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476

General Software Discussion / Re: MOGware's FileHamster (Complaint)

« Last post by CWuestefeld on February 03, 2009, 10:48 AM »

I'm doing both for my personal projects.

I use SourceGear Vault for typical source control and configuration management stuff. Tomos hit one point about this: an industrial-strength system works better for things that need consistency together, as with labeling and branching.

But I'm using FH for stuff that's atomic and changing over time. This is typically for stuff like files containing test data.

477

Living Room / Re: Meme time! Five Things People Don't Know About Me

« Last post by CWuestefeld on February 02, 2009, 05:03 PM »

It's a shame to follow down this dark path, but this is actually an interesting story. I went to school with someone who ran away, later to be convicted of taking part in a semi-famous murder. In 1982, three gay prostitutes from New York City (one of them my schoolmate) went down to Florida and murdered one of their clients, the "junk food professor" from the University of Florida. The case was rendered more bizarre by the means of killing, and strange stuff like writing "redrum" on the walls. This was all written up in Newsweek, was notorious enough to be discussed on web sites like the one linked below.

I won't offer any quotes or post photos, because it's a little disturbing and anyway, it would hijack the thread.

Full story here

478

Living Room / Re: eBook readers

« Last post by CWuestefeld on February 02, 2009, 09:35 AM »

In the e-ink technology, the screen has no light like the PDA's or computers and it is like a page of a book. In the dark you see nothing unless you use booklight and under the sun or room light it is like a paper, pages written on it as ink and more clear. In the PDA's you can not read under the sun.

-gorinw13 (February 02, 2009, 09:03 AM)

I disagree with your assertion that PDAs can't be read in the sun. My Dell Axim x51v does just fine on the beach in Cancun.

While the normal viewing case doesn't require lighting the way a PDA does, and allows eInk devices to have phenomenal battery life, I can't understand why lighting isn't built in (but off by default). It seems just another case of trying to perfectly imitate paper, including its shortcomings.

The thing is, my single biggest use of ebooks is in bed, reading in the dark so my wife isn't disturbed. The feature you describe clearly interferes with that.

(And it reminds me yet again of my whining about the artificial imposition of page boundaries.)

Other products like PDA or similar computers are harder to read because of the screen technology, when compared to standard books or e-book readers. Another difference that the e-ink technology makes is the battery consumption.

-gorinw13 (February 02, 2009, 09:03 AM)

The batter life is really a compelling feature, but I don't find that eInk's image is superior to my PDA. It's certainly different, but in an apples-and-oranges way. The text on my device is incredibly clear, what with ClearType and VGA resolution. I'd venture to state that the text is smoother and clearer than some real ink, like newspapers on cheap paper.

479

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: LifeSaver diary

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 31, 2009, 01:34 PM »

Thane, thanks for the cogent explanation of what you're doing.

FWIW, the behavior you're seeing is intentional. that pulldown functions as an editor for the currently-selected entry, not as an alternate means of selecting a date in the calendar. The reason for this is to allow you to provide entries for the previous day, or to adjust the entry's time-of-day as you like.

I think that this will be clearer when I finish up my next batch of enhancements. I'm adding Tags to the system (so you'll be able to say that an entry relates to Career or Romance or whatever you like). With that, there will be two separate "navigator" areas on the left side. You'll be able to flip between the calendar navigation that you're seeing now, or the Tag-based navigation. When this is done, there should be a much bolder demarcation between the navigation controls and the editing controls.

the calendar view on the left side of the screen clips off the most of the Friday column and all of the Saturday column.

-thane777 (January 31, 2009, 11:25 AM)

That's interesting. I'm using the Windows built-in calendar control, which doesn't give me any control over its size, so I assumed that it's always a constant size. I'm guessing that you've got your display set to "Large Fonts", or some similar change that alters the metrics of the fonts. I'll have to find a way to query the calendar for how big it "wants" to be, and force the whole navigator control out to that width.

480

Living Room / Re: Meme time! Five Things People Don't Know About Me

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 31, 2009, 10:18 AM »

• If you give me a word, I can almost instantly reply with the alphabetized set of letters in the word.
• I always count the number of steps in a every staircase. I tell myself it's for safety, just in case the lights go out. But I think that, in combination with #1, it's really a symptom of OCD.
• I have lost count of the number of speeding tickets I've gotten in my life (of 42 years). I think it's somewhere above 30. (But the only accident I've ever had was when I was 16).
• Right now I'm making my own yogurt.
• I like to watch bad horror movies. They may be lousy, but they're a sort of art form.  

481

Living Room / Re: An interesting comparison of internet shopping websites

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 30, 2009, 08:11 AM »

SmarterDeals provides hardware best price comparison features exclusively for hi-tech products, like - computer hardware, software and electronics.  You can make best deal out of it.

-smarterdeals (January 30, 2009, 05:58 AM)

I am very tempted to flag this post as spam, it clearly being a plug from someone involved with the site, being a 1-time poster, and not really disclosing the poster's relationship with the product. But at least it's not one of those deceptive "hey, does anyone know of something that does x?" posts.

Mr. SmarterDeals: a more acceptable way to do this is to be up-front about your relationship, and post your announcement in the forum area that is meant for that purpose: Announce Your Software/Service/Product.

482

Living Room / Re: MS takes evil to new level; ruins birthday cake

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 28, 2009, 03:06 PM »

What's proprietary about "<!--"? That's a standard HTML comment.

483

Living Room / Re: Going Into Frugality Mode -- What are your Tricks and Tips

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 28, 2009, 12:04 PM »

I've got to disagree with one of the posts here. During heating season, turning off lights does not save you money in the big picture; all of the energy they burn is turned into heat. So the only savings is the difference in cost between electrical energy and whatever heating method you use: probably pretty trivial in the number of kwh we're considering.

Perry advocated staying away from credit cards. I disagree strongly: this may be the single largest saver I've got. You must pay the full balance each month. But assuming that you do that, you can really benefit from them. My cards both give 1% cash back, so I'm getting that savings off of everything I buy -- a tiny percentage over a really big base number. Also I have two cards, with the closing date staggered two weeks. I always use the one that has closed most recently, which means I've always got 4-6 weeks before I have to pay back any charge. This means that I effectively have a free loan to myself in perpetuity of a couple of thousand dollars.

One post mentioned VoIP, and that's a decent savings for me. A plan like Vonage gives all the features you're used to from your circuit-switched landline and then some, and can save you lots of money -- especially if you have a high-speed data connection anyway.

As was mentioned at the top, smoking and drinking having to be the biggest money pits ever.

One post mentioned keeping your car longer, and another mentioned cell phone plans. Both excellent advice, and put the two together: there's really no need to keep turning over cell phones. Usually most of the cost is underwritten by the carrier, but you're paying that back to them -- with interest -- over two years at the (high) service level they require.

Here's my own contribution, sure to be unpopular. Avoid the so-called "organic" section in the grocery store. I'm not arguing with the idea of organic foods, I'm arguing with the marketing of them. As with so many things, the government (in America, anyway) defines what can be called "organic", and you'd be surprised at that definition. There are plenty of fertilizers, pesticides, and preservatives that are still used. It's quite likely that when you buy that product with the Organic label, you're not getting a pure unadulterated food. And the prices of these are grossly higher than the "standard" foods elsewhere in the store.

When you are shopping, be prepared to buy in quantity. There are certain foods that are staples in my diet, and I know that the store puts on sale regularly. For example, I love Langer's cranberry juice cocktails, which are a little on the expensive side (~$4/half gallon). But every couple of months they go on sale at half price, and I buy a heap of them. If you're prepared to invest a little up-front and have the space in your basement to keep the stock, you can save a lot by using sales like this.

Here's one little thing that I've been doing recently. Save some money by making your own yogurt. It's trivially easy to do, and costs less than half of what you're paying in the store. (And if you want Organic foods, this is really the way to get it).

484

Developer's Corner / Re: Fun/Funny Videos Teaching how to Program an Ancient PDP-11

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 27, 2009, 07:31 PM »

Hmmm. I learned assembly language on the PDP-11, and there was no panel-switch-flipping involved. We entered our code on a DECWriter terminal, and saved it on an 8" floppy disk. The system had a hard drive (I don't know the capacity, but it must have been microscopic), but we kept our personal work on the floppy.

The DECWriter had its own problems, though. It was a terminal whose display was essentially a dot-matrix printer, and the thing's printhead would get in the way of seeing what it was typing. So you'd type a few characters, then forget where you're at or wonder if you hit the right key. So you'd have to sit there for 5 seconds and the machine would realize it was in the way and move the platen out of your way.


Kids these days, they just don't know how easy they have it. But those were good days, and we were happy with what we had. 

More than you ever wanted to know about it here.

Youtube video here (jump in 30 seconds of the 1 minute piece).

485

Developer's Corner / Re: What's the Best Programming Language For...

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 27, 2009, 12:16 PM »

Choosing the language is only the smallest of the technical aspects. Far more important is developing an understanding of

• Scalability - how to handle large numbers of users concurrently
• Security - how to keep data private, avoid hackers
• Maintainability - how to release updates and bugfixes with minimal impact on users

I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but my "day job" is managing a team responsible for a set of ecommerce sites. I hardly have the opportunity to write any code myself anymore. Most of my time is tied up handling and planning for the three issues above.

486

Living Room / Re: Culture of Computer Programmers

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 27, 2009, 10:43 AM »

Some folks have observed that tests of software people show that many of us have tendencies toward autism. Over-generalizing significantly, such people are characterized by difficulty in understanding the reactions of other people, and how to interact with them.

I think this makes a lot of sense. I think that we software developers find our interactions with the computer rewarding because the computer behaves very deterministically. Given a particular input, the computer will always react the same way; and if you want a certain output from the computer, it's possible to methodically calculate the right algorithm to get it. We're not burdened by the subtle, hard-to-comprehend, and sometimes random, reactions that we get when interacting with humans.

487

Living Room / Re: Culture of Computer Scientists

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 26, 2009, 09:24 PM »

No discussion of our culture would be complete without mentioning cold pizza.

488

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: LifeSaver diary

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 26, 2009, 09:22 PM »

Mr. Adept, I'd like to attack the WM platform (I've been a PocketPC user for many years myself). But I think the priority is to make the desktop application really notable amongst the field of diary apps first.

When/if I get to the PocketPC platform, I'll keep you in mind.

489

General Software Discussion / Re: copy paste between 2 computers on separate networks?

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 26, 2009, 02:19 PM »

There's a Clipboard Extender utility called Ditto that will send clipboard content to remote computers that are also running Ditto.



From the program's online help:

Options -> Friends
Friends Table - Ditto can automatically send any or all copies to up to 15 other computers.  Double-Click an entry in the to open the “Friend Details” dialog box.  Enter in the IP/name of the computer you want to send copies to.  If “Send All Copies” is set then every copy will be sent.  Otherwise the Friend will be listed in the right click menu to send them copies individually.

IP/Computer Names Text Edit Box - When a copy is received over the network and the source’s IP or computer name is in this list then the copy will be put directly onto the clipboard.  Otherwise it will only be in the Saved Clips List to use at a later time.  Enter the IP or Computer Names separated by commas into the edit box.

Network Password - When clips are sent over the network the data is encrypted using this password.  On the receiving side the data is unencrypted using their network password.  So when sending a clip across the network, both sides Network Password must be the same.  If this you want to receive clips from multiple people with different passwords then you can enter the registry keys

Receive Passwords - If you are receiving clips from computers where your network password does not match, enter additional network passwords separated by commas.  When a clip is received the network password will be tried first, if that doesn't work the list of "Receive Passwords" will be used to decrypt the clip.

NB: When a clip is received from a Friend, the Friend’s computer name is appended to the end of the Description text.

• Log Send Receive Commands – is used to view what is happing with the send and receive code.  This is to only be used if there are problems and the Ditto team asks for the file to debug.
• Disable Receiving Clips – This will prevent the server thread from starting and the socket from listening for clips over the network.  If other people send you data you will NOT receive the clips!

By Default Ditto opens port 23443, to change this add a DWORD registry entry "SendRecvPort" to "HKCU\Programs\Ditto"

490

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: LifeSaver diary

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 25, 2009, 08:57 PM »

One question I have is about exporting to xml.  When I try viewing it in either FF3 or IE7 I only get the document tree (raw html code).  ...

Am I saving it incorrectly?

-thane777 (January 25, 2009, 06:49 PM)

No, you're doing everything correctly, this is exactly what's supposed to happen.

The idea of the XML export is that all of your data is encoded in a form that's easily read by any software that cares to do so. That is, any other diary software could easily extend their features to allow importing LifeSaver's output. It's not supposed to be human-readable, at least not in any pleasing form.

However, I do plan to build an HTML export into the program as well. Perhaps you could tell me what your expectations are.

How would you like to see HTML output be organized? For example, should it be just one giant long page (probably not)? Or should there be an index page listing all the entries, or maybe the index should be a frame, opening up individual entries internally? Or maybe somewhere inbetween, grouping, say, all the entries within a month into single pages, with an index for the months?

491

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: LifeSaver diary

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 24, 2009, 03:24 PM »

OK, Version 1.0.3311 is now uploaded to the original post, as well as my own web site. The only difference here is that the File menu is now enhanced with an MRU list of your files.

Note: I also discovered an issue with the installer. You'll need to uninstall any previous version before installing this update.

Darned installers. I hate 'em. I wish there was decent documentation from Microsoft. There's lots of stuff that says "if you select this then X", but it really never tells you what the heck "X" means, and what its implications are.

492

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: LifeSaver diary

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 24, 2009, 11:07 AM »

Just a quick update.

First, insert the usual excuses: busy at work, got sick, yadda yadda.

But today I'm trying to look at this again, starting with adding an MRU list to the menu so you don't need to keep finding your diary file.

493

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: LifeSaver diary

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 19, 2009, 05:20 AM »

LifeSaver has just given a mention on DownloadSquad 

-Perry Mowbray (January 19, 2009, 03:53 AM)

Whoa, cool! Thanks for the pointer, Perry.

494

Developer's Corner / Re: Qt now also licensed under the LGPL

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 18, 2009, 07:14 PM »

I know of a number of top-quality applications that employ Qt; hopefully with this change more will be able to join these ranks.

On the other hand, it seems to me that gobbledygook like this

• We will continue to support the GPL version 2 through the newly added LGPL version 2.1 license, as it allows for the automatic conversion to the GPL.
• We will continue to release Qt under GPL 3

As a first step we have selected LGPL version 2.1 as this is the version of the LGPL that best fits our purposes and we are most comfortable with at this point in time.

It seems to me that all of this nonsense with the shades of legal meaning between different licenses (not to mention their versions!) do nothing to improve the "freedom" of software. Quite the opposite, the explosion of licenses and the confusion they cause, multiplied by uncertainty of their real legal implications, actually chills the use of open software. I know that I've been chased away from using open source software because I was concerned about licensing legalities.

The open source community seems to have realized this recently, but it's far too late to fix. Efforts to clarify things by introducing new version numbers adds to the problem rather than cutting through the confusion.

495

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft Word Question --

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 18, 2009, 09:29 AM »

I am trying to format the files to use it in an ebook reader device

-gorinw13 (January 18, 2009, 05:55 AM)

Yet another confirmation of my opinion that pagination on eBook readers is evil. I can't understand why they insist on artificially carrying forward this limitation of paper.

496

N.A.N.Y. 2009 / Re: NANY 2009 Release: LifeSaver diary

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 18, 2009, 09:27 AM »

I get some jumping around while I'm typing text.  Have you heard that before?

-paris27 (January 17, 2009, 08:30 PM)

No, I haven't observed that. Can you describe a bit more what you're experiencing?

497

General Software Discussion / Re: The Monkeys Have Hit The Button

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 16, 2009, 08:42 PM »

-f0dder (January 16, 2009, 07:03 PM)

Nothing per se, but even though JIT technology has become better, it's still more heavyweight than native code.
[/quote]
That's not entirely correct. It really depends on what you're doing, and what you're comparing to.

Here is one simple analysis, a few years old, finding that .Net managed code is about 1/2 as fast. But it's a very simplistic benchmark, and kinda old technology.

But here's another analysis that finds some areas in which .Net managed code outperforms C (although not overall). Good reading for the in-depth analysis of the results.

So you'll see that in some circumstances, the .Net jit compiler can be as good as what you could achieve in native C code.

498

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft Word Question --

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 16, 2009, 04:35 PM »

I don't think that's really possible. Changing the font size is going to allow either more or less text onto a page. It's bound to result in repagination.

499

General Software Discussion / Re: The Monkeys Have Hit The Button

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 16, 2009, 02:39 PM »

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that a screen shot of someone's software cannot infringe on that person's intellectual property. This is covered under trade secrets, and what the Cairo people are doing is OK: if you agreed to secrecy to get the s/w, and then leaked it, you've breached the contract and suffer the penalties that it outlined.

But there's no worries of prosecution under DMCA or something like that (as far as I understand).

Legalities aside, this all sounds very unappealing. While Microsoft seems to be trying to be more open, this organization is taking the opposite direction. 

500

General Software Discussion / Leaked images of MS Office 14

« Last post by CWuestefeld on January 16, 2009, 09:42 AM »

Leaked images of Microsoft Office 14:

A few more images at the link.

It looks like the ribbon is sticking around 

(from Neowin.net)