funner and more relaxed thing for everyone. If your message was not intended 'angry', then I apologize for interpreting it as such, but if I were the sole one responsible for handling support requests, I might well ignore disrespectful, annoying, look-the-world-is-about-me requests flat out.

Thankfully I'm just a coder.

404

Official Announcements / Re: January 2011 Giveaway is open for entry

« Last post by worstje on January 13, 2011, 03:34 PM »

Take a look at this... Dr.Explain Mini-Review  by tinjaw.

-CodeTRUCKER (January 13, 2011, 03:21 PM)

That'll teach me not to search the DoCo forums. Looks a bit old, but hey, I haven't got too big and important needs anyhow, so old features should be fine.

We are using Help & Manual in our company, after being with Robohelp for many years until they sort of 'gave up' (we also did).
H&M was chosen after a thorough selection procedure over several other packages because of robustness, usability and support-options, features that Robohelp didn't (properly) have.
I'm not one of the guys working with this tool, but you can give it to anyone that's a bit of a writer and at least computer-literate, and get very nice result from it.

-Ath (January 13, 2011, 03:25 PM)

You don't happen to know any specific arguments that took you to H&M or away from other tools, do you?

405

Official Announcements / Re: January 2011 Giveaway is open for entry

« Last post by worstje on January 13, 2011, 03:13 PM »

So, is there anyone with experience with these various tools? If anyone here has experience with these tools, I think they'd be very useful to have listed .

For example, I've got my eye on the two documentation-related softwares, and while I intend to give them a shot and try them out... well, they're of the sort 'more features than you'd come across while testing' and tbh, I dislike documentation enough to want to avoid messing with both for a several hours to try and accomplish something and then go re-do it on the other one again.

Edit: As far as biasing goes, well of course I'd be biased on that topic. Most of these tools do however seem to favor the creative side of things, so in that sense I think it might be appropriate to do a bit of light favoring of NANY participants. These giveaways are all things that are of use to people involved in NANY apps, and imo less so to the more general visitor using such applications.

Btw, mousie, I thought you already used that Camtasia license?

406

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: JottiQ

« Last post by worstje on January 12, 2011, 06:00 PM »

That entire function needs an overhaul anyway. It is slow, misses files, and to boot tends to be misleading since people expect a good result to mean the process is fine. Which it isn't; rundll32.exe shell32_.dll,TakeOverMyPCAsRunDLL is a commandline of a running process that would be quite nasty yet rundll32.exe is 100% safe.

As I already wrote in a forum thread at Wilders Security, I am quite tempted to remove the function as a whole since it does not properly fit the 'usage domain' for which JottiQ was written.

407

General Software Discussion / Re: Let's try to create our own suite for internet security.

« Last post by worstje on January 12, 2011, 05:56 PM »

On a related note, what are some recommended on-demand scanning for antivirus, malware, etc.?

-superboyac (January 12, 2011, 11:59 AM)

How about JottiQ?

-Deozaan (January 12, 2011, 03:28 PM)

WRT on-demand scanners, can any service that won't work without an internet connection truly be called on-demand?

They should be called 'when convenient'.

The only anti-something service that can be truly called on-demand is something that will work offline as well as online.

-4wd (January 12, 2011, 05:52 PM)

JottiQ does indeed not fit the bill here. As much as it is on-demand (online aspect ignored), it is not intended to scan entire computers. It is meant for small amounts of files you specifically distrust. Nothing more, nothing less.

408

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: JottiQ

« Last post by worstje on January 12, 2011, 05:15 PM »

Thank you for your reply, ccondrup. I am glad you enjoy JottiQ!

That is indeed something that needs looking at. I intended to add one of those at some point, but I rarely use such 'internal' selection dialogs myself and with the drag/drop, commandline and shell extension supported, it somehow felt as if I had covered all my bases.

409

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« Last post by worstje on January 11, 2011, 10:33 PM »

Not a user, but I figured I'd give my opinion on the toolbar glyphs. I think the new are nice, but that the cyan background is a bit too much. It takes up a lot of the image and is the brightest color in there, detracting from the bit of the glyphs that really denote the meaning of the icon. Does that make sense?

410

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / JottiQ: are translations needed?

« Last post by worstje on January 11, 2011, 08:08 PM »

Ok, so I admit it is addictive to look at the referers and notice all the articles and other nooks and crannies that link to JottiQ. And I noticed that a lot of them are foreign, non-english going through the effort of using and reviewing JottiQ. So I wonder.. maybe I should change that?

Let me know what you think.

Thanks.

411

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: UpdateVersion

« Last post by worstje on January 10, 2011, 03:09 PM »

Ahh. Shame on me for only watching the screencast - I hadn't even seen there was an entire .xml file with configuration settings and such. Shame on me indeed.

It's just nice having the output visible - I always have to go over my preprelease.bat to see if it went allright (Idiotic me tends to test from there at occasion, and then stupid explorer/opera/whatever end up using DLLs which can't be replaced.. afin, you get the idea). The more I can see about stuff being successful, the less worries I'll have and the less problems that suddenly sprout up when users download the final product.

412

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: UpdateVersion

« Last post by worstje on January 10, 2011, 02:35 PM »

I don't care much either, but the way I see it the information should either be correct or too large. The size of my executable will always be too small to use, so I want to hardcode it.

413

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: UpdateVersion

« Last post by worstje on January 10, 2011, 02:12 PM »

This looks like an awesome tool, and I wish I looked into it before the screencasts came out.

However, as much as there is the ability for me to test and prod around with test files, I'd love to have a bit more verbose output possible, so I can see exactly what lines / tags it adjusts. As it is now, I've got a preprelease.bat sitting in the directories of my tools, and that one prepares the appropriate packages for my files (copying files from build/editing locations), which then does the zipping up and/or ISS compilation.

So, stuff I'd love to see added:

• A verbose switch to see what lines it adjusts in what files.
• An ability not to update the FileSize in the pad_file, as it differs considerably for my JottiQ releases and I use a hardcoded size of the installer instead. (It seems the most appropriate size.)
• Same with long and short descriptions, as I don't believe those files match my executable very well (if I even use them - I don't remember.)

414

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: JottiQ

« Last post by worstje on January 10, 2011, 11:40 AM »

Do you mind providing the portable version in .ZIP format? Not everyone can open .7z.

-Ashraf (January 10, 2011, 03:26 AM)

I'll consider it once I wake up a bit more. The way I see it, .zip has been around since the 90ies, and while it is a good format, there's way better alternatives available already. I have not removed the requirement for the VC++ 2010 Redistributables because of efficiency and because as time passes, everyone should have those on their system. My logic is the same with the .7z format: everyone ought to get an archiver able to extract it nowadays.

Perhaps such 'progressive' thinking of mine is the wrong thing to use here, but if I don't try to push a better format a bit, who will? Big companies certainly won't as they have companies, users won't because older formats work fine for them, and so forth. It is a little thing to get a new archiver as even the builtin Windows support for .zip is the crappiest and slowest thing I've seen.

JottiQ just got a long writeup with pictures at dottech.org:
http://dottech.org/f...eeware-reviews/21190

-mouser (January 10, 2011, 08:35 AM)

Awesome, I'll go read it now.

415

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 screencast viewing problem (private youtube)

« Last post by worstje on January 09, 2011, 08:18 PM »

Well done DC! We can all be proud of our productive time-wastings.

416

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: "VeggieSquares" - Children's Game

« Last post by worstje on January 09, 2011, 07:10 PM »

Awesomeness indeed.

417

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: That NANY badge

« Last post by worstje on January 07, 2011, 08:35 PM »

You can go through the screencast post thingies of the previous years to get a full list, right?

418

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Park Cursor Aside

« Last post by worstje on January 07, 2011, 09:48 AM »

On normal Windows Edit controls, the cursor should disappear the moment you press the first key. No sooner than that, no later than that.

I am not sure what else could cause it. Have you tried making sure none of your other running apps cause this indirectly? I recall that you have an insane amount of apps running, and if any of them use a mousehook in some way, I could imagine them causing this.

419

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: JottiQ

« Last post by worstje on January 06, 2011, 05:46 PM »

So far, I think it helps greatly that v1.0.2 hasn't had much attention, and that v1.0.1 was getting most of its downloads from some major review sites with tons of users that all tried the app out at the same time. Sadly, v1.0.1 and prior had to be completely banned as a consequence.

At least from now on, JottiQ has an update-check, and it will be able to just error out once Jotti's general load becomes too heavy. It isn't an ideal solution, but given the timespan available to us it was among the best we could figure out. If all goes well over the next few months, I might be able to relax some things or Jotti might be able to get some more capacity. Time will have to tell.

420

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: askapic.com - Photo Q&A Site

« Last post by worstje on January 06, 2011, 01:57 PM »

Yeah I made an account. The place definitely needs OpenID though, and when I registered while posting it didn't refresh. So I ended up hitting Post a second time... which I think due to the use of Ajax made it look like it finally posted for the first time while in actuality it was a double-post that was hidden from me.

421

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: Recording Screencasts of the NANY 2011 Projects

« Last post by worstje on January 06, 2011, 01:15 PM »

I just got to see an initial attempt of one of mouser's screencasts that he intends to re-do because it isn't upto his standards, and I must say.. those who get him to screencast their entries are lucky bums.

You're doing a great job, mouser - don't let all my complaints and wheezing and whining get to you.

422

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: askapic.com - Photo Q&A Site

« Last post by worstje on January 06, 2011, 12:01 PM »

I find it hard to comment on the colours thing. While I realize I haven't spoken up till now, I'm not personally a fan of the light blue background your website has going as a theme, and the logos as they are aren't even set to that colour background, making it even harder to make a right decision.

On a white bg, the greish one looks best. The other two.. I don't know. The colours aren't all that bad, but I just don't like the chemistry the way I see it atm. Dropshadows are overdone imo and I'd recommend taking it out to look less cheap.

423

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: JottiQ

« Last post by worstje on January 06, 2011, 11:02 AM »

I have been trying to hide the entire cache/non-cache thing for as much as possible. Once you start drawing a lot of attention to it, people will be all like 'oh my, I definitely need to re-scan since it might be a stale result'. There already is a second opinion feature for those users who truly need it, but in practice, it is really not necessary. The website itself also offers cached results even though you always upload the file in that case. Why? Because it is only rarely that you really need the file scanned again. The biggest issue is with 0-day viruses/worms and the sort which happened a lot in the days of the big viral email crap. Don't forget that JottiQ is not meant to be a first layer-of-defense - it is meant to be investigative in nature.

Also, while the item is processing you can keep an eye on the status message and/or icon in the queue to see what logical path is being taken. Uploading is very obvious, as are the 'file is queued' and 'intermediate results' bits.

424

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it possible to have a future without a .NET-style takeover?

« Last post by worstje on January 06, 2011, 06:13 AM »

Agreed. Dodge VB, no matter what incarnation it might be: that is my advice. :-)

425

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / JottiQ v1.0.2 is now available

« Last post by worstje on January 06, 2011, 05:56 AM »

JottiQ v1.0.2 is finally out. It is not the sort of release I would have preferred to make, but it is a necessity.

• JottiQ v1.0.2 Installer
• JottiQ v1.0.2 .7z archive

Changes in this version:

v1.0.2 (2011-01-06)

    JottiQ-got-too-popular-for-its-own-good release. At the highest point
    before Jotti's malware scan was forced to cease servicing JottiQ, the old
    all-time record for its scanning load had been beaten by over 500%.
    
      Added: Update check. It should have been implemented pre v1.0.0, but a
          lot of issues came up and it simply didn't happen. Have a look inside
          the 'About JottiQ' dialog. Future versions might add automation for
          this sort of checking. This supports the DCUpdater application.
      Added: A very heavy-handed approach to try and lighten the load on the
          servers. If the server passes a certain point, all non-cached files
          will not be uploaded and throw up an error. This way Jotti will
          hopefully no longer be forced to cease servicing JottiQ. In future
          versions, once JottiQ loses its spotlight, I will look into merely
          saving the actual file uploads for last in the case Jotti's malware
          scan is overloaded so one will not have to reset items to get stuff
          to scan once it quiets down a bit.
      Added: An actual link to the website and the discussion thread on
          DonationCoder. Forgetting to link to your own site is a bit of a
          stupid mistake to make.
      Added: Internet shortcuts. (Rather too many links than too little!)
      Added: Detection for withdrawn service from Jotti, and possible actions
          the user can take to alleviate the issue.
      Changed: Upgrading versions will require the 'Privacy Agreement' to be
          accepted once more.
      Changed: Users that put an unreasonably high load on Jotti's servers will
          from now on be reminded they are quite the inconsiderate users.
          I would rather not start truly limiting users as it will hurt the
          intended use-cases of the application as well, but if in the versions
          and months to come such soft reminders prove to not be enough, I will
          have to resort to limiting functionality in all sorts of ways.
      Changed: The older changelog (version history) entries have been split
          off into their own Changelog.txt file. This way the Readme will be a
          bit more accessible to users again.