Recent Posts

7701

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft goes all Apple with a Kill Switch for Apps under Win8

« Last post by wraith808 on December 08, 2011, 10:26 PM »

It's all a matter of credibility and trust.  And in this area, it seems that Apple actually has been more responsible than Google, i.e. Google has used their kill switch *multiple* times, and Apple has *never* used theirs.  If you have it for security concerns and manage it well, i.e. you have a pretty solid vetting system in your store, and you only use it if its a clear and present danger to the users, I can see this as useful.

Also, note that this is *only* for stuffs sold through their store from what I understand.  If you install software as normal, this doesn't apply.

7702

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by wraith808 on December 08, 2011, 10:23 PM »

So the Nook (not the Kindle) sounded like a really good idea - for kids at any rate. I asked my daughter Lily (aged 10) about it and she's mulling it over. She and I went out a couple of days ago to a secondhand bookstore and a children's bookstore (new books) and she bought a whole stack of real hardback and paperback books with her birthday money. I idly wondered at the time whether some of these might be available as ebooks.

-IainB (December 08, 2011, 09:31 PM)

My daughter is 10 also, and the books that she was anticipating are all on the Nook Color.  One of the things that I still don't like about ebooks is the fact that you can't get them used.  I'd understand it to a certain extent if they cost less than dead tree pubs, but they don't, so they really need to put a way in to transfer DRM.  They won't, of course- they don't like the used book market either.  Another thing I very much don't like now with the way that the book market has shaken out is that eBooks are never on sale anymore.  I built up my considerable collection at fictionwise.com with their sales and their book club.  I miss that.

On another topic, as I said above, I like this topic (Amazon and publishers) and I like the ebook topic in general.  However, this particular topic is so fragmented that when it comes up in your unread topics, you don't know what to expect, and the conversations are very interweaved and especially later if someone peruses it or tries to find something, there really won't be a good way.  Is it possible to separate these into topics in the future, or just make it obvious that this is a mish mash of information?

7703

Living Room / Re: What were these architects thinking?

« Last post by wraith808 on December 08, 2011, 05:06 PM »

Like someone said in the comments- reminds me of Minecraft more than anything else.

7704

Living Room / Re: What were these architects thinking?

« Last post by wraith808 on December 08, 2011, 05:02 PM »

They were thinking that they were designing a building for Seoul, South Korea, almost 7,000 miles from New York?  I could see if these were in downtown Manhattan, or even Los Angeles, CA, or anywhere in between.  But half way around the world?  Really?

7705

Living Room / Re: The WET Cart - Coders beware, you might cry

« Last post by wraith808 on December 08, 2011, 04:57 PM »

I cried laughing!   Especially at the comments... and the google comments about the DRY Principle... made my day!

7706

Living Room / Re: Steam: Savior or Slayer of PC Gaming?

« Last post by wraith808 on December 07, 2011, 10:43 AM »

Steam is a mixed bag - but my main beef with it is that when I am somewhere with no internet connection I have almost never managed to play my games.

-iphigenie (December 07, 2011, 08:36 AM)

I've never had this problem.  Are you aware that you will be going somewhere and able to start it offline before you go?  Not ideal, but I know that works no matter what.

7707

Living Room / Re: Paypal confusion - it not using my credit balance.

« Last post by wraith808 on December 07, 2011, 07:46 AM »

I didn't think it was a bug or anything- I was wondering what the reasoning was behind not letting non-US users convert their currencies.  Like I said, it works in the U.S., and they have charged me conversion fees before.

7708

General Software Discussion / Re: software/script/code/macro repositories

« Last post by wraith808 on December 06, 2011, 10:20 PM »

http://snipplr.com is a good place to find code/scripts.

7709

Living Room / Re: Paypal confusion - it not using my credit balance.

« Last post by wraith808 on December 06, 2011, 02:56 PM »

I wonder what the reasoning behind that is?

7710

Living Room / Paypal vs. Regretsy

« Last post by wraith808 on December 06, 2011, 02:49 PM »

Regretsy is a sort of fail blog for Etsy that posts cynical snark about the crafts presented there.  Right or wrong on that point, they give a lot to charity, and decided to do a charity drive at Christmas.  But apparently Paypal likes cats more than children, at least from the customer service SNAFU that Paypal started.

CATS 1, KIDS 0

That started a PR nightmare of internet proportions, especially when Paypal's policies on the issue were dissected in-depth in a rational manner on a blog.

Apparently, the internets can affect corporate actions, because Paypal backed down.

But yeah, this puts Paypal more firmly in the evil column, even though most of us still use it because it's the most convenient choice out there.

7711

General Software Discussion / Re: Logging out of Facebook is not enough

« Last post by wraith808 on December 06, 2011, 10:42 AM »

I wonder if incognito mode in Chrome is enough?  I only visit facebook to play a game that's not outside of facebook... 

7712

Living Room / Re: Paypal confusion - it not using my credit balance.

« Last post by wraith808 on December 06, 2011, 07:19 AM »

Yor paypal balance must be higher than the money you are paying out so there is no mention about a 'alternative payment method'.

-justice (December 06, 2011, 07:11 AM)

So they force paypal to use credit card instead of your paypal balance for payments. Therefore the money becomes traceable in your country as well, in addition to being transparent to the government of Hong Kong.

-eleman (December 06, 2011, 06:12 AM)

Neither one of these happens to me; I'm in the U.S., so that could explain it... but this is neither of these is a uniform policy.  Paypal always uses my balance before any of my funding sources, subtracting that amount from the amount to be drafted if necessary.  I can't even tell it to do otherwise.  And if something comes in before my funding source is drafted, that new balance will still be used before the payment source.

7713

Developer's Corner / Re: Indie Game Dev Bundle from Envato

« Last post by wraith808 on December 05, 2011, 11:39 PM »

Thanks!  That's a really good buy!

7714

Developer's Corner / Re: Writing to Form1 textbox from Form2

« Last post by wraith808 on December 05, 2011, 03:43 PM »

I probably should have been clearer about when it's a good/bad idea to do that.

-Renegade (December 04, 2011, 08:32 PM)

Especially since it's in a thread with a question from a design/architecture novice

-f0dder (December 05, 2011, 03:11 PM)

Burn! 

(j/k )

7715

Developer's Corner / Re: Writing to Form1 textbox from Form2

« Last post by wraith808 on December 04, 2011, 08:12 PM »

^ OK.  I can go with that.

7716

Developer's Corner / Re: Writing to Form1 textbox from Form2

« Last post by wraith808 on December 04, 2011, 07:02 PM »

It's kind of abusing the settings, but whatever.

-Renegade (December 04, 2011, 07:31 AM)

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

It creates a large window of exposure, and debugging anything that occurred from that (other than in the simplest case) is going to be a nightmare, IMO.

7717

Living Room / Re: Our own "private" social network

« Last post by wraith808 on December 04, 2011, 05:13 AM »

I would suggest considering BuddyPress, that would be my first consideration but of course it depends on your requirements, expectations and the Drupal familiarity which in my opinion makes some averse to WordPress based stuff 

-rgdot (December 03, 2011, 01:47 PM)

Thanks for the heads up on BuddyPress.  It looks pretty cool, and I think I'm actually going to try that one.

7718

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by wraith808 on December 02, 2011, 07:35 PM »

Maybe these updates need to be in either a news thread, or their own individual thread?  Because a lot of them relate on peripherally to the subject of the thread, and its confusing...

7719

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: BugAid for C# - Add-in for Visual Studio that improves the debugging experience

« Last post by wraith808 on December 02, 2011, 10:22 AM »

I know the feeling
During some time in a big software company, in which I was coding about 2-3 lines a week, I started to get weird hand-shakes. Feeling relieved only after I started coding at home.

-vitalyb (December 02, 2011, 08:52 AM)

And *that's* why I turn down any promotions to management.  No amount of money is worth losing the enjoyment of coding- I've tried it and I don't like it.

But *this* I will be trying as soon as our release is done (don't want to chance any new things on my system at *this* stage )

7720

Developer's Corner / Re: Ribbon UI - is it really THAT good?

« Last post by wraith808 on December 01, 2011, 03:51 PM »

But I've found that once I figure something out in WPF/XAML, the solution is a lot easier to implement, a lot more straightforward, and easier to maintain.

-wraith808 (December 01, 2011, 02:58 PM)

Yup, that, and stick to MVVM.

-Ath (December 01, 2011, 03:06 PM)

MVVM itself is also not a silver bullet, and can be a hindrance in some cases.  All of these things (to steer back on subject), from the ribbon (and other UI elements), to .NET (and other frameworks), to MVVM (and other design patterns) are tools.  And the same tool is not useful in all situations.

7721

Developer's Corner / Re: Ribbon UI - is it really THAT good?

« Last post by wraith808 on December 01, 2011, 02:58 PM »

I do, when a program that used to start inside of a second now takes 10, and when it flickers all the time displaying menus or switching views. When I built my last system 4 years ago, I started from this, then upped some of the specs even more. I later swapped a video card for one that can play most of today's FPS games at max settings. I used to have a WD Raptor drive for the system partition (until it broke). I really don;t like waiting, so I built a system that didn't make me wait too much. And still, both back than and today, .Net apps flicker like heck and perform most operations with the urgency of a lazy iceberg. Granted, sometimes coders do things in ways that are inappropriate for the platform, but their suboptimal code would not cause significant slowdowns in native C++ or a Delphi apps. And still the apps crash just like they used to, except what used to be "invalid pointer operation" is now "reference not set to a valid object instance" or some such. It's the same darn error! For the user, .Net gives no gain whatsoever, but it exacts the very high price in loss of performance.

-tranglos (December 01, 2011, 02:48 PM)

But none of this is a function of .NET.  I used to be a Delphi fanatic also.  And my first forays into .NET were less than stellar, especially because I was converting Delphi apps to C#.  But nothing that you said applies to *all* .NET apps; they're a function of how they're implemented.  I get no flicker in places that I used to have to code around in Delphi/C++ and use less memory in most cases.  It's overkill for some things, but then again, so was Delphi.

...and yes, suboptimal code will slow things down in Delphi.  I've seen it.  I've dealt with it and had to fix it.  As far as the user getting nothing from .NET, it depends on whether the user is paying for development.  When the user is paying for a product, nothing that the product is written in is going to do anything for the user.  But I've found that once I figure something out in WPF/XAML, the solution is a lot easier to implement, a lot more straightforward, and easier to maintain.

7722

Developer's Corner / Re: Ribbon UI - is it really THAT good?

« Last post by wraith808 on December 01, 2011, 02:25 PM »

you can't get to Font or Paragraph properties without those

-tranglos (December 01, 2011, 02:15 PM)

Yes you can.  I know I have, and I'd forgotten that you can click that.  I think the right click menu has it.

UPDATE: I was right... it is the right-click menu.

7723

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2012 Brainstorming, Suggestions, General Discussion

« Last post by wraith808 on December 01, 2011, 01:04 PM »

I put two pledges in this year... I have ideas for 2 more small ones given time: an add-on for RIFT and another desktop gadget for checking RIFT server status and news (they're so easy!)  It just depends on time...

7724

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Canceled NANY 2012 Pledge: Track My Stuff!

« Last post by wraith808 on December 01, 2011, 12:56 PM »

NANY 2012 Entry Information

Application Name	Track My Stuff!
Short Description	Track your items and who you lent them to.
Supported OSes	Windows XP/Vista/7
Setup File	TBA
Description	I have a lot of xbox games because I don't trade them in because I play sporadically.  So when my son's friends come over, they want to borrow games.  I don't mind- but I also don't play enough to notice when they haven't returned them.  This was my solution.
Features	Tracks your items, and who currently has them.  Customizable description fields, and image of item.
Screenshots	Coming Soon
Installation	With .NET 4.0 installed, unzip application to location and run.
Uninstalling	Delete application install location.
Notes	Requires .NET 4.0.

7725

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / NANY 2012 Release: Desktop URL Embed

« Last post by wraith808 on December 01, 2011, 12:51 PM »

NANY 2012 Entry Information

Application Name	Desktop URL Embed
Short Description	Embed the contents of a webpage in the desktop as a gadget
Supported OSes	Windows Vista/7
Setup File	version 1.0.0
Description	Active desktop was supposed to be a big feature on Windows, but it has faded into the annals of history.  Or has it?  It's still there, just not as prevalent.  So when I wanted to embed a webcam view in my Evil Genius desktop setup, I decided to learn about Windows Gadgets...
Features	Embed a URL into your desktop.  Set a refresh if desired and the size of the gadget.
Screenshots
Installation	Double-click the .gadget file.  Allow installation.
Using the application	After installation, the gadget should appear.  Drag the window as desired by the gripper, or click the wrench to adjust the settings.
Uninstalling	Right click on the desktop and select gadgets.  In the window that appears, right click the Desktop URL Embed gadget, and click uninstall.
Notes	Requires IE unfortunately.  The desktop gadget content portion is only IE.