Recent Posts

551

General Software Discussion / Re: Basic Question on Photo Tagging

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 12, 2008, 07:24 AM »

+1 for Exifer. I've been using that for years. The IPTC and EXIF data is (generally) standardized, and any compliant program should be able to share the data.

I used to use IMatch. The software is incredibly advanced, the UI is well-thought-out, allows access to a centralized database on the server, and even has a scripting model. However, the upgrade process was so onerous that I had to drop out. One had to download and install the trial, then find your password to download the registered version, find the registration code and install it over the top, then find different passwords and registration codes for the "service packs" to be installed over the top (or at least that's how I remember it). I grew so confused, and had such trouble tracking all the (changing with each version!) passwords and codes, that I could no longer install it.

Now I just use ACDSee, which isn't as capable, but at least it doesn't put the user through such torture.

552

General Software Discussion / Re: Another 'Lifetime' license bites the dust

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 12, 2008, 07:17 AM »

I think Josh and Dormouse may both be right, depending on the specifics of each case. The thing is, it's up to the developer to decide his business plan.

However, SlySoft commits the logical fallacy of false choice. Their message (as quoted) only acknowledges two options: lifetime upgrades versus annual subscription. In fact, there's a third choice (and maybe more). Most software sells a given version and allows a customer to use that version in perpetuity.

IMHO, the choice that SlySoft is making is absolutely unacceptable for any program that acts as a repository for data (which isn't SlySoft, btw). Anything that's holding your data -- say, EverNote, Zoot, Outlook, even apps like Word or Excel, to the extent that you need them to gain access to your own data -- MUST allow a perpetual license for at least that version. An annual license scheme essentially holds your data hostage. Once the customer has allowed the app to encode his information, the developer can extort any amount of money up to the value of the user's data (or cost of re-entering) to allow the user access to his own stuff.

553

Living Room / Re: Google Native Client Puts x86 On the Web

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 09, 2008, 09:43 PM »

One imagines that the x86 code that's running is effectively inside a VM, with the browser providing the OS. In this context, the fact that it's x86 is relatively meaningless, except that it promises ultra-high performance. But in every other respect, it's absolutely no different than javascript running in the browser. Granted, we've seen how that can be a risk. But this isn't creating a greater surface area for security holes, it's just rearranging that surface area.

554

Living Room / Re: Free multiplatform mind mapping tool

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 09, 2008, 11:27 AM »

I downloaded and was going to install. But their support has a lot of comments about obscene memory usage (over 1GB) and errors from insufficient window handles. Apparently they've got a big leak problem.

555

Living Room / Re: Gizmo's Tech Support Alert Newsletter Merges with Windows Secrets

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 09, 2008, 08:33 AM »

I haven't had any value out of that newsletter since it changed

-iphigenie (December 09, 2008, 04:33 AM)

Agreed. Not that it's bad, but it certainly doesn't carry the quality of Gizmo's own newsletter. I can't see that the paid version is worth investing in.

556

General Software Discussion / Re: Movie Collector 5 released

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 08, 2008, 12:15 PM »

MC 6, which releases tomorrow, will now fetch data exclusively from their own online database. Support for IMDB and every other source has been completely dropped.

-nosh (December 08, 2008, 11:26 AM)

I think it's not as bad as that sounds. From an update email they just sent out:

Now, when you download the DVD details of your specific edition, our system will automatically use Amazon to supply the missing cover image.
The beauty of it is: you won't even notice :-)

Are you using our Flic or CueCat scanner to add your DVDs?
Then version 6 will work out great for you!

You see, now our system will also do automatic Amazon Lookups for all barcode searches that are not recognized by our own database.
Again, you won't notice a thing, apart from getting more hits of course!

And if even Amazon reports: "never heard of that one", we've got a new "last resort" lookup solution (only for Region 1 discs though):

-- The excellent Region 1 DVD List published by hometheaterinfo.com --

It won't give you cover images, but it will at least recognize your barcodes and return basic information like Title, Year, Studio, Genre and Release Date. The list is updated on a daily basis, so it will be a great help keeping our results up-to-date.

557

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

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 07, 2008, 10:12 AM »

NANY 2009 Entry Information

Application Name	LifeSaver
Version	1.0.3311
Short Description	Keep a diary
Supported OSes	Windows with .Net
Web Page	none yet
Download Link	Author's web site Or from attachment to this post, below.
System Requirements	.Net 2 Internet Explorer (don't worry, you don't need to use it as your web browser)
Version History	2009-01-11 - 1.0.3311 New feature: file menu now has MRU (Most Recently Used) file list for your convenience. 2009-01-11 - 1.0.3298 Spoiler Fix bug where changes to an entry didn't get saved if the user clicks next/prev too quickly. 2009-01-01 - 1.0.3288 (Release 1) Spoiler Add EULA to installer and About box Fix installer to overwrite old version Fix bug where changing entry body text forced rebuild of calendar Fix bug where XML export didn't close file immediately Add meta data to XML export Remove BETA warnings 2008-12-21 - 1.0.3277.22049 (Beta) Spoiler Add XML export Add ability to open a file from Explorer Fixed calendar colors (I hope) Added a bunch of graphics to make it pretty Added Delete, then disabled it because of a problem in the backend datastore Fixed the need to click away from the text editor to get changes to save Improved synchronization between entry date editor and calendar selector (there may still be issues here, I'm still chasing it) Fixed a bug in the browse to Previous feature (sometimes entries would be skipped when occurring on consecutive days) 2008-12-16 - 1.0.0.1 (alpha 2) Spoiler Added password (remember, this isn't crypto) Added auto backup datafile Fix crash when you start app but don't open file for several minutes Fix crash when you try to re-open the same file that's already open Fix problem where "create new" diary over an existing one would open instead of creating new 2008-12-14 - First public alpha
Author	Chris Wuestefeld: CWuestefeld

Description
At the surface, it's Yet Another Diary/Journal Application. But as I've complained here, as recently as last month, a fundamental problem with all Diary software I've found is that the data is locked into a proprietary datastore and format. This is absolutely antithetical to the purpose of a diary: long-term tracking of thoughts. At some point in the future, our current applications and the format in which they store the data will be obsolete; it's imperative that something like this be easily extractable, in a way that can be imported into future systems.

Features

• Entries formatted in rich text (HTML to facilitate export)
• Password-protected datastore (not cryptographically strong, but should be enough to keep out your little brother)
• Multiple entries allowed per day
• Browse next/previous entry
• Export to XML

Planned Features

• Entry tagging, including browse by tag
• Full-text search
• Images attached to entries
• Score entries on user-defined criteria to track progress toward goals

Screenshots
[ Invalid Attachment ]

Known Issues

• Previous version must be uninstalled before upgrading.
• Delete entry not allowed yet.
• There isn't yet any way to change your password.

558

General Software Discussion / Re: wanted: way to batch/script manipulate image (ICO) files

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 05, 2008, 01:09 PM »

I'd look at scripting ImageMagic. It's very high quality and can do pretty much everything you can imagine (assuming that you can figure out the arguments to send it).

559

General Software Discussion / Re: XP SP3 blocks .NET security patches

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 05, 2008, 05:38 AM »

I think the headline of this article is a tad sensationalist. It implies that all .Net updates are blocked. In fact, it only affect .Net 3.0. That's bad, but it's really not the end of the world.

You can always upgrade to .Net 3.5, the current version. And I *think* that 3.0 was a relatively short-lived version, just a transitional thing to the current 3.5.

560

Living Room / Re: Christmas Gift Ideas Under $25... Make a List!

« Last post by CWuestefeld on December 03, 2008, 04:32 PM »

Who's the naked person over to the right? 

561

Found Deals and Discounts / USBSafelyRemove: 1yr free / lifetime discount

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 26, 2008, 08:11 AM »

I just saw a Raymond.cc post telling about a free 1-yr license for USBSafelyRemove.

USB flash drives are so common nowadays and I believe most of us already have one. It is very convenient to carry along our data with us all the time but can also be a problem when you’re unable to properly eject it from your computer. The error message “The device ‘Generic volume’ cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later.” is what you’ll see when you’re having the problem. You can use Unlocker to unlock the files in used and then eject OR you can use a special tool called USB Safely Remove developed to help you easily manage your external hotpluggable device.

USB Safely Remove normally cost $20 for a single user license which last a lifetime but they’re giving away free licenses to everyone for a week in order to promote upcoming version 4.0. You may use all the features of the program and get upgrades for one year for free. Actually they’ve done this early this year on February to promote version 3.3, so no big surprise that they’ll start doing it again. Continue reading on how to get your free USB Safely Remove v4 registration code.

USB Safely Remove is a neat and handy replacement for the standard ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ tool. It will make life easier and save time for those who have several hotplug (USB, SATA, Firewire) devices and those who use them extensively.

Just in case, here's a direct link to the deal.

When I went there, I discovered there's also a 20% discount for a lifetime personal license. This seems like the perfect license: for your personal use, you get lifetime updates and usage on all of your computers.

Registration benefits
    * Buy only one license for using the program on all your computers!
    * Pay once, always get upgrades - free future version upgrades!
    * The registration reminder will never popup again.
    * Technical support.

The discounted price is $14. The page leads me to believe that the deal is only for today, but you know how those things go.

Disclaimer: I have no association with this company. Heck, I've never even used the product -- it just looks very useful, and I've heard good things about it.

Edit: it appears that the free license deal is only good this week, the week of Thanksgiving.

562

Developer's Corner / Re: Visual Basic: finding out dependent OCX/DLL files

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 25, 2008, 12:23 PM »

I was always running into problems with missing DLLs. Here's one of the ways I'd diagnose the problem -- and you could do the same to get the list of what you need.

There's a program called Depends that spits out tree showing all of the (linked) dependencies of a module. One weakness is that it only knows about dependencies that the linker knew about -- stuff that's dynamically loaded by your app code won't be caught.

563

Developer's Corner / Re: Forms calls a class, class interacting with a form

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 22, 2008, 02:09 PM »

CW: you don't get a leak from #1 unless you have a really unusual GUI design

-f0dder (November 22, 2008, 12:58 PM)

In .Net WinForms (which I assume is the environment, judging by the VB syntax), you will have a leak. This must be the case in any garbage-collected environment. In this example, the TextBox (and hence any handles it's using, too) cannot be collected while there are any live objects referencing them. The reference from MyClass will hold any referenced TextBox in memory until the MyClass object itself is collected.

I meant to offer a more concrete suggestion as a worthwhile and instructive step before jumping into MVC.

Declare an Event in your Class, and let your form listen for that event. This is easy to do: syntactically it's just like when your form waits for a button click or something like that. The advantage is that MyClass doesn't need to have the faintest idea of how the UI works. He just needs to shout out by way of the Event: "Hey! I've got a new value for myname (or whatever)!".

The same caveats about leaks apply, though. When you subscribe to the Event, you're holding a reference to the MyClass instance. That instance can't be garbage collected until the reference is cleared, either explicitly or by the death of the form that's listening to it.

564

Developer's Corner / Re: Forms calls a class, class interacting with a form

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 22, 2008, 12:49 PM »

rht341 is certainly correct, but a couple of warnings:

1: In your proposal to put the reference to the textbox into your class's constructor, you've tied the life of the textbox to the life of your object. A reference to the textbox will keep it around as long as your class, and this may manifest itself as a memory leak, causing your program to die after having been active for some time.

2: In the 15-20 years that OO development has been popular, we've learned some lessons. Depending on the nature of your class, you may be about to step into one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: keep your application's data separate from its user interface. When things start to get bound together tightly, it becomes difficult to maintain your program as you need to make changes to either the UI or the data. Better to keep them separate, with a well-defined interface dictating how they interact. Probably the leading design for ensuring this is the Model-View-Controller pattern.

This same kind of question comes up in many areas, and developers have found many ways that work well for attacking them. These have been documented and gathered together in catalogs of "patterns" (e.g. here: http://www.dofactory...tterns/Patterns.aspx ). You'll give yourself a big leg up if you read up on these. You'll get the benefit of many years of experience from developers that have gone before us.

565

Developer's Corner / Re: DC loads fast. What is the secret.

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 20, 2008, 08:44 AM »

How does DC avoid spam users?

I have a SMF forum that's been under attack for the past week, getting numerous user registrations that are clearly bogus. I've responded in a completely reactive fashion. Since my forum is only of local interest, and the bad guys are using IP blocks that ARIN says are European, I just ban IP ranges as they hit me. But this means I'm always playing catch-up.

I don't want to switch to the model where I have to approve each registration -- I think that interferes with getting new users participating.

Has anyone else experienced this? How did you deal with it?

566

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: WaggleImage on Bits du Jour (Nov 18 2008)

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 19, 2008, 08:50 AM »

At present we don't include OCR functionality although the hooks are in place in the application.  The royalties required for any OCR engines that provide a good recognition rate are high which effectively prohibits us from supplying them

-WaggleSoft (November 19, 2008, 06:50 AM)

I have a suggestion:

Microsoft Office has OCR capability; this is used by the nifty little tool JOCR. Perhaps for customers that have already paid for this OCR API by purchasing Office, you could employ that.

567

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: XYPlorer ($15) Nov 24 at BDJ

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 19, 2008, 08:40 AM »

I've avoided jumping back into the discussion until some of the smoke clears. Now that those with more vested than I have sounded off, I'd like to weight in.

As Nosh alluded to, one of the most common activities here on DC is our discussion of what we like and dislike about software. I'd bet that the vast majority of threads on this forum include some negative comment about some program or other (FARR excepted, of course )

This thread didn't need to be any different from that. The fact that Josh and I dislike XYplorer shouldn't get anyone excited. As superboyac and others noted, it's good for all of us that there are many choices -- including XYplorer -- so that every one of us can get our peculiar needs addressed.

Instead, DonL escalated what had been a dispassionate discussion (at least the portion of it appearing here on DC), turning it personal and heated. This is inappropriate on DC, and it's inappropriate behavior for the voice of any company to turn personal in this way.

I realize that my opinion of XYplorer is just that: my opinion. I was offended when DonL simply dismissed my perception of the program, saying "The opposite is true". Had he articulated what his overarching philosophy for the program is, or given me examples of how things hold together tightly, we could have had a real, constructive conversation. But in fact he dismissed my opinion, apparently not caring what I -- nor other DC readers -- think.

He then went on with a quip, painting both myself and Josh as "idiots", and telling us we should shut up. Not only was this offensive, but ironic as well. He talks about things being "system features", and admonishes us to know what we're talking about before posting publicly. Yet he seems not to know what he's talking about; had he read my post, he'd see that this is, in fact, a feature of DOpus.

I responded to these comments with a bit of sarcasm, saying that my eyes have been opened by his offhanded dismissal. This was intended as an invitation to explain himself further, although he either ignored it or didn't notice it in his zeal for flaming.

Let me suggest that this isn't the wisest behavior for a software publisher. I expect that DonL has alienated more potential customers than he's won over. Even if I am mistaken in my assessment of the program, personal attacks aren't warranted. A rational discussion is still called for.

Remember, you're not just talking to the previous poster: you're talking in front of every DC reader, present and future.

FWIW, I still think it's worth hearing about the XYplorer unifying philosophy. I'm not into it, but maybe someone out there still is.

568

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: XYPlorer ($15) Nov 24 at BDJ

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 18, 2008, 01:37 PM »

The opposite is true.

-DonL (November 18, 2008, 01:24 PM)

Oh, well now I understand completely, and see exactly how I went wrong.

About the run dialog (Josh, aka Metshrine is serial-punishing me in fileforum for months now, poor idiot): If you allow yourself to think for a minute: This is a system function. Run dialog = system component. Not software feature. Got it?

And for the future: Before you talk bad about something in public, please get to know it first, or simply shut up.

-DonL (November 18, 2008, 01:24 PM)

Had you read my post, you'd see that this works in DOpus. It's able to replace Windows Explorer with itself, so (almost) everything that Explorer will do, DOpus will instead. It's that simple.

Perhaps before you call someone out, calling them idiots or telling them to shut up, you should make sure you're not putting your own foot in your mouth.

569

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: XYPlorer ($15) Nov 24 at BDJ

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 18, 2008, 11:58 AM »

I like to be able to launch directly to the folder I want by using the run dialog. ... DOpus isn't much better and that one turns me off even more so due to its high price.

-Josh (November 18, 2008, 10:21 AM)

I just tested this as a DOpus user. I am able to launch a folder in DOpus by entering the path in Run. Of course, you're right that it's very expensive.

FWIW, I agree with your assessment of XYplorer -- it seems like they've just thrown a whole laundry list of features in, without much thought as to integrating them into a way that makes coherent sense.

570

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your music player of choice?

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 14, 2008, 06:56 PM »

Can anyone suggest a good portable music organizer? (I'm a big fan of MediaMonkey, but it's not portable)

I put my whole library onto an external harddrive so that it can travel with me. And the MM installation on my own system has it all indexed in its database. But when I'm at another machine, I'd like to be able to search and browse the library quickly.

571

Living Room / Re: How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 14, 2008, 05:04 PM »

That's why a lot of sites also pay attention to the IP addresses of the people who are causing problems. You can frequently catch banned users who are attempting to re-register that way. If push comes to shove you can also deny registration requests from a block of IP addresses; or deny access altogether.

-40hz (November 13, 2008, 09:33 PM)

Way back in the day, I was active on a hacker/phreaker BBS. To keep out the "bad" guys, we had a unique security feature. During login, the BBS would send a "+++" to get into the modem's command mode, then issue the command to query the device's serial number, and then put the modem back into normal mode. This would prevent anyone getting in with a stolen password, unless they had also stolen the user's modem as well.

572

Living Room / Re: Surfulater 3 - huge price hike (166%) + where is the Firefox add-on?

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 13, 2008, 08:08 PM »

though I haven't used it in ages

-Carol Haynes (November 13, 2008, 08:01 PM)

Ditto. I bought and paid for it, but then found that Evernote does the job much better. On the other hand, Evernote put themselves in the doghouse for me...

573

What's the Best? / Re: What's the best Journal (Diary) software?

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 13, 2008, 04:04 PM »

I've been (idly) looking into this for some time. To me, this is one place where a proprietary data format is out of the question. The whole purpose of a diary is for posterity, so you don't want to be trapped when the product is desupported. I think this boils down to an XML export of your data.

I only find two diary products that support this:

• SuperDiary (http://www.programming.de/superdiary.php )
• Xtreme Journal System (http://www.xtremejournalsystem.com/ )

I haven't tried these, but the online descriptions suggest to me that images and stuff aren't stored in the DB, but merely referenced -- which means that any encryption isn't going to apply to them. That's bad for me.

574

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Server 2008 R2 - 64 bit only from here on ...

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 13, 2008, 08:01 AM »

I must have missed that program up on the Microsoft Partner website.

Every company I work with (including some Fortune 500 behemoths) pays for each and every copy of Windows they use regardless of whether it is the server or desktop version.

AFAIK Microsoft does not do "free" when it comes to their operating systems. And "site-licensing" has not proven popular due to the costs involved.

Minor point: IT does not generally welcome new versions of Windows. Most organizations are very reluctant to upgrade server and desktop software as long as their current version is working. So unless the newer version offers significant and measurable benefits, most businesses will only go to the new release when they buy new hardware that includes it. Buying a new computer is still the most cost-effective (as opposed to cheapest) way to buy a copy of Windows.
 

-40hz (November 13, 2008, 06:42 AM)

My employer derives well over a billion dollars in revenue a year from such licenses. I could cite a list of household-name companies as long as my arm that are customers of ours, and satisfy their s/w needs (Microsoft, Adobe, McAfee, etc) with licenses like this. For medium-to-large companies, license agreements is the way to get your software. Actually, I can only think of one household-name-size company that does not do this.

(These aren't quite "site-licenses"; they don't mean "everyone regardless of how many"; there are price gradations that set ceilings on the number of deployed licenses. Typically a customer will self-audit annually and purchase additional true-up licenses at that time. But within the agreed-on range, there's little concern. So at the margin it behaves like a site license.)

Some sw manufacturers offer things akin to Microsoft's "Software Assurance" program, which gives you the right to ongoing upgrades of covered products over a time period (3 years for MS). So Carol is exactly right.

For large organizations, getting an OS upgrade via new hardware is decidedly not the most cost-effective approach. This is due to the costs of IT support. Generally speaking, large organizations want to minimize the variety of systems they must support. Having to maintain the skillset for multiple systems, needing to keep track of who has what, needing to get a meaningful answer from the user about (what version of Windows do you have? What about Office?) is a really significant cost.

This is true for hardware as well. You personally can get a computer much cheaper because you're only supporting yourself; we have many large customers who are willing to pay a premium to us to ensure that we'll be able to supply to them the exact same models over a full generation in their business (say, three years); we must stock a warehouse with these to ensure that if the manufacturer discontinues the model, we'll still have a sufficient stock to satisfy those customers.

575

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Server 2008 R2 - 64 bit only from here on ...

« Last post by CWuestefeld on November 11, 2008, 06:10 PM »

CWuestefeld: is that 32bit apps on the 64bit OS, or 64/64? Would surprise me a bit if MS couldn't make stable 64bit versions of their flagship server apps, considering that NT supports some pretty massive x86 systems.

-f0dder (November 11, 2008, 04:33 PM)

IIRC, both of the apps I cited are 32-bit. Note, these aren't the server apps themselves, but the tools used for building such apps. It seems obvious to me that you'd want to be able to run these tools on the platforms that you're trying to develop for. If you've got a bug in a 64-bit app and you need to run the debugger, you've got difficulties as it is.