Recent Posts

5601

Living Room / Re: There is something 'sinister' going on here

« Last post by app103 on June 24, 2006, 06:36 AM »

right click on it and choose "show picture".

this is a well known problem with IE.

-kimmchii (June 24, 2006, 06:29 AM)

but that's the strange part of it...I did that and it didn't show. 

(humor me here, I am being funny...or maybe not)

5602

Living Room / There is something 'sinister' going on here

« Last post by app103 on June 24, 2006, 06:21 AM »

I noticed something yesterday when I visited the forum...my avatar was gone!

Something or someone had eaten it. 

I had to upload it again.

Now I noticed another one missing today...housetier's!

Where are they disappearing to...one by one? 

Is someone or something getting hungry?

or is this all part of some evil plot and somehow all the avatars will be used to build some evil secret weapon to take over the world?   

Watch out...YOURS might be next! 

-----

screenshot of the latest crime scene:

5603

Living Room / Re: Delphi 2005PE - trying to find a magazine disc with a copy.

« Last post by app103 on June 23, 2006, 08:16 PM »

Not sure, but maybe the Borland site in Poland has it for download.

I know they still have D6 & D7 personal editions for download and I have the url's for those versions tucked away if you need them. (can't find the links on any of their sites)  You still need to register at the Borland site of your choice for a key for it though.


Also, you may want to look for these 2 back issues of magazines.

These are both published by the same publisher in the UK:

PC Pro: issue 128, cover dated June 2005, DVD edition (not cd edition)

PC Plus: issue 232, cover dated Summer 2005, DVD edition (not cd edition)

5604

Living Room / Re: Maillardet’s Automaton

« Last post by app103 on June 23, 2006, 05:57 PM »

This is amazing! Even today it is amazing to see a mere "clockwork" producing writing and pictures...

Is that for real?

mouser you find the strangest things

-housetier (June 23, 2006, 05:12 PM)

You mean the coolest things. 

It reminded me of a doll I had when I was a little girl, called Sketchy,  that stood in front of a desk and drew pictures. I tried to find a pic of this doll, but none I could find had the desk, which is where all the "magic" was.

But the doll was very primitive compared to this Automaton thing.

It's one of those marvels that brings out the kid in people. 

5605

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: disable all taskbar button flashing

« Last post by app103 on June 23, 2006, 01:32 PM »

Ok...tried the newer version again...and with the tips skrommel gave here:

https://www.donation...86.msg28929#msg28929

I am mathematically challenged. I can't seem to put the correct combo of settings in the correct boxes. Everything I do is wrong.

The example is for a taskbar on the bottom, and I keep mine on the right side. Can someone please help out here with what to put in the 4 boxes?

 

5606

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Create your own Tool Tips

« Last post by app103 on June 21, 2006, 08:05 AM »

but I do feel a little embarrassed being able to answer my own request 

-dB (June 21, 2006, 07:25 AM)

donate a few credits to yourself and you'll get over it. 

5607

Living Room / Re: Unix-Haters Handbook

« Last post by app103 on June 21, 2006, 07:57 AM »

my clock proggie is currently using about 6mb ram. 

5608

Post New Requests Here / Re: modify Peer Gaurdian Lyte to check site for updates blocklist

« Last post by app103 on June 21, 2006, 06:45 AM »

Peer Guardian and PeerGuardian Lyte are both open source C++ programs, (Visual Studio) in case you needed to know.

The mod Nobby wants is for a specific group of users of the program. A rather large group with at least 1 million users.

PGLyte currently doesn't contain any type of automatic updating features and this is needed. Not only is it needed, but it needs to check for updates more frequently than the regular PG program does, and to a different location than the full version does (as to not hammer the servers of the poor dudes that host that list).

Nobby's group plans on posting and maintaining their own list for use with the program and update it much more frequestly...several times a day if necessary.

Nobby has told me that if this request is filled, that he will include a link to this site on whatever page he posts a download link on, and urge users of the modified version to make donations in appreciation, as well as making a donation himself.

5609

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: disable all taskbar button flashing

« Last post by app103 on June 20, 2006, 04:39 PM »

Did you remove the old ini-file before upgrading?

Skrommel

-skrommel (June 20, 2006, 11:06 AM)

Newer version wasn't even in the same folder as the older one. So it couldn't be a problem with an older .ini file.

5610

Living Room / Re: how to pronounce 'Haneke'

« Last post by app103 on June 18, 2006, 06:12 PM »

will you please pass on my gratitude to your friend, Sable.

-nudone (June 18, 2006, 04:30 PM)

Sure...she gets an extra treat next time she comes to visit me. 

(in addition to the custom special 'Sable Pizza')

5611

Living Room / Re: how to pronounce 'Haneke'

« Last post by app103 on June 18, 2006, 04:06 PM »

My friend, Sable, in Germany, made this wav file so you can hear a real German pronouncing his name: Michael Haneke

 

5612

Living Room / Re: Ebooks & Readers...and all for FREE

« Last post by app103 on June 18, 2006, 03:48 PM »

There are 1000's & 1000's of free ones available...you don't have to worry about getting burned.

You couldn't possibly read all the free ones in your lifetime.

And you can download plain text Project Gutenberg ones and convert them to .lit with a free Microsoft Office plugin, I think.

5613

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is so much software cracked?

« Last post by app103 on June 18, 2006, 03:26 PM »

While reading about the ideas of charging for support, something started to sound really familiar. Then I remembered...

One of the founders of Red Hat, Bob Young, who went on to found LuLu.com, wrote a book about making money by giving away software. (One of the books on my reading ToDo list that I haven't had the chance to read but will)

And guess what? He's giving it away ...if you download it (print edition is $4.83)

The older description of the book, at the time I downloaded my copy, kind of suggested that his approach was that you make your money in services provided after you give the software away..like support...and training.

-----

And if you haven't noticed, Microsoft is suddenly giving away a lot of very pricey things...or at least providing a scaled down version of many of their developer's tools. So even Microsoft realizes the benefits of placing it within affordable reach. So now there really isn't a reason for hobby programmers, those that work unpaid on open source projects, freeware authors, or students, to go after pirated versions of things like VS2005. And Borland has been giving away personal editions of their developer tools for a long time. And these are very usable products they are giving away here.

I hope more big companies decide to make this a real trend.

-----

Sometimes the volunteer support you get in forums is better than the support you would pay for...or is provided by paid employees of the company.

AOL discovered a valuable resource in its customer base of experienced users and allowed them to have their own area to offer free volunteer tech support to others.

My experience has been that they know the software better than the paid tech support guys, as they use it every day, and they know all the little tricks that aren't in the official script.

I know this from 2 angles: I have received help in their live user2user help chat with issues that even the paid guys had no solution for...and eventually volunteered, myself, back in the AOL 6.0 days. The volunteer user2user support is top notch and the first place I would suggest any AOL user to go to first, if they can. If it's not accessible, then pick up your phone and talk to the less knowledgeable paid guys.

5614

Living Room / Ebooks & Readers...and all for FREE

« Last post by app103 on June 18, 2006, 07:59 AM »

After a discussion in the irc channel about reading ebooks and software that can be used to do it, I thought I'd make a post about one such freely available reader and a format that some may be unfamiliar with.

MS Reader is a free download from Microsoft. It is available in a desktop version as well as a version for Pocket PC. The file format it uses is .lit.

I have both versions and I have to say I enjoy reading ebooks on my Pocket PC more than on my desktop. There is nothing quite like curling up with a good book, and the size & shape of a Pocket PC allows me to have that familiar 'book in my hand' feeling without the dust and ink fumes in the pages to irritate my eyes. It allows me also to read in the dark, in the back seat of the car on a long trip. I can also carry tons of books on one small compact flash card. Books in the .lit format are pretty small.

On the desktop, it is almost as good, and you might want to give it a try.

MS Reader will allow you to do some of the things that you'd do to a print version of a book...and more.

Books can be searched, set multiple bookmarks, make text notes and highlights...you can even doodle in your book in a variety of colors. All of this stuff can be hidden or deleted when you no longer need it.

You can adjust the size of the text to what is comfortable for you, and it has Clear Type text so it's easier on the eyes. You can even sit back with your eyes closed and let it read to you, if you want.

There are a number of titles available for free, and even the ones that are not free are much cheaper than the traditional hard copy versions. You do not have to register your copy of MS Reader with an email address or passport account unless you plan on buying DRM restricted books. It will work perfectly fine unregistered with most public domain and free titles.

Download MS Reader

Download free Encarta Dictionary and translation dictionaries

Download many free public domain works to try with it:

Abacci eBooks
University of Virgina Free Ebook Library

A Google search can find even more free titles.

And if you like it and are ready to purchase ebooks, check sites like Amazon.com for the MS Reader format next time you are shopping.


screenshot of desktop version with an excerpt from Agatha Christie's The Secret Adversary (free ebook file size: 168kb):

I like my text big...it allows me to relax my eyes while reading.


note: if you delete a book from your MS Reader library, you also delete it from your hard drive, so be careful and make backups of whatever you are deleting first!

5615

Living Room / Re: All your base are belong to us

« Last post by app103 on June 17, 2006, 12:42 AM »

Oh, I know what prompted this post 

https://www.donation...60.msg28530#msg28530

5616

Dr.Windows / Re: Dr.Windows Dialogs - Add Yours!

« Last post by app103 on June 16, 2006, 11:32 PM »

5617

Living Room / Re: weird notepad bug - creaing a text file with "Bush hid the facts"...

« Last post by app103 on June 16, 2006, 01:16 AM »

This same bug is not specific to Windows Notepad...it is also in Notepad 2.

Oddly though it's not in either of the simple notepad projects I wrote with Delphi and C++ Builder.

5618

Living Room / Creative PC Cases

« Last post by app103 on June 16, 2006, 01:09 AM »

A friend of mine took the idea of case mods to an extreme...building a pc out of recycled parts into an old bar-b-que grill that his mom was going to throw away.

I love it!

Maybe I'll be able to get him to come here to respond and discuss it.

5619

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by app103 on June 16, 2006, 12:52 AM »

I kind of gave up using Firefox on a regular basis.

Rebuilding it from scratch every time there was an update got to be too much work. Each time too many extensions I used ended up broken or things just got too messed up in the process of updating for Firefox to be useful any more.

I now have a copy without any extensions at all installed and I don't plan on installing very many into this copy, if any.

One of my favorites was WeatherFox which was renamed to ForcastFox.

Description:

Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com. Display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable extension.

Features:
# international weather
# display temperatures in Celsius or Fahrenheit
# choose forecast area by US zip code or TWC location id
# search for location id's from within the program
# tooltips show the weather summary and forecast high and low temperatures
# open AccuWeather®'s forcast by double clicking images
# monitor the weather for one to nine days
# place the icons in any toolbar or status-bar including: the navbar, status bar, personal toolbar, or menu bar
# an alert slider pops up when the current conditions refresh from the server (you choose how often)


I would give a screenshot of what this really looks like in action but as I said...my previous install of Firefox was hosed during an update....again.

BTW...A great place to get just about any extension available for Firefox or Thunderbird is at The Extensions Mirror. There are also some there that you can't get any place else, as some extension developers have run into hosting problems and have made this site their official download location for their work.

5620

General Software Discussion / Re: Simple To-Do?

« Last post by app103 on June 15, 2006, 10:20 PM »

It doesn't have any type of reminder alarms/alerts but it is simple:

http://www.appsapps.info/todolist.php

As you can see it has uses beyond the usual agenda type stuff.

I use it to keep track of lots of things besides the usual...

• grocery lists
• projects
• party planning (it's really great for that)

5621

Official Announcements / Re: Cody's Haiku Mug

« Last post by app103 on June 14, 2006, 08:14 AM »

Congrats, Rover and jdd!

5622

General Software Discussion / Re: soft and hard links in ntfs

« Last post by app103 on June 14, 2006, 05:55 AM »

Mounting partitions as hard links on your C drive, and making them seem like folders, also prevents you from running out of drive letters.

There are only 26 letters in the alphabet and you can eventually run out, but no limit to how many drives that can be mounted as folders with hard links.

5623

Living Room / Re: Another article on google adsense worries

« Last post by app103 on June 14, 2006, 05:42 AM »

Google is actually doing something about spam blogs that exist solely for the displaying of Google ads and to encourage the clicking of them on Blogger.com/Blogspot. (They own Blogger)

I have a news related blog specifically for one topic which includes a short snip of the news articles I find related to the subject and a link to the original.

The purpose is to give readers a way to communicate with each other and discuss these articles when a news site doesn't give them the same opportunity to leave a comment. Most news sites don't allow a discussion to take place. I started it after a series of news stories painted a horrific picture that made me want to scream and none of the news sites with these articles gave me an opportunity to speak out and correct their misinformation. I found out I wasn't alone...there were more with a need to vent some steam about what they were reading.

This blog was flagged by Google as a 'spam blog'.

This meant at first that I would have to enter a code in order to make a post to it, to verify that a human was actually making these posts and that it wasn't something automated.

Eventually they froze my blog to prevent me from making any posts and told me I would either have to move it off Blogspot or ask for them to have a human review it and approve it before I would be allowed to post to it again.

The blog was only 2 weeks old when my trouble with Google started. The blog didn't have any Google ads on it at all. I didn't want anybody's ads there, as the subject of the ads related to the topic of my blog that they would have placed there would have sent people to some place where I didn't want my readers to go. Some place where something that is supposed to be free was being sold to those that were ignorant to that fact. It could have led to my readers being ripped off by leech-like opportunists.

Despite a lack of ads, Google did make an effort to put a stop to what it thought was a 'spam blog'.

Now what exactly qualifies as a 'spam blog' in their eyes? One that contains a large amount of outgoing links, and content duplication. The 2-3 sentence intros to the articles were considered by Google to be content duplication. Blogs are flagged as spam by an automated process, and once identified as spam, it can't be reversed unless the owner of the blog requests a review by a human, which could take awhile. Take this as a warning if you quote articles and link to the originals in your blog...do it too many times and yours will be a 'spam blog' too.

So Google is trying to do something about what they think qualifies as abuse. At least on servers they have control over.

I also know of at least 1 case of a forum owner being denied proper payment by Google for clicks by users of his forum, after a sudden dramatic increase in clicking that resulted from an extreme surge in membership and activity at his forum. An event last September sent millions to his forum looking for tech support. The ads that Google displayed on his forum promised miracles and an easy solution to the issues that brought them to his forum. People clicked and were ripped off by leeches. Then Google accused the forum owner of click fraud and would only pay him based on an average number of clicks he had in the past. Sometimes it doesn't pay to become popular.

5624

Living Room / Re: Interesting tad bit - MS Windows Genuine Advantage Phones Home Every day

« Last post by app103 on June 11, 2006, 01:33 PM »

The NT kernel is far more stable and far more secure than the 9x kernel, that has been proven time and time again. I remember having to reinstall win98 every 3-4 months due to some driver or rogue app that would crash it. In XP and 2k, I have driver rollback, I have system restore,

-Josh (June 10, 2006, 04:25 PM)

I didn't have much luck with Win98 either, but ...

I installed WinME about 3+ years ago on my P1...and exposed it to heavy daily around the clock use. (we work in shifts in my house and a computer doesn't get a chance to be idle for longer than it takes for someone to get up and use the bathroom and someone else to jump in the seat) I still haven't formatted it since that install. And WinME also has System Restore, just like XP does....it was the first version of Windows to have it. Win2k does NOT have System Restore, as you implied. Microsoft didn't give 2k users that luxury. Not sure what I would need driver rollback for since I won't be updating them and I have them backed up with Driver Magician any way.

IE6 (GOLD RELEASE) support for win9x will cease after July of this year ( http://support.micro...t.com/gp/lifesupsps/ ). So no, they wont receive patches, only win2k/xp will. This is good because the old 9x code bases need to be retired since the XP codebase is proven to be far more stable.

Updates should continue for IE 6 on all versions of Windows till they retire IE6 for all Windows versions.

If they had no intention on doing this then there shouldn't have been an IE 6 for 9x to begin with.

The WMF bug, was patched immediately by microsoft. All of these exploits you list have all been patched by microsoft. And I ask, were you affected by the WMF bug?

That isn't true. This bug was uncovered back in the beginning of January and I am still waiting for Microsoft to release the patch for my WinME, which is affected. And yes, I have been affected by the bug because I installed a 3rd party patch while waiting for an official one and unregistered the required .dll file. Same patch I put on my XP system while I waited.  And I am getting tired of not being able to see thumbnails in Explorer and not being able to open .png files any more while I wait for an official patch that will fix this and let me go back to getting full use of my operating system. Like I said in an earlier post...WinME users keep getting the short end of the stick.

While there are more exploits, how many have you been hit by? The only one I was hit by was blaster, and that was an easy patch.

None. I never have been a victim of any type of exploit while running 9x.

I must be some sort of magician. I have run 9x for years without falling victim to an exploit, without ever being infected with a virus, without any major spyware issues. And my system has been quite stable, not needing a format or reinstall in quite a few years. The last format was to upgrade the OS to WinME. And the only time I reboot is to reset the modem.

And I have used it for EVERYTHING...programming, graphics work, running a web server, hosting a chatroom with 30+ active chatters even. Some have accused me of abusing that poor old pc....pushing it to its limits, constantly....running software I should never have even thought of installing on it. I treated that P1 like it was a P4.

And every day that system gets better & better...more & more stable.

I can't say the same for my XP machine's stability.

Uptime record on 9x was in excess of 65 days straight, online with heavy use. (a major power failure in my neighborhood broke that streak)

Uptime record for XP has been about 3 days...and if you compare system specs between the 2 machines, the XP one hasn't been worked nearly as hard.

5625

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by app103 on June 10, 2006, 03:58 PM »

Darn...I missed mine. I was so totally distracted with posting that I didn't realize when it happened.

This was my 100th post:  https://www.donation...38.msg27384#msg27384

My thoughts?

Wow...can't believe I am still here. No site's forum has ever been able to capture my interest long enough to get 100 posts from me before.

That says a lot.