Recent Posts

7151

Developer's Corner / Re: multi answer multi choice database

« Last post by Deozaan on March 26, 2009, 12:13 PM »

Will the response table take two answers?

-h0meopathic (March 26, 2009, 07:52 AM)

That depends on how you set it up in the database.

Like I said, on the PHP page, make the multi-answer questions check boxes instead of radio buttons and then in your database put a 1 for the choices that were selected and a 0 for the ones that aren't selected.

7152

Living Room / Re: What is Twitter: A Funny Sarcastic Cartoon

« Last post by Deozaan on March 26, 2009, 12:40 AM »

Here's a cody-fail for anyone that needs it on March 28th.

-40hz (March 24, 2009, 05:22 PM)

Why? What's happening on March 28?

-Deozaan (March 25, 2009, 11:09 PM)

I assume it is a reference to the scheduled downtime stated here.

-wreckedcarzz (March 25, 2009, 11:39 PM)

Thanks wreckedcarzz. I didn't see that post in the middle of the page of unread threads.

Don't official announcements and important messages like this usually have a darker background so they stand out?

7153

Developer's Corner / Re: multi answer multi choice database

« Last post by Deozaan on March 25, 2009, 11:14 PM »

What's wrong with checkboxes?

Or just store the different choices as booleans in the database, and mark them as 0 if they're not chosen and 1 if they are.

7154

Official Announcements / Re: MARCH 2009: It's the 4th Anniversary DonationCoder.com Fundraiser

« Last post by Deozaan on March 25, 2009, 11:12 PM »

Should i change the goal to $10k?

-mouser (March 25, 2009, 05:56 PM)

We baked the cake already. Anything else is just icing. Nothing wrong with making a goal of 4 tubes of icing but only making it to 2.

If you catch my meaning.

7155

Living Room / Re: What is Twitter: A Funny Sarcastic Cartoon

« Last post by Deozaan on March 25, 2009, 11:09 PM »

Here's a cody-fail for anyone that needs it on March 28th.

-40hz (March 24, 2009, 05:22 PM)

Why? What's happening on March 28?

7156

Living Room / Re: Steamworks Makes DRM Obsolete?

« Last post by Deozaan on March 25, 2009, 11:02 PM »

From my point of view, there's no stopping the people who are serious about breaking copy-protections, but at least this removes the excuse from developers that intrusive, rootkit-like DRMs such as SecuROM are necessary to protect their assets.

And it also gives someone like me, who dreams of getting into the Indie Game business, some good news that the Steamworks services are free for developers. And Steamworks provides more than just copy protection. It also provides matchmaking lobbies, achievements, automatic updates, etc. All in all it sounds like a nice solution to me. I think this would allow me, if I were a game developer to be honest and say that yes, my games are going to be pirated, but I also would be putting some effort into protecting my software from that.

I guess my main point is that I imagine publishers require some sort of copy protection to be placed on your software. Something like Steamworks would allow an a developer to meet the publisher's demands for DRM with little or no additional cost, even if as a developer you knew there was no way to absolutely protect your software from piracy.

7157

Living Room / Re: Help build Cody City!

« Last post by Deozaan on March 25, 2009, 10:51 PM »

at what point does a 50ft fire breathing cody trample into the city center and destroy everything?

-mouser (March 25, 2009, 07:13 PM)

As soon as you PROGRAM YOUR SMURFING GAME TO DO THAT!

7158

Living Room / Steamworks Makes DRM Obsolete?

« Last post by Deozaan on March 25, 2009, 04:10 PM »

That's what they say:

March 24, 2009 - Valve today announced a new set of advanced features delivered in Steamworks, a complete suite of publishing and development tools that are available free of charge to developers and publishers worldwide.

Headlining the new feature set is the Custom Executable Generation (CEG) technology that compliments the already existing anti-piracy solution offered in Steamworks. A customer friendly approach to anti-piracy, CEG makes unique copies of games for each user allowing them to access the application on multiple machines without install limits and without having to install root kits on their PC.

The new features also include support for in-game downloadable content (DLC) and matchmaking. The in-game DLC support allows developers to deliver new content as they choose (paid or free) from inside the game itself, allowing users to make immediate purchases and experience the new content in the same game session. The Steamworks matchmaking now includes the robust lobby system shipped and tested in Left 4 Dead.

-http://store.steampowered.com/news/2372/

Read the rest here.

Probably one of the most important thing about this (for developers) is that Steamworks services are offered free to developers and publishers, so there's really no reason why developers should use invasive DRM to "protect" their games.

Thanks Valve/Steam, for coming up with solutions!

7159

Living Room / Re: Help build Cody City!

« Last post by Deozaan on March 25, 2009, 03:40 PM »

Smokes!! Now we've got crime at 4%...

Increase Security!

-Edvard (March 25, 2009, 12:58 PM)

You posted the wrong link to increase security. Your link just increases population, which isn't helping our unemployment rate, either.

7160

Living Room / Re: What is Twitter: A Funny Sarcastic Cartoon

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 10:50 PM »

Just a bunch of twits.

7161

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Auto Set Low Priority Program for XP, etc...

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 09:34 PM »

I haven't used Process Tamer in a while, but I'm pretty sure you could accomplish this with it. Process Tamer has an option for making itself and Task Manager high priority.

Then just adjust the options so that anything above 1% or something will lower the process. Something like that ought to do it for you.

7162

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Clickless mouse (for web browsing)

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 08:40 PM »

Try Skrommel's Mouse Activate.

Automatically activates a window or a control when the mouse hovers over it, or autoclick if the mouse is left in the same place for 1 second.

Now if we could only get Skrommel to make a Mouser Activate coding snack. That would be something!

7163

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 06:09 PM »

so the first grouping is separating everything into 4 categories depenging on update status.
then each of those 4 categories is organized by application name.

-mouser

Clear as mud!

-cranioscopical (March 22, 2009, 05:56 PM)

Makes sense to me...

7164

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 05:29 PM »

Looking good!

7165

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 04:53 PM »

they're already farther apart than the circumference of the Earth, so who can say?

-cranioscopical (March 22, 2009, 02:54 PM)

Er... 

The track has to go around lots of mountains and things.... adding to the length of the track.

7166

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 02:10 PM »

Don't like them and in my experience all versions are broken or bypassable. On the forum of which I am an admin I have set up a question and answer and in around the 8 months since spam has been close to zero.

-rgdot (March 22, 2009, 02:00 PM)

The true solution is word problems!

"In A.D. 2009, tragedy was beginning. Sally is on a train traveling west at ninety-nine miles per hour. Johnny is on a different train, on the same track, traveling east at four-hundred-thirty-eight miles per hour. The trains are two thousand six hundred fifty-three miles apart. Sally and Johnny are on the way to destruction. They have no chance to survive. How long do they have left to make their time? (You may assume that all Zigs are taken off.)"

7167

General Software Discussion / Re: how to best keep track of your ebook page numbers

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 02:01 PM »

This probably isn't any help, but I think if you own Adobe Acrobat (which is expensive) you can add bookmarks to PDF files.

7168

Unfinished Requests / Re: EXISTS - IDEA: Regular Expression Helper

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 01:50 PM »

I guess that leaves Regex Buddy by JGSoft.

I haven't used it myself, and like the original post says, it's not free, but I've used other JGSoft applications and have been very happy with them.

Also, if you just want to test Regular Expressions, then fellow DC Member allen has a handy online utility called ReReplace.com.

ReReplace.com is a full-featured web based text search utility with full regular expressions support, advanced match highlighting and text replacement capabilities.

-http://www.rereplace.com/

 By the way, it was Allen who told me about JGSoft and he uses Regex Buddy (and even links to it on rereplace.com).

7169

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 01:39 PM »

Alternate Version

7170

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 01:31 PM »

That's an awesome tip, scancode!

MegaUpload's captcha isn't so bad once you realize there are 4 characters. The first 3 are letters and the final 1 is a number.

7171

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Day: Gravity Pods

« Last post by Deozaan on March 22, 2009, 03:07 AM »

[EDIT]Thread Necromancer alert! I'm reviving a 2-year dead thread.[/EDIT]

Several years ago I found a site made by some guy (Keith Peters) who made a bunch of experiments in Flash. That website was Bit-101.com. It inspired me to try something similar--something I called The Idler Project at the time. My goal was to create a new experiment every day for an entire month (30 consecutive days). I succeeded with that. But that's a bit tangential.

Anyway, for some reason I remembered Bit-101 tonight and decided to check it out to see what Keith was doing these days. He stopped doing his Bit-101 lab (Flash experiments) back in December of 2005, but I found out that he's the guy behind Wicked Pissah Games and he made Gravity Pods.

I also found out that there's a Gravity Pods 2.

What's really interesting is that you can see the precursors of Gravity Pods in his Bit-101 Lab. Specifically August 12th and 13th, 2005.

7172

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by Deozaan on March 21, 2009, 10:56 PM »

Is this the kind of information you're asking about?

yes.  i'm trying to decide some of the issues you raised -- e.g. should it be a global setting to look for betas or a per-application setting, do i need to show people both stable version info from web AND beta info? or just one of those based on what they have asked to see, etc.

-mouser (March 21, 2009, 09:04 PM)

I would definitely recommend having the option to download and install the stable version even if the user has selected to watch for betas. That way if a beta is too buggy the user will be able to revert back to a stable version.

The more I think about it, the more I think it would be nice to be able to select on a per-application basis. I don't use some applications a lot, or I may not use some of the advanced features of applications (like FARR) so a beta would not likely interest me. But there are other applications I'd love to keep watch for betas, such as DcUpdater itself, or Screenshot Captor, or Trout.

7173

Developer's Corner / Re: donation edicate

« Last post by Deozaan on March 21, 2009, 10:50 PM »

Every time I've donated to this site I always get a personal thank you e-mail from mouser. If you've ever gotten one from him then you can take a look at that to see what mouser usually does.

7174

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by Deozaan on March 21, 2009, 08:50 PM »

does anyone have any ideas for a gui/workflow that would allow people to decide how to be handle the idea of having multiple releases of a program corresponding to stable/beta versions?  how to present the info to user? how to let user say which they want to be notified about, etc.

-mouser (March 21, 2009, 07:48 PM)

I think a simple checkbox in the options would be enough to allow the user to decide if they want to keep track of beta releases. Something like:

[] Let me know about beta releases. NOTE: These might be unstable and buggy.

Or it might be a good idea to allow the user to select individually (per program) whether or not to check for betas. In that case you'd need to ask somewhere else and store the choice somewhere so that it is remembered between updates That is, the .dcupdate file won't be a good place to store whether or not betas should be checked because each time you update the app it will replace the .dcupdate file.

And then perhaps the .dcupdate file will contain info about where to find betas and the server.xml file will have an xml tag to indicate stable or not. Though it would probably be better to default to stable (omitting the tag means it is stable) and only require extra stuff for betas.

Is this the kind of information you're asking about?

7175

Living Room / Re: Dual XP Home start up screen

« Last post by Deozaan on March 21, 2009, 08:46 PM »

This is how you can reduce or remove the dual boot delay:

WARNING: MESSING AROUND WITH THIS STUFF COULD CAUSE PROBLEMS. DON'T DO IT IF YOU'RE UNSURE.

1) Go to Start -> Run and type in "msconfig" (no quotes) and click Run.

2) Switch to the BOOT.INI tab. You'll see a "Timeout: 30 sec." option. Change the number of seconds to whatever you like.

3) Press OK. It may or may not make you reboot at that time. Either way, the next time you reboot it should only delay the number of seconds you entered in there.