Recent Posts

476

General Software Discussion / Re: Is DonationCoder too exposed of a brand?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 26, 2011, 03:24 AM »

I find it really hard to compose replies to these posts that pack in 10 different conflicting barely-related ideas..

Paul please take this as constructive criticism -- you find some great stuff and have some cool ideas but it can be so hard to digest this stuff and respond intelligently when it feels like i'm reading a murder mystery with these posts sometimes.. with 10 different ideas, a mystery title, and 5 different links.  And it makes it that much more likely that any discussion to follow is going to go off in 10 directions at once (or else just cause people to give up trying to form a coherent response).  I'd give anything to have you refine these posts a bit and just really try to make one point at clearly as possible in each topic..

Believe me mouser, I'm trying. IMO the reason I bolded this:

Probably only 5% represent donationware on their sleeves

Was for those looking at that one single point but even bolded sentences can't seem to convey that.

One of the things it seemed like you were suggesting is that perhaps we should be more in the vangard about actually advocating for the concept of donationware and championing that cause more clearly in everything we do.

It's the opposite actually. I feel DC is already a vanguard. Among all donationware sites, it's the only one that still hosts regular events, though there aren't a lot of posters compared to larger forums - it's still one of the few places where blogs like ghacks will post a program shared here.

Yet it doesn't translate that way to search sites. Just go ahead and "dasboard" donationcoder and donationware in Netvibes: http://www.netvibes.com/en

The results are day and night. DonationCoder donationware is treated in a different light from donationware across the net. It's one thing if it's just Wikipedia since they have a notability issue but for people to not even know the top donationware communities - it brings into question the brand "DonationCoder", not just in terms of SEO but as a whole in uniting donationware aware users. (not just in dictionary terms but in philosophical terms)

Paul, do me a favor and summarize your original post.

I already did it in my original post. (See title, see bolded sentence or even just the clue to type donationcoder and donationware in both Netvibes.com and YourVersion.com)

Maybe I'm just not cut out for writing. It's the same with my blog. I've have someone here whom I respect dearly gave me one of the most detailed advises to improve my blog but I just couldn't pull it through. mouser have given me tons of clues on what to improve but regardless of the different format I've tried when making topics, it rarely works.

Donationcoder.com is vaguely branded and amorphous

Um no... the mention of changing DonationCoder didn't originate from me.

I just put it there to reference how things are changing in DonationCoder but we may not even consider the fact that Donationcoder and Donationware are both clearly branded but vaguely connected as far as search engine perception goes.

3. Donationware is an unprofitable and unsustainable model. Instead, let's charge $1/download, standardized by mobile apps.
4. Devs get little or poor feedback from donationware. Better to charge a set fee and this will change.

These are all good points that the articles are trying to question but as far as the context of my pasting them - again, this was just to emphasize how many just perceive donationware to be freeware with donations. They are missing a huge chunk of the community and concepts and philosophies that has been developed here in DC in the form of DonationCoder software.

477

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Anuran

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 26, 2011, 03:17 AM »

Not necessarily. You could just have multiple instances of Anuran but one single AnuViewer directory collecting those logs.

478

General Software Discussion / Re: 20 New User Misconceptions about Linux

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 04:58 PM »

And nobody is required to sign in under the GPL. It's purely voluntary. So how is that "taking freedom away" from anybody?

This (but an example for Creative Commons) http://blog.internet...-results-in-lawsuit/

Freedom also involves opt-out. Just in case, a license maker may not be fully aware of the implications.

It's something that FSF rarely address but it can't be helped. Libre impression has helped them a lot but if they really wanted to align themselves with the gratis movement - they'd replace Free with Released. Would summarize many of the licensing ignorance around. Of course "software that might be potential abandonware" isn't as catchy as "open source".

Also for GPL, there isn't as major a controversy yet as what happened with Creative Commons.

479

General Software Discussion / Re: Is DonationCoder too exposed of a brand?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 04:45 PM »

???

Except for the first part, wrong on all counts. (especially considering I was part of that talk and even shared a mock-up on that thread)

480

Living Room / Tweet Mirror

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 03:31 PM »

Next generation of full body porn to come (Just kidding, just a giant mirror that acts like an Ipad)

Source

481

Developer's Corner / Chrome Developer Tools: Back to Basics

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 02:10 PM »

Don't know a thing about this so I'm not going to quote any content but this seems important:

http://blog.chromium...-back-to-basics.html

482

Living Room / Attention Traditional Companies: Stop Trying!

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 02:04 PM »

This is preaching to the choir but great article none the less: http://www.searcheng...s-stop-trying/27954/

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not discouraging traditional businesses from going digital. Though my opinion is that they should stop trying to be and start be-ing (digital).

As good old Albert Einstein could have said it, [traditional companies and their marketing people] should try not to be a [business] of success, but a [business]  of value.

483

General Software Discussion / Re: Most Pirated Software?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 01:59 PM »

Understood.

But I think if you read what I wrote you'd see I wasn't attempting to moderate. Nor did I suggest he shouldn't say what he did. Nor did I hit the 'report to mod' button. Nor in any other way do anything to imply he didn't have a 'right' (whatever that means in this context) to say what he did.

To do any of the above would have been me trying to bring about an outcome. Since there was no agenda behind my question, I didn't have an outcome in mind.

Now who's talking like an attorney?  

-Paul Keith (February 24, 2011, 12:10 PM)

Really? I thought I sounded more like a Jesuit back there.

(I get that "sound like an attorney" thing a lot BTW.  )

-40hz (February 24, 2011, 12:45 PM)

It's hard for me to add anything else other than:

I wonder if mouser would ever add Slashdot like tags to DC. It can be awkward thinking I just didn't reply.

484

General Software Discussion / Re: 20 New User Misconceptions about Linux

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 01:51 PM »

Once you GPL something, you relinquish all control of your source and what people do with it. It's a one way thing. You can't un-GPL something later on, or otherwise try to get it back by adding proprietary elements to it. Because those will also fall immediately under GPL if you do. You could create proprietary add-ons I suppose. Some places do that. Or try. But that still doesn't hand control of your originally GPLed program back to you.

Once someone GPLs something, they don't really need to un-GPL it. In fact, that would be marketing suicide even IF it was possible to do that.

You could create proprietary add-ons I suppose. Some places do that. Or try. But that still doesn't hand control of your originally GPLed program back to you.

...or proprietary Operating Systems hence the frying pan analogy.

If you're saying a company could GPL something and make it free in order to deep-six a small competitor who didn't have deep enough pockets to compete against a free product...well, why would they want to GPL the freebie? Why not just give it away, keep the proprietary license, and then start charging for it once the competitor goes out of business? You don't need to get involved with GPL to do that. Microsoft used a similar strategy to price Novell out of the market after Microsoft released NT Server. They just made the original release dirt cheap compared to Novell and used the opening they created (and what money they did get) to drastically improve NT until it was as good, and later, better than Novell.

Because then you're missing a huge chunk of the Open Source cult. Microsoft is the most exposed competitor defending their turf.

Tons of these other applications like Chrome and Firefox weren't going to just usurp IE or hell even convince Netscape users to just move to them.

They needed some symbol of goodness. An invisible enemy to rally the righteous. Something like WMDs to start the descent of war.

After that, they need to be faster and more rapid at building the community. It doesn't matter if they can't Un-GPL something. It's not like you can't create and sell commercial GPL software. What you really want is people believing you not only won't do no evil but you want slave add-on makers developing improvements for your frying pan all while the brand is mostly going towards the pan.

FSF keeps saying this

They also said alot of other things, sometimes it feels like they create a strawman where they expect the person talking to not have known what they are talking about so they can re-direct it into canned responses when GPL is far from needing a FAQ but a distinct separation between bandwagons and core philosophers understanding the difference between each of their actions and reactions towards the GPL.

GPL something and it's code is no longer yours. You've given it away to the entire World. Forever.

Again, same thing happened with the clock. Same thing happened with the Bible. I don't really know why this is such a hard thing for FSF sometimes to understand.

They set the GPL to prevent this issue, not to beat this issue like a dead horse.

Even back then, pre-GPL, you could give something away to the World forever. What Stallman originally understood was that it wasn't enough. There was a potential flaw. GPL wasn't bringing something new. It was defending against something old. The fact that today it's been sort of reversed just mostly due to the convenience of many open source software compared to the original days, doesn't mean open source suddenly becomes the liberator rather  than the templar.

It's a lot like some hardcore Linux users. They are so closed to converting users into Linux. Just a little bit more attitude towards gratis than closed club house preacher and RTFM could have easily been WWWTM (What's wrong with this manual?) ...and Linux users would have an easier time converting people just a tiny bit and making up for all the shortcomings of Linux but only a few do that and we get this circular argument where valid arguments become cliche arguments just because the source of the concept becomes hijacked by the wrong fundamentalists on a cult level.

Finally...+1 to what mwb1100 said.

Edit: Woops. Sorry for the rant about FSF.

485

Living Room / Yahoo: Where Startups Die (MyBlogLog in this case)

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 01:31 PM »

Source

486

General Software Discussion / Re: Instantly Increasing Password Strength

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 01:08 PM »

Yeah, that was what I was trying to imply.

I don't know anything about SQL but I do know one thing, if you leave your keys at the front door, eventually someone's bound to open your vault no matter how complicated the lock is unless you trick them into thinking the treasure is there.

487

General Software Discussion / Re: 20 New User Misconceptions about Linux

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 12:45 PM »

How is it possible for GPL or Creative Commons to protect a work selfishly? Once it's GPLed or CCed, it's out where anybody can get at it. About the only protection they provide is preventing somebody else from subsequently claiming the work as their own and putting it under a proprietary license or standard copyright.

Exactly.

It's out where anybody can get it which means kind of like yellow journalism, if you are a big enough company who needs marketshare more than money especially if your software is starting to trail off, you open source or creative commons it.

This doesn't work for smaller brands but like Ubuntu, Firefox and Chrome can set a precedence for how new users might think via adopting the model.

Ubuntu is more explainable in that it was necessary but Firefox for example created this whole it must be open source or we're not going to use it which, as instrumental as it was already to cause less popular OS browsers to be ignored, lead to the opening Google needed to establish Chrome which is basically open source the egg as long as it will allow you to turn the customer into the product and buy your frying pan.

Note that I'm not saying this was definitely the intention, just that this was the result. Kind of like the mass production of the clock leading to less time to pray to God despite it's original intention being to have more time via being able to schedule more prayer time.

488

General Software Discussion / Re: Most Pirated Software?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 12:10 PM »

Understood.

But I think if you read what I wrote you'd see I wasn't attempting to moderate. Nor did I suggest he shouldn't say what he did. Nor did I hit the 'report to mod' button. Nor in any other way do anything to imply he didn't have a 'right' (whatever that means in this context) to say what he did.

To do any of the above would have been me trying to bring about an outcome. Since there was no agenda behind my question, I didn't have an outcome in mind.

Now who's talking like an attorney? 

489

General Software Discussion / Rant: Sigh...I hate censorship disguised as morality

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 12:02 PM »

I'm not sure my comment is going to get past moderation in that article but here's what I wrote:

This is just silly and sadly proves your own bias.

You didn’t even ask for the best browser. You asked for what people used.

Opera does not need to have an 80% market to have an 80% appreciation.

It’s one thing to ban rude users, it’s another to flat-out censor opinions.

If you look around the internet, especially blog posters like you: Majority of the so called Fanboy Blog Advertisers are Firefox and Chrome users.

This isn’t even an argument of quality over other browsers. Opera sucks right now in that the old stable browser is currently very unstable with extensions added but this idea that somehow Opera fanboys are worse than Firefox and Chrome just because your less popular blog got a skewed audience and suddenly they now are worth censoring? Puh-lease.

Opera is so un-advertised elsewhere feature for feature that lies such as:

“Opera may be a bit faster, and only a little, but the Chrome interface is clean as a whistle.”

…being spread around still despite the fact that you can customize Opera to have an even more minimalist and cleaner interface than Chrome especially pre-version 10 is just like the same old same old story handed down by every non-Opera fanboy. Where’s the censorship there. Ban rude fanboys but using Opera as a scapegoat. Man…that’s just low.

and this was in reply to this

The Internet is a wonderful place to glean information, but it is also a place where some people can take advantage of the Internet when posting comments or reviews. These floaters actually surf the Internet looking for topics that they are passionate about, and will try to convince us that what they are posting is fact. Last week I posted an article asking people which browser they use and why they liked it. I ended up receiving some 70 plus comments in which about 80% spoke such glowing words about the Opera browser, that one would believe that those of us who use anything else are dummies. In fact one person who placed a comment this morning told me just how dumb I was in no uncertain terms.

Because of this idiot and his cowardly ways of taking advantage of my extremely good nature, no further glowing and loving accolades of Opera will be posted in the comments section. If this was the only time that this has happened I would just dismiss it. But this has happened before and as luck would have, happened again when I was visiting the Best Buy site looking at the Motorola Xoom tabled computer.

Motorola Xoom has not been released as of this date. Yet there are 20 reviews of the product. These were not product reviews. These were people who were expressing their opinion about the product before they even tried it. One after another they complained about the high price Motorola was charging, how it could never beat the Apple iPad and so on.

I'm sure there's a good chance the blog owner would pass my comment through especially since it seems a bit like it was designed to create some controversy but I still hate this. I hate how the other commentors ignored the crux of this censorship attempt and I hate how the lesser ones get the boot all the time like if Opera doesn't work with Gmail, it's always Opera's fault first.

I mean I know it's a small blog but I see this all the time with major blogs. Often times sites like Lifehacker will eventually create apologist or clarification style articles like Linux and Opera articles about it's features ...sigh...but in the end, they don't do this at the beginning and all the latter articles have mostly commentors saying how "Finally! You should write more blog articles like this." ...all while those earlier articles are full of the latest Firefox extensions, Google Chrome advertisements, Twitter and Facebook topics... as if those services weren't over-exposed already. It's just sad and I don't know where else to vent so I'm posting it here. (although I really should make a blog post about it but...ehh... I'm too tired to reply if that guy or someone else comments on my comment. At least here maybe they'll get lazier and not register. I'm not looking to ignore anyone but anyone else feel so helpless against moral censorship and fear that it would just be hijacked as a pro-this or pro-that comment?)

490

General Software Discussion / Re: Instantly Increasing Password Strength

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 11:53 AM »

Well the thread was two fold. One simplified password strength and the other is that situation.

I'd argue since there's a separate HBGary thread, that the front door perspective is more of a major component of this thread than the HBGary example. (sorry if it's really HBGeary, I didn't really look into the topics in depth and most of what I read was written HBGary)

In that sequence though, does a password really help? Most security relies on the front door being backdoored, not entered through.

It would probably be more secure for HBGary to have an easier deceptive information alongside real information to make disinformation decipheration much harder. In that sense, it's like an encrypted container. Get into the OS but all you can do is just delete the files, not view it.

In here, you're viewing the files but you don't know that you're being convinced to treat the wrong files as legit and the chances of a whistle blower getting the wrong picture means there's a lower chance someone is going to look again after what has been confirmed. That's the security there IMO. The password is just useless no matter how complex. You're basically attracting attention to a compromised situation. There's a very low percentage chance that the guys won't figure out the complex password eventually anyway. Obscurity is really your best password especially if it's obscuring via red herring.

491

General Software Discussion / Re: Most Pirated Software?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 11:42 AM »

If you don't speak about the how, you're just white washing IMO.

It's like gun usage. You can support guns and gun laws but in a society where people don't know how to use guns in an educated manner, they aren't being safer.

Same thing with piracy. Alot of these videos white wash the dark side and the dark side is the key to figuring out why the market acts like this. Instead we have DRM, DRM, DRM...we have "oh it doesn't take away sales".

It just creates another exteme of lies like Jesus is your saviour or Christmas is about generosity without really sharing the true side of Christ' teachings or Christmas' marketing gift bonanza which leads to mob tramplings all year long.

In a way that's why I feel you are lucky. Lots of guys persist. I could show someone a cracking tool and they would persist in cracking all their games but if I told them about torrents over Limewire, there's not a good chance they might even try Limewire.

Why is that? Because not all of us get the luck of figuring out the puzzle. Me? I'll trade an instant ban of all scene music and movie and popular software releases if it means I'll have a free repository of all the real 5 star books and all the real 5 star collection of rare software that would change my life. Doesn't mean if I persist in that mindset, I'll figure out IRCs and UseNets unless I have the money and the knowledge to set up things like seedboxes and having a terabyte HD while not being lured to leech and get because I have a fast connection and I know which collections to seed.

Not going to happen though. In the end, I'm still a slave to wanting to get Photoshop because I don't know any better unless I can figure out feature per feature what the difference is between Photoshop and GIMP and GIMPShop and Paint.net. Can you imagine if more of us transcended the "how" of currency? We'd have given less of our freedoms to corporations because more people would have known how capitalism works.

Instead what we ended up is people speaking about the why and why not of capitalism and it helped for a while but in the end, it just created a bunch of wage slavers despite the fact that there's a minimum wage, despite the fact that nothing is preventing anyone from organizing a boycott, despite the fact that there were schools, despite the fact of all this... it was lost because we'd rather show someone why they need to fish rather than show them how to fish. So again, I'm sorry if I'm somewhat underrating your persistence because of this, but when linked to your piracy statement about not the how...I just need to respectfully disagree with your conclusion.

492

General Software Discussion / Google set it's sights on other Operating Systems

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 11:12 AM »

It may sound oxymoronic in that Google went from software to hardware but apparently they are back to software again. This time, on the desktop:

The folks over at the Google Chrome OS team are starting to rethink their approach to the OS and could be expanding into other platforms. The team is posed to start focusing on the approach they take when it comes to windowing. These changes may also apply to the Google Chrome browser and the proposed changes such as eliminating the URL bar that I have previously written about.

In addition the Google Chrome OS team is considering hardware acceleration to support and also to consolidate the Chrome UI across different platforms including Windows, Mac and Linux. Also mentioned on the Google Chrome web site is support for OpenGL, Direct 3D and Win 32 as well as other open source support.

Source

493

General Software Discussion / Re: 20 New User Misconceptions about Linux

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 11:04 AM »

Shuttleworth? How about Google's OS 

Linux will never go away though. You can't Ubuntu Arch or Gentoo. Only make them more user friendlier.

Same thing with GPL and Creative Commons. Someone will use those selfishly to protect their work if they are bound to lose a product like what happened with Netscape.

They won't do it for selfless reasons but you don't kill the hand that will save you.

494

General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 11:00 AM »

No...no... I did get it the first time but my head just went into things like Scrivener, Outliner 4d, Final Draft which I consider bloated and big ass still but are they really? Should we instead turn those things into extensions and plug-ins?

Once that happened, I had to write what I wrote.

495

General Software Discussion / Re: Instantly Increasing Password Strength

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 10:57 AM »

Well, the problem with experts is that they often treat security in a vacuum.

That's why they missed defending people against Facebook while some of them were trying to figure out OpenID or some of them can only go so far as thinking cryptographically without having any solution for an easy to decipher master password except for one click logins.

The reason why simplicity is important is because the dumbest users are the ones in need of the best security. I'm not saying I'm unhackable and if you're not an expert, I'm way worse. I don't know anything about cryptography.

I do understand though that my first PC which was on Windows didn't function like Linux or that the guy who set it up didn't give me any better AV than Norton so I feel I get to have an opinion on security when I've experienced the fall and none of those security guys where there to save me from my own stupidity and naivete.

496

General Software Discussion / Re: Most Pirated Software?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 10:47 AM »

Yes, I did manage to get latest Photoshop + Elements. All in all it took may be 10 hours but then it was tested and "secure". Update proof? I doubt it. Uninstalled shortly after, worst crap I have ever seen. Most are more than happy with older and more proven to work versions.

Lucky!  

My impression is that 9 out of 10 who post in public warez forum, p2p threads etc. are dumb as a door and understand very little of security and malware. They go by names only, like nod32 or kaspersky. I would be careful to suggest they do much thinking

...stop flaming me!!!

Just kidding.

Actually this is true but my point was, just knowing nod32 and kaspersky, means that the users not only read reviews - they are apt to have read things like Sandboxie and have a decent malware and free AV installed to begin with.

As these users download these apps, these users become more exposed to figuring out which is legit and which isn't legit at a basic level and thus you have a higher mix of these comments verifying these files as opposed to say... Photoshop where working versions are the thumbs up, not the actual functionality.

I don't know about pirating outside popular sources, where the dumb people go, but f0dder is probably correct. There are many ways to get what you desire. Knowing IT people is usually an advantage

Yup. Sucks to be me but to be honest it's not like unpopular sources are a secret. Just hard to configure plus for piracy, intelligence is not the measuring stick but uploader reputation and people who have access to certain sites.

Paul Keith: I haven't had an interest in Photoshop for ages, since it's a piece of bloat, and my needs are fulfilled perfectly by Paint.NET... but www.nfoogle.com suggests that it shouldn't really be hard getting hold of a copy of the latest & greatest Photoshop.

See, that assumes the average downloader not only know nfoogle but they can afford usenet or know how to circumvent that.

I don't even know nfoogle and the average pirating person doesn't either. (Note that piracy is such a huge spectrum, average means below average and above average means going beyond public torrents)

Also, again, it falls into verification. It's one thing to acquire Photoshop, it's another thing to acquire THE Photoshop and I think that's important.

If you're just leeching Photoshop for the sake of leeching Photoshop, you're not really pirating. Just blindly acquiring. If that's the criteria, one may as well count the number of false software acquired via Gnutella and Kazaa which is pointless because this thread is not about the most pirated virus.

Umm...even if it was just a quick load/try/remove deal... do you think that's a wise or considerate thing to come right out and admit doing on the public forum of a highly visible site where a number of its members and visitors write licensed software for a living?

Just thinking out loud here.

Yeah. I don't see any problem stating that.

It's really up to mouser to moderate the posts but the truth is, some of the most apt pirates are also some of the biggest software supporters.

It's a lot like the assumption that poor people prefer cheaper knock-offs when in reality, poor people prefer brands and those that can't afford brands - buy branded knock-offs but they don't know the quality.

Same thing with drug users. Setting aside addicts, it's safest to induce drugs with people who know the elements of drugs than those who merely sell it. In that sense, the best supporter against drug abuse are the drug users themselves who don't want their drugs to be further demonified.

With software, the ones who pirate software, are much more intelligent at figuring out which software they want to support. The end result is that these guys tend to support the software in this site rather than merely pay x popular software for their needs.

There are exceptions like me who can only donate to developers if others donate to me since I have no money but I really and firmly believe that piracy is the market deciding they want to pay for items they really want to pay. We're not doing it at a conscious level, but evolutionarily speaking, now marketers can't get us as addicted because if they do, consumers will react via piracy not blind payments.

497

General Software Discussion / Is DonationCoder too exposed of a brand?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 10:23 AM »

Lately there's been talks of upgrading DC's homepage design and DC's app-nag designs but I think something that is equally as fatal if not more so is that: DonationCoder is a DIFFERENT name than DonationWare!

It's like Ubuntu to Linux except DonationCoder's brand is split in half.

If I'm making up fake statistics based on my estimation:

40% of users are here to use the software
25% of the users come here to get their suggested softwares, programmed
30% of the users come here for the forum and the community

Certain percent of these are probably donating one way or another if they have the cash

BUT!

Here's the clincher:

Probably only 5% represent donationware on their sleeves

I'm not talking about people who give donations but people who feel strongly about the concept of donationware in the same vein some open source users understand and spread the philosophy of FOSS.

This is an important distinction because DonationCoder is not just any Donationware site. It is the ALPHA site of Donationware.

Where others merely turn their software into donationware, DC is supposed to champion the why, the audience, the developers into donationware. Instead what is DC's brand?

(Emphasis on brand, not category, not posts, not philosophy)

DC's brand is NANY. DC's brand is software developed thanks to developers who took their time to build it for someone. Other times, DC's brand is about having a polite tech forum and a repository of some really good free software that happens to be donationware.

...but DC's brand is not exuding donationware beyond that.

How can I say this?

I haven't been checking up on Netvibes so today when I say that they have a new "Dashboard It" feature, I thought...hmm...hey often times I use the search term "hentai" just to verify if a search engine is legit or not because there's literally a day and night instant difference between a spam site and a legit site and you don't have to be a porn addict to know which are the middle of the line top quality websites that aren't famous.

...and I did it to the search entry and it looks legit enough at crawling data. Like any search engine results, it's going to be filled with lots of inaccuracies but it was able to hit some really good marks here and there. (Note that Netvibes is just piggybacking on things like Google's search results in it's widget and not really using an algorithmn)

...and so I said, ok, just out of curiosity...what other rare search terms that can be used to test the value of this feature. Something that I might legitimately treat as a saved search and I wrote in "donationware".

WOW!!!

There's not only no mention of donationcoder, there's almost no mention of the philosophy of promoting donationware.

Here you have one of the biggest sources and repository of donationware and yet donationcoder is donationcoder. Donationware is donationware.

I even tested this with an alternative dashboard service in YourVersion.com and it's the same result except donationware has more entries.

Worse, donationware is treated as something that is merely ASKING for donations and nothing else. Not license key implementations, not support implementations, not NANYs.

I mean look at these:

I don’t think I’ll do this, but it’s an interesting idea: the software remains free, but each download costs $1. Just $1.

I think it’s safe to say that most people could afford to pay $1 to download one of my apps/hacks/etc. You download it, can’t get it to work, don’t like it, etc.? Too bad, you’re out $1, no big loss. You already downloaded this version once but lost the zip file? Too bad, you’re out another $1. It’s only $1, no big thing – right?

It’s such a simple idea – even if it cut my downloads by 2/3, I’d have upwards of $10,000 so far instead of the nearly $500 I’ve gotten in donations (stats are updated on the Donation Page). I’d (of course) set it up so people who have already donated are exempt for the download charge.

The only real problem I see is that the barrier to entry then becomes PayPal, and it seems lots of people don’t like PayPal. Ah well, it’s an interesting idea – who knows I might try it down the road.

$1 is no longer part of donationware? Then DC's license key probably isn't either!!!

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Theory of Community Destruction

This is a theory. Something rather remarkable happened when I switched to Donationware, which is that the overall quality of feedback visibily declined. While there will always be a certain segment of the userbase that you simply cannot please, what can be quite surprising is to see the champions of your application begin to fade away over time. When an application has a fee for a full version it serves to gate the horde out. When anyone can and does gain access, it becomes a commons and only a certain percentage of users try to keep the place kept up--in a manner very similar to a public or shared space. My theory is this. Donationware is a negative pressure on a community that seeds the destruction of the application licensed under this model.

Donationware a feedback destroyer? OMG no wonder DC is a wasteland of ghosts. Nobody wants to talk and participate in donationware!!!

Source

...however the rest of the article is awesome. I didn't do a check if it was linked here before but it's worth reading the entire article for anyone interested in Donationware.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Instantly Increasing Password Strength

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 09:36 AM »

Anything else done to reduce the complexity or length in order to make it more suitable for human use will reduce the level of security.

Not necessarily. As I suggested before in another thread, three way login forms can be very powerful.

You can't mass brute force a photo upload for an image captcha unless you have access to the home storage file already but even then you have to know each users' specific thought process and which personal photo they are using to access something.

Same thing with using QR codes except the problem is cellphones obviously but the more you're inserting custom logins - the harder it is to guess the password. It's also a lot slower. You really have to have a database of things other than texts and you need a fast undetected connection so that you can mass upload all the custom passwords of multiple accounts rather than just quickly auto-type the entries based on guessing one syntax (letters and numbers).

Basically, I'm not a security expert, but IMO if you increase length of entry rather than length of password or complexity of password - it becomes harder to crack obviously since you're telling the cracker to crack multiple access points instead of one hub.

Edit:

One simple example of this is: fake username + fake password + fake e-mail.

Even if you can hack the e-mail, the recipient loses barely anything of importance. But let's say the e-mail username and password is showing a fake "fewer access" profile? Suddenly even if you can cut through the middle, you better be sure the user is logging in into their secure account rather than just giving you access to a limited account. It's basic Linux security who's only weakness is that it's not simple enough yet to create a disposable account as opposed to a guest account for the masses to use.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Google Chrome continues to ruin standard user interface

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 09:30 AM »

Well...I don't know about that news but since Chrome's OS is based on Linux plus it's a web operating system - you're pretty much manipulating your file manager anyway when you visit Google Docs.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Most Pirated Software?

« Last post by Paul Keith on February 24, 2011, 09:27 AM »

My pick:

MS Office - This is not only the original most pirated software but both professionals, casuals and most importantly Windows users expecting it to be bundled with the OS acquire.

Counter claims against these:

Photoshop - You have got to be kidding me if this is the most pirated software because hell I couldn't find a latest Photoshop software without encountering lots of fakes. Older versions, cool. Latest versions - I have a better chance of finding a legit non-malware copy of Windows than try and testing all the Photoshop versions that are out there. It is mostly notable for being the most handed down warez among friends besides MS Office but ease of acquisition? Forget about it. You can't even be sure you're getting the complete package. It's like the Sims. Even if you have a torrent of all the expansion packs, there's no guarantee you're getting the latest patched game, the latest items in the shops nor of the latest mods out there.

Windows - As much as people are pirating Windows, they are not massive updates. People pirate either XP or 7 and rare is it for someone to pirate both still. Not only that but - the chances of someone with a legit Windows pirating the OS is pretty low except for backup purposes.

AV Software - This used to be the case but nowadays which paid AV software is really that good? Not only that - they are separated per brands. Nod32 is/was obviously the most sought after but you will always have newbies going for Norton.

Nero Burning - Same thing as AV software

I cannot see why anyone would use pirated antivirus software.  If they can hack it to let people steal it, what else have they done to it? Just pay for what you own, sheesh.

It's actually the reverse. Often times people are so wary of a false hacked software that everyone is all eyeballs on the software looking for something that's off and this counts for casual users too obviously. The result being that it's almost rare for any false antivirus software to be seeded much.

On the flip side though, I doubt anyone is buying pirated AV cds. This is often more like a download and keep and don't look again until it's no longer working deal. I also think part of why cracked av software is popular is because people want to test run tons of things on that piece of software. Because of that, it's nearly impossible to get away with a hacked AV for long because a third of the acquirers of these softwares are probably security testers with virus files on hand and they test run the AV detection to the point of paranoia that something like malware would probably be detected by another set of their security programs/habits and methods.