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General Software Discussion / Re: The DonationCoder "Superior Antivirus" Award/Certification

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 20, 2009, 05:04 PM »

Stoic Joker: make the award too hard to achieve and not many companies would want to participate,

-f0dder (December 20, 2009, 03:49 PM)

So... you're saying honesty is too much to ask for? ...Mind you given the marketing environment today I'm inclined to agree with you. I just don't know that is best to ignore the hideous monster and take-it lying down (in a comfortable position).

though... I'm not for yet another meaningless "this'll look good on an awards page" kind of thing, but I do believe it should be something attainable with a product aimed at end-users and not "geekboy powerheads" like the participants on this forum.

Right... and explaining just how paper thin a given (advertising) claim is, is something I could easily do to my mother (who is neither powerful, geeky, or a boy).

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General Software Discussion / Re: The DonationCoder "Superior Antivirus" Award/Certification

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 20, 2009, 03:41 PM »

regarding the suggestions that companies not be evil in terms of trying to trick people into a false sense of security, all well and good -- but for this award i think we want it to avoid any kind of subjective judgement.

-mouser (December 20, 2009, 11:39 AM)

Understood, but I really don't think it would hurt the awards veracity if there was some mention of how well (acurately...) their product was presented. Are the features (/claims) Touchy-Feely (new-bestest-friend-forever) ...or pragmatic (Meat & Potatoes) fact. There should be some way to quantify (Reality Check) how straight they are with the products presentation.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 20, 2009, 03:25 PM »

Good job, SJ!  As I have said, it is a great little program.  In a couple of weeks, I will be adding another school to my list that I support.  This will work good up there... let me see what models and what IP's are be used without having to physically go to each one.  I do know that they are still on DHCP and they have had one grab another's IP address already.  So they print to Printer A but it prints on Printer B.  

-techidave (December 20, 2009, 11:46 AM)

That does tend to be a problem when the only thing guaranteeing a network's configuration is a really long lease time. Given that static addressing is rather problematic on large networks, and printers have a habit of getting corrupt and needing to be (cold) reset (to factory settings), the best option I've found is to use the MAC address to create IP address reservations in DHCP. That way even if the printer "forgets" where it is supposed to be, the DHCP server will always assign it the correct (reserved) IP address.

Now I will just have to figure out which IP they are supposed to have so that I don't have to reinstall them on all the machines.  

Easy-est/Fastest method I've found is: Printer properties->Ports Tab->Port Configuration ... and then hope they all match (I've seen that one go both ways).


I'm still researching the if/how to get the IP addressing method & info to see if it can be implemented (and reconfigured) reliably.

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General Software Discussion / Re: The DonationCoder "Superior Antivirus" Award/Certification

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 20, 2009, 11:33 AM »

The award could only go to a company that does not try to sell "security". They should be honest about what their product really does: attempt to lessen the likelihood of catching a worm, virus, or whatever. When they "guarantee 100% security" they are making fools of their customers.

But if they do educate their customers and try to raise their awareness about those "dangers" without resorting to panicking them, I think that should have a positive impact on the uhm awardiness(?).

-housetier (December 20, 2009, 12:06 AM)

110% agreed ... The various AV companies seem to pit their marketing & legal departments against each other ... Granted they never really flat-out say 100% effective. But, most seem to use the cleverest forms of word play to get as close to the razor edge as po$$ible without causing anybody in legal to have a seizure.

Truth-in-Advertising should most definitely be considered, and weigh heavily on any award(s) given.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 20, 2009, 11:14 AM »

Well, I can't seem to find a smiley for stunned/speechless ... but Wow! ...and to think I was afraid this thing would flop because it was too narrow focus for anybody else to really need.

Apparently it's a good thing to (occasionally) be wrong.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 18, 2009, 10:33 PM »

Hm... I - Don't - Know ... But it is close to something I was thinking about today regarding the collection/display of other parts of the network configuration info. Granted the main view is "full" so more columns would start to get messy, but a context menu more details option might be a possibility. I'll have to do some MIB walking on the test group to see if/how reliably I can query for that information.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Space Management : there is a new competitor - SpaceSniffer

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 18, 2009, 07:00 PM »

Small, portable, straight forward simple self explanatory interface, and insanely fast! I honestly don't know if it was just over or just under a minute it took to completely scan my (almost full) 500GB storage drive as I was actually rather mesmerized by the manner in which the report was pouring into the program's interface. Either way the instant the scan started it began displaying relevant info that could be reviewed and analyzed as the rest came in.

@sajman99 - I have no idea how I missed this before, but thank you for bumping the thread - This is hands down the coolest freaking thing I seen in a while!

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Piggy Banks

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 18, 2009, 03:58 PM »

Can you add a date check so that if fund line item X is a day (or so) behind its goal it changes color and/or resorts itself to the top of the list? (gentile reminder sort of thing)

-Stoic Joker (December 18, 2009, 05:49 AM)

To clarify for me, you would like some notification that a fund is about to be met, right?

-skwire (December 18, 2009, 03:10 PM)

Not quite, I was thinking it might be nice to draw attention to a fund that has been missed. So if yesterday's deposit wasn't made it would gently remind the user by changing color, or re-sorting, or something like that.

Just a thought
Stoic Joker

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Piggy Banks

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 18, 2009, 05:49 AM »

Can you add a date check so that if fund line item X is a day (or so) behind its goal it changes color and/or resorts itself to the top of the list? (gentile reminder sort of thing)

5660

Living Room / Re: The Great Aussie Firewall to Go Ahead

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 17, 2009, 06:31 PM »

Helmets are required for bicyclists here, but not for motorcycles.

-Stoic Joker (December 17, 2009, 05:25 PM)

That sounds pretty insane :-s

-f0dder (December 17, 2009, 06:05 PM)

My guess is they're working off the assumption that if one's tender pink body bounces off a Buick at 85mph their probably better off dead.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 17, 2009, 06:05 PM »

Okay, so it occurred to me that some folks may be wondering how the above turned out... (Dave and I discussed it at length via video conferencing).

The Xerox we discovered does not quite follow the protocol standards of how & where (and if) the information is stored. Hence if the data isn't where it's supposed to be... it can't be gotten. Some of HP's plotters also suffer this affliction ... but this is a fairly rare occurrence that I've to data only seen twice out of several thousand different makes & models tested.

On the scan picking the wrong address info issue. Yes it can happen. When the scan options opens it grabs the IP address & subnet mask off the first adapter it comes to while enumerating the adapter list from whichever end (been a while since I did that research) is least likely to be/have a dial-up adapter.

I had considered at one point enumerating all of the local adapters and having them (and their associated address info) available on a drop-down menu to pick from on-the-fly. But I suspect this may just be unnecessary complexity as it would seldom be needed. ...Being game to try it however, I'm looking for any input on how useful this feature might be.

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Living Room / Re: The Great Aussie Firewall to Go Ahead

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 17, 2009, 05:25 PM »

Innuendo[/b]: you haven't had a forced-seatbelt-use law until a couple of years ago? O_o

-f0dder (December 17, 2009, 11:09 AM)

Here either, unless Innudeo lives in Florida also (I do). We just got the pull-over-for-seatbelts thing here. But that's not the weird part ... Helmets are required for bicyclists here, but not for motorcycles.

5663

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 PRE-RELEASE: Leap of Faith

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 17, 2009, 05:15 PM »

maybe it's a zen commentary.. after all, only a creature who can't jump would dream of a world where every time you jump the universe rearranges itself.

-mouser (December 17, 2009, 01:03 PM)

You could be on to something there ... may when the tree makes it to the top it could land in some soil and finally be allowed to take root and bear fruit.

On the other hand I had been thinking it was a one legged snail with no head.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 PRE-RELEASE: Leap of Faith

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 15, 2009, 10:23 PM »

I'm really not into video games but this thing is fun! I love the jump blind and hope there is something there other than a ceiling ... I've been laughing & swearing for last half hour.

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Developer's Corner / Re: Can Buttons be Dynamically Moved, Resized, etc. in Your Language?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 15, 2009, 09:55 PM »

I was cleaning out a room and re-discovered a never-opened Visual Studio 2005 (Standard Ed.)

-CodeTRUCKER (December 15, 2009, 08:03 PM)

Now I'm not per-se superstitious ... but that sounds an awful lot like a sign to me...

...I use MSVS2005 on an almost daily basis, it's a fine IDE me thinks!

5666

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 15, 2009, 09:40 PM »

Okay this last one took a bit of fiddling with, but I think it was worth it. Originally the Emailed report was just a .csv file spit into the message body (e.g. it was ugly) ...which was fine if it was only going to be read by a machine. Now the reports are sent as an HTML Email in a bit more people pleasing table format. For those that don't want to go back to the first post to see the screen shot I'll stick it here too:

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 14, 2009, 10:26 PM »

Hay, don't give up the ship man...even my boss liked your toner levels idea ... and if the boss is happy...

I've got the toner levels stitched into the report, but want to do the HTML formatted Email thing before doing another release (day or so).

On the Xerox issue I'm not sure what I can do, but I'm not prone to giving up. I'm supposed to be off Wednesday, but I go on vacation next week so that (wednesday off) may get canceled. Assuming it doesn't how does your Wednesday look, and is a Skype Video call an option?

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 14, 2009, 06:58 PM »

I wouldn't worry too much about the print screen functionality at this point in time.  It would be nice but probably not worth the effort.  Unless some others would like it too.  I can just use excel to print it.

-techidave (December 14, 2009, 04:34 PM)

lol ... Okay, now I'm confused... Which are we "printing", the programs, or the printer's graphical display screen? The .gif thing I was talking about earlier was regarding the printer's graphical display (which I gave up on a year ago).

Printing the program's report output window (e.g. the ListView control's contents) is do-able (in reasonable time frame). That's part of the Email report HTML formatting thing we discussed earlier. I'm currently working on the Save Toner Levels on report code and should have it finished tonight. If you don't mind a quick & dirty "Print" function I can stream the formatted output to a text.htm file which opens in the default browser for printing...when I do the HTML Email code.

Since my users don't normally print a huge amount so being able read the display is a big deal for me.  not yet anyway.

Okay, it was just a thought...That had occurred to me when in the situation I was describing.

It's interesting how my Xerox DocuPrint N2125's page counts shows up under the Color Page Count column.  It also doesn't report the serial number.

But I would bet this is just how that model is programmed.

-techidave (December 14, 2009, 04:35 PM)

Hm... Is that during the scan? Or when reopening the report? Xerox has a habit of piling a bunch of stuff into one field and then parsing it out later (I'm guessing the last part). The main reason that .tsv is a file save option is/was Xerox, and their inane habit of returning commas in the response string. It would work fine in the ListView control, but totally BorK a .csv file (for I'd gather rather obvious reasons).

Now if it's the initial scan that's being garbled then that is something I've not seen before (OIDs used are Industry Standard RFC stuff). I tried piecing the report you posted earlier, but can't be sure if the save function didn't trip over an extra comma (HostName is also oddly missing). Let me know if goofs up the info during the scan and I'll try to find something in that series I can MIB walk if need be.

5669

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 14, 2009, 03:56 PM »

the last paragraph, I am not following what you mean.  Does this mean when an error is showing on the control panel display, I could then see it from within your program?

-techidave (December 14, 2009, 02:54 PM)

Basically, yes. Any of the standard textural message that show up on the printer's display (Ready, Tray X Empty/Open, Cartridge Door Open, & etc.) can be queried for by polling their message buffer(s). It's identical to the text output of the Printer Status program I posted earlier in this thread.

For the most part it would be a waste of time/screen space (I think) to pull that info for a regular scan. But if you get stuck on the phone trying to troubleshoot something on the other side of campus, it might be handy (I thought) to be able to dump the printer's display (text only) so you can see the error message the user is trying to describe.

can you just add a "print screen" to your program?  maybe that would save some time.

Some printers have the ability to stream the display as a .gif which is a live screen shot of the printers graphical display...but I'm afraid that would take more time than I have.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 14, 2009, 02:49 PM »

Hm... I had rather gotten used to that. The Email report really just spits the contents of a .csv file into an Email...which is all I really need for our billing system. I've been in the habit of hitting the replace "Extra" (according to Outlook...) line breaks and then pasting it to a text file for the billing system.

This may take some time, but I should be able to add the HTML code to the output stream to format the whole thing into a presentable table. Currently the toner levels are not stored in the reports, so I'm assuming that you would like those included in the HTML Email also, yes?

I was also thinking about adding the option to the context menu to pull the current display text from the printer. This would allow you to actually just see an error message instead of having to get user X to read it to you (there is a tendency for end users to "round-off" the error message and the .xxx is  usually important). Does that sound usefull?

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 14, 2009, 09:30 AM »

Nice app! What about adding the ability to scan multiple SNMP communities?

-kickarse (December 14, 2009, 08:57 AM)

The option is available at scan start to change the community name for the current scan. And I could add the option to save an alternate (default) community to the Config.ini fairly easily. But, are you looking for the ability to scan multiple communities simultaneously? That may take some time to figure out, as it would involve extensively modifying the core scanning engine code.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 14, 2009, 05:55 AM »

Did anyone notice that Page Countster already got it's own writeup at ghacks:
http://www.ghacks.ne...ware-page-countster/

-mouser (December 14, 2009, 12:03 AM)

I did actually, and while I wasn't sure exactly what the implications of it being there were, I did (panic) jump on getting the Email Report feature rewritten yesterday before it turned into a fiasco.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 13, 2009, 05:37 PM »

Uh-oh ...I've been adding stuff... Hope it's ok ...Current build is v1.0.0.155

Can now send test page to any network printer without needing its driver installed.
Can (temporarily) alter the Ready State message on the printers display.
Email Printer Info Report is now (configurable) "fixed" so that you can enter any Email address, mail server, & subject line. Previously the defaults were hard-coded & sent all scan reports to my work Email ... nobody sent me any ... Now the default is to popup the configure options dialog.

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Page Countster

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 12, 2009, 12:15 PM »

Ya know...I was thinking if we flipped that around we'd get Prinfo ... or even Prinfo Scan? Hm...

-Stoic Joker (December 12, 2009, 12:16 AM)

Google turns up too many results for Prinfo and Prinfo Scan but no results for PrinfoScan, meaning PrinfoScan is a better choice.

-app103 (December 12, 2009, 12:20 AM)

Hm... Well, I know I'm splitting hairs here but if I do a search on "Prinfo Scan" (with the quotes) Google shows no results, which implies (or at least seems to imply) that that particular combo hasn't been used yet. Do you thing that is a fairly safe assumption?

ok, I just tried it again and now have the newer 135 build.  not sure what happened earlier.  Yeah, maybe that was it... too early!

-techidave (December 12, 2009, 11:26 AM)

I'm not sure on that one either, and considering I admin the server, a bit disconcerting too. *Shrug* More for the to-do list... *Sigh*

...Any how, glad you got the new build 135, 122 was reporting a toner lever of 150% for a HP LaserJet 5Si that doesn't even have that feature available (given it's about 12 years old...)  ...But that's what error checking is for... b135 handles the legacy stuff much better (properly...).

One other (sort of handy) oddity I did notice, is that apparently the Cyan toner level OIDs are reused on Mono printers. The percentage reported reflects the Maintenance kit (fuser), life expectancy remaining. Given that the seemingly erroneously returned information has value, I decided to let that bugg live.


Let me know if it works to your liking & if there is anything else I should try adding. I've been thinking of adding the option to change the printers display text. Granted the change will revert back to the machines default ("Ready...") text when the printer is restarted...but it could be useful...or at least fun to play with.

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Developer's Corner / Re: Can Buttons be Dynamically Moved, Resized, etc. in Your Language?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on December 12, 2009, 09:22 AM »

If I had to make a choice between Java & VB, I'd go with VB. I've never really seen a Java application that I liked, they always seem to be flaky, persnickety, and unstable. Sure I've used to for quickie bits on a web page, but I'd never try doing anything serious with it.

Seems to me that the only real "advantage" to Java is the one size fits all cross platform usage. However if being cross platform isn't an objective, then there is always a better way. This is for the same reason that a swiss army knife is a poor substitute for a proper tool kit. Sure it's handy for the type of quick fixes you can do while wearing a suit ... But don't try rebuilding an engine with one.