Recent Posts

7826

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 18, 2011, 08:10 AM »

Well, it looks like the free one doesn't work for mixed assemblies. I've posted here: http://forum.enigmap...c.php?f=20&t=807 --We'll see what happens.

Still have the other one to try out.

-Renegade (April 16, 2011, 07:10 AM)

Well, to follow up, the guys a f***ing star! Seriously. The developer is amazing. He's followed up with information and checked the files I sent. Now, the problem isn't solved, but jeez... The developer is trying! That's a lot more than you get from most companies.

Check the forum link in the quote above -- you'll see what I mean.

7827

General Software Discussion / Re: Free anonymous web pages

« Last post by Renegade on April 18, 2011, 05:44 AM »

Look what I did ma! All by myself~! http://pastehtml.com/view/1e4pvab.html

That actually is pretty nifty. I can see that being very useful for a lot of people.

7828

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 4: Resizable Textareas Out-Of-The-Box

« Last post by Renegade on April 17, 2011, 10:10 PM »

Is it a part of the HTML5 spec?

7829

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Compare dictionary (text) files and remove duplicate entries

« Last post by Renegade on April 17, 2011, 07:41 PM »

I can't imagine how you could possibly get a "dictionary" that's 40 or 50GB. That's more than enough for every word in every language. Including Klingon.

It must be almost entirely duplicates. Or it's not a dictionary in the traditional sense. Is it an actual dictionary, with definitions, or a word list? It sounds like a word list for dictionary attacks.

7830

Living Room / Re: The anti-piracy lobby makes a convincing argument

« Last post by Renegade on April 17, 2011, 06:07 PM »

I've always marvelled at the effectiveness of the anti-piracy campaign. Here's another gem they can be proud of.

P.S. - Bonus points for anyone who knows which software the guy in the video is using.

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=KPNL82EY1dY

-nosh (April 17, 2011, 12:53 PM)

While the production value is excellent, which is to be expected, the messaging is kind of dumb.

The fact is that broadband is much faster, so it's faster to download a video from a bittorrent or buy a movie from a legitimate online store than it is to go to the store and buy a DVD.

I have "real" DVDs that I've gone to play and... ooops... They don't work! Because of a macrovision screwup or region coding problems... This is what I get for buying "real" DVDs? Problems?

Piracy is a problem, but they need to stop being wankers about distribution and pricing and make them broadly available for online downloading. iTunes isn't the answer. They should have a generic store setup with a decent API and a good CDN (Akamai) then let people set up online stores to sell. Meh... whatever. I don't think I'm the only one that has lost all respect for the RIAA/MPAA. Heck, charge for the movie and a "delivery fee" for the bandwidth to download it. But pleeeeeeaaassseee... Get into the modern world...

I've stopped buying anything from iTunes anymore. Now, I might browse in iTunes (rarely), but I buy DVDs in the store because they're the same price, and I have the option to rip them to non-f****d formats on disk that are more reliable.

7831

Developer's Corner / Re: A very good (and free) captcha class in PHP (Recommendation)

« Last post by Renegade on April 16, 2011, 12:44 PM »

Rather than using annoying captchas why not have a random general knowledge question from a list. Choose one word answer questions that anyone with half a brain knows the answer to but bots can't do. Helps the visually impaired than because they can use a screen reader to work out what is required!

-Carol Haynes (April 16, 2011, 12:13 PM)

But what would that be?

The problem is that problems like that (e.g. CAPTCHAs) are more easily solved by computers.

Lists are easily broken.

7832

Developer's Corner / Re: A very good (and free) captcha class in PHP (Recommendation)

« Last post by Renegade on April 16, 2011, 10:47 AM »

I don't care for readers if they can't understand my trouble with bots and russian captcha breaker sites. I need to use captcha if captcha breaker sites or xrummer or similar sites hurt my blog or site. Economic times are very hard, if i have to choose between captcha and readers, my vote goes to captcha. Readers (which are not converting for me in terms of any value) are not helping me in any way. I have to sort spam and server load if i don't pay attention to spam bots or manual spammers. So i'm with captcha, as long as it gives me result.

-mahesh2k (April 16, 2011, 07:03 AM)

I'm not sure I know what you mean there.

7833

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 16, 2011, 09:41 AM »

Virtualization is such a fluff word these days, and their "technology" page is very brief - but it seems like they're doing #2 from my post above. Be sure to test extensively on various Windows platforms... the base code to skip Windows PE-executable/DLL loader and do your own is relatively easy, but there's craploads of special case stuff to handle, and you need to hook a lot of API functions in the manually loaded image - and getting all that code right is not trivial.

-f0dder (April 16, 2011, 08:58 AM)

All the more reason to buy rather than build!

7834

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 16, 2011, 07:27 AM »

Nope. Doesn't seem to work for mixed assemblies.

I didn't try with pure native or pure .NET.

Oh well. Otherwise, it looks like a good product. Just not what I was looking for.

7835

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 16, 2011, 07:10 AM »

Well, it looks like the free one doesn't work for mixed assemblies. I've posted here: http://forum.enigmap...c.php?f=20&t=807 --We'll see what happens.

Still have the other one to try out.

7836

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 16, 2011, 06:38 AM »

I've only given this a cursory try, but Enigma Virtual Box is similar and free.  There's an enhanced paid version.

Since I read this thread it prompted me to visit the site again. Seems v. 2.0 of EVB was just released on the 14th:

http://www.enigmapro...tor.com/en/home.html

The "Protector" version claims .NET support and sells for $149 USD for single user license. I played around a bit with the free version. It was easy to use.  Rather like a simple installer wrapper app.

-MilesAhead (April 16, 2011, 01:30 AM)

Nice find! I've not tried it yet, but I'll give it a spin and post back what I find.

Thanks!

7837

Developer's Corner / Re: A very good (and free) captcha class in PHP (Recommendation)

« Last post by Renegade on April 16, 2011, 01:28 AM »

I should apologize for this post in advance. I know, you think you have found a very good thing, but I do not believe there is or ever will be a "good" captcha. They are a major annoyance for end users. Putting them on your web site is like saying "I hate you" to your visitors. Spam is your problem, you should solve it. It is not your visitor's problem. They don't care.

I have 0 captchas on my site and the level of spam I am getting is negligible. It is because my forms are protected by other means. I use invisible codes that expire after some time, I do not have the form source code in the html, but use javascript to display it. I submit the forms via ajax. This improves the user experience and prevents spam.

Google for "without captchas" and you'll get a lot of resources. It takes more time to build a site without captchas, but it is worth it.

-vlastimil (April 15, 2011, 03:45 AM)

Custom solutions always work better because any solution that gains any kind of popularity is targeted by spammers.

Form protection with custom IDs and names is fairly easy to break though. Codes are the same. I came across that on one site I was doing some automation with. It took a few extra minutes to get things working.

But using JavaScript and AJAX is a good deal better to protect things. It forces you to check the rendered document, which is more difficult than simply walking the DOM to find things.

+1 for no CAPTCHAs. They're simply horrible to deal with. I've been at sites that I couldn't figure out the CAPTCHA for. Not fun.

7838

Living Room / Re: US rolls out Internet Identity Plan

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 10:33 PM »

the government wants to squelch any talk of a "national Internet ID card" and emphasize that the plan will be both voluntary and led by the private sector.

They're treading very lightly as well.

7839

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 09:46 PM »

Check here:

http://boxedapp.com/technology.html

7840

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 09:37 PM »

Hrm, if it supports both .NET assemblies and native DLLs, it has to either

1) unbundle the files to %TEMP% or whereever.
2) use manually coded and potentially fragile routines to load the native assemblies.

If the product does #1, please don't use it for your end-users' sake. Temp files == slow, and can trigger antivirus programs in the depressing way. If it's #2, test the result carefully across a wide range of Windows versions.

-f0dder (April 15, 2011, 06:47 PM)

It's virtualization. It loads DLLs into memory, then accesses them from there.

7841

Living Room / Re: Good blog for software developers to follow

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 07:53 AM »

Oddly named as they have 3 or 4 per day, but nevertheless, lots of good stuff there.

Again, thanks for sharing that!

7842

Living Room / Re: Photos of the Surprise gifts I won from the April Giveaway

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 07:40 AM »

you might find something interesting

-mouser (April 14, 2011, 04:28 PM)

Didn't you promise not to fudge this?

-cranioscopical (April 14, 2011, 04:53 PM)

mmmmm fudge....

-tomos (April 14, 2011, 05:05 PM)

Reminds me...

7843

Living Room / Re: When Growing Online Pressures Backfire

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 07:30 AM »

Erm, yes. It was a revelation to my young idealistic naive unemployed self that the real world works on the principle of "just good enough". And quite right too; otherwise nothing would ever be "completed".

I wish I'd accepted this fundamental truth at an earlier age.

-nudone (April 15, 2011, 02:26 AM)

+1 w/nudone.

"Not everything worth doing is worth doing well" was the hardest work lesson I ever had to learn.

-40hz (April 15, 2011, 02:49 AM)

Very much agreed.

Success incorporates 2 very important attitudes:

1) Can do!
2) That'll do!


I think I kind of monkeyed up what I wanted to say in the original post... Oh well. This is one direction anyways~!

7844

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 07:25 AM »

Checked:

http://www.infraluti...viewtopic.php?t=1928

No. Infralution's .NET Encryptor only does .NET assemblies.

So, that leaves BoxedApp at the top of my list so far.

7845

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 07:15 AM »

Hey! Renegade's got a new avatar. Like it!

Thx for the heads up too!

-40hz (April 15, 2011, 04:03 AM)

Thanks! It was one of those pieces of artwork that I bought while doing Super Simple. It was just so cute.

But do check out that BoxedApp. It's slick.

It's 300 Euro, but really, for that kind of software? That's cheap!

Of course, if you only need to merge .NET assemblies, then ILMerge.exe is the way to go.

Incidentally, Infralution's .NET Encryptor packs assemblies together, but I don't know if it will do mixed... I should check...

7846

Living Room / Re: Old Computer Ads - This is way cool!

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 07:11 AM »

They're trying to trademark "app store". Jeez... Excuse me while I go out and patent breathing...

7847

Living Room / When Growing Online Pressures Backfire

« Last post by Renegade on April 15, 2011, 12:02 AM »

I'm looking for camera lenses, and this is one that I checked out:

http://www.sigmaphot...-apo-dg-os-hsm-sigma

(But only because I found it somewhere for almost half price.)

Now, there's a video from a Sigma tech rep there, and man... Painful...

She's obviously not comfortable with the taping, and the video really isn't doing much justice to the product. There a reason for hiring actors and voice actors: the rest of us tend to bugger it up with stuttering, pauses, bad intonation, etc.

It seems like there's always more and more pressure from technology to "do things", but, a few things seem to get lost in the message.

It's really hard to get some things done properly.

Does anyone get those kinds of pressures at work? Where you're asked to do things that you *can* get done, but you know it won't be quite right? Ever have to settle for "good enough"?

7848

Living Room / Re: Salaries of Charity CEOs

« Last post by Renegade on April 14, 2011, 10:47 PM »

@cranioscopical:
Why limit that rule to charities only?

-Shades (April 14, 2011, 10:36 PM)

Why limit it to CEOs only?

Muahahahah~!

7849

Developer's Corner / Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Renegade on April 14, 2011, 10:25 PM »

This might be a useful heads-up for some people.

http://boxedapp.com/



It lets you create a single EXE file from multiple and mixed DLLs, so you can have a .NET program that pulls in native DLLs, but package it all as a single EXE.

BoxedApp Packer is a developer utility for converting your regular full-fledged applications to single self-sustaining executable files that don't require the installation in order to be run. That literally means that you can squeeze all ActiveX controls, dynamic libraries, and just all kinds of files that your original application depends on into a single executable file and run it just as if that was a regular application installed the regular way...

I've given it a quick few tests, and it pans out. Works very nicely.

Now, you can't use it for something like this call:

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("blah.exe");

But boohoo. Everything else seems pretty slick.

7850

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY MUGs

« Last post by Renegade on April 14, 2011, 09:52 PM »

I think we need to adopt a new rule: you can't receive a new mug (for a new event) until you post a photo with the previous one.

-mouser (March 18, 2011, 02:51 AM)

Sigh... That's not much of a motivation.

I received official notice from my wife that my NANY mug is no longer my NANY mug!