Recent Posts

8176

Developer's Corner / Re: PowerShell Analyzer - Free IDE and testing framework for Power Shell

« Last post by wraith808 on June 17, 2011, 07:40 AM »

This software is no longer available, does anyone have a mirror?

-justice (June 17, 2011, 04:02 AM)

It's not quite up to date (executables from 2008) but the original site is still available. The blog is dead though.

Guess PowerGUI is a better choice now

-Ath (June 17, 2011, 06:46 AM)

Last update to the blog was in april, so I wouldn't pronounce it dead yet...

8177

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of VistaDB

« Last post by wraith808 on June 15, 2011, 11:11 PM »

(Completed Review and Assessment)

8178

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by wraith808 on June 14, 2011, 09:11 PM »

Many have offered solutions, just none that have been accepted by the proponents of DRM.

-steeladept (June 14, 2011, 07:34 PM)

What are these solutions? I've never defended DRM, but I still don't see an alternative for ebook authors. How do you generate a reliable income stream for ebook authors without some form of DRM (and copy protection falls under the banner of DRM)?

-johnk (June 14, 2011, 08:17 PM)

Manning.com and Oreilly.com have done away with DRM, and they don't seem to be hurting...  Also DriveThruRPG.com and IndiePressRevolution.com.  I think you can make money, you just have to be willing to take the chance.  And that's what it comes down to IMO.  Be willing to trust your potential customers, or hold on to the fear that you won't make money.

8179

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by wraith808 on June 14, 2011, 06:04 PM »

The lion's share of the money still goes to the publishers

-40hz (June 13, 2011, 07:24 PM)

Not true -- the biggest share goes to the retailer.

-johnk (June 14, 2011, 05:38 PM)

Depends on the publisher and the market and whether you are considered a distributor or not.  I know that in most science fiction/fantasy and gaming books that's not true from experience.

8180

General Software Discussion / Re: iBooks vs Stanza displaying an epub on iPod Touch/iPhone

« Last post by wraith808 on June 14, 2011, 02:10 PM »

PDF

It's not long lines by themselves, AFAIK, but the formatting of long lines.

-wraith808 (June 09, 2011, 04:27 PM)

I've wondered what you meant by this. I think you are saying we are currently at the mercy of how the epub author and the epub software choose to format the lines. Hypothetically, the author can take steps to make sure the lines are interpreted correctly on all readers. I haven't had any luck to find anything like an epub validator to make sure this doesn't happen.

-daddydave (June 14, 2011, 12:18 PM)

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but yes, you interpreted my meaning correctly.  I'm not sure how many ways you can create an e-pub, but I've seen varying formatting based upon where I obtained the document from, and I have seen code format correctly on my iPhone, iPad, and on both.  And issues on one or the other.  So yes, I think it's a source translation issue.

8181

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by wraith808 on June 13, 2011, 06:38 PM »

The only reason eBooks can't be used in the same way is that publishers don't allow it - there is nothing to stop Kindle or any other book reader from removing rights from a book while it is lent to a friend - who temporarily inherits the rights until the book is returned. It is just pure greed on the part of publishing houses - author's only get a tiny, and dwindling, proportion of the book cover price. The only motivation for publishers is greed - that is why eBooks often cost more than printed editions on Amazon even though the publisher overheads are minimal in the eBook world.

-Carol Haynes (June 13, 2011, 06:36 PM)

Especially looking at the capabilities of the Nook to lend...  and how the publishers have marginalized that.

8182

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by wraith808 on June 13, 2011, 06:37 PM »

The big fat problem with Kindle is a word I dislike most when it comes to formats: proprietary.

-zridling (June 13, 2011, 03:45 PM)

I don't understand the debate about the "proprietary" nature of the Kindle. The Kindle is an e-reader, and a top-class one at that. You can load it with thousands of books and documents without ever buying an ebook in a proprietary format. That's how I use it anyway, and many others do likewise.

-johnk (June 13, 2011, 05:59 PM)

Agreed.  I don't think there is an e-book reader that reads *only* proprietary formats.  Heck, even iBooks allows you sideload other formats.

Most musicians make music because they enjoy it, and some of them hope to make some kind of living from it through live performance. Most writers write for money, plain and simple. Without DRM, the vast majority of people will not pay for books, just as very few people under 30 pay for recorded music.

I don't think DRM will survive, but I don't see how authors will be paid, and I don't see how books will be written, aside from the small number of fiction writers who do it for love.

-johnk (June 13, 2011, 05:59 PM)

I think that until you've written, you tend to undervalue the cost of words.  It's the same with music, to a large extent.  And software, to a lesser extent.  It's the nature of the beast.

But I agree that DRM will not survive.  I just wish that the publishers could see that *now* and not make the *same* sort of bad decisions the music industry has made.

8183

General Software Discussion / Re: Automatic document creation. How?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 13, 2011, 06:32 PM »

I guess I've just never actually seen a good Access based application. *Shrug*

-Stoic Joker (June 13, 2011, 06:12 PM)

I've seen a couple of good ones.  The problem is, with any enterprise, once something is *good* they want *better*.  Which in most cases means *bigger*.  The road to hell, and all that...

8184

General Software Discussion / Re: Automatic document creation. How?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 13, 2011, 04:54 PM »

Access with an Access backend (mdb) is wonderful for single person apps and good for small workgroups with a handful (say, less than 20) of simultaneous users.  Access as a front-end to SQL server or Oracle is a wonderful tool, plain and simple.

<snip />

For the sorts of things that superboyac is inquiring about, Access is like a dream come true.

Whew, sorry for such lengthy opinionating! 

-JohnFredC (June 13, 2011, 04:29 PM)

We'll have to agree to disagree on that point.  I've been around the block a few times myself, and have dealt with a variety of situations from access being used as a back-end, to access being used as a front end for SQL Server, Oracle, and Sybase (you want to talk about a nightmare?  Access+Sybase.  Actually, anything and Sybase... but that's a different discussion).  And in my experience, Access and enterprise has been a headache.  Admittedly, that was a while ago.  But from a speed and configuration perspective, and getting around problems that enterprise solutions enabled me to solve more easily, Access never did me any favors.

8185

General Software Discussion / Re: Automatic document creation. How?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 13, 2011, 03:37 PM »

I spent 15 years of my professional life making my entire living as an independent Access developer so please bear with me.

No offense intended to anyone here, but those who poo-poo Access probably haven't used it professionally.

-JohnFredC (June 13, 2011, 07:02 AM)

Heh.  I've used it more than I'd wish professionally, and I can say that a good 40%+ of my time (and I'm being generous) was spent getting around limitations of it, whether with pure access development, or using access as a back end.  While it's true that some of my distaste is rooted in ODBC, Access can IMO be very easily misused.  That's not to say that with help it couldn't be a platform for the project presented here, but IME, outside of small-scale data entry projects, you quickly run up against it's limitations.  I've always thought this was the reason that MS has been marginalizing it as of late- because with misuse, it becomes a PR nightmare.

8186

Developer's Corner / Re: NetRexx is now free and open source courtesy of IBM

« Last post by wraith808 on June 13, 2011, 02:22 PM »

Blast from the past.  I haven't kept up with Rexx since my OS/2 days...

8187

General Software Discussion / Re: Need Help figuring out what personal wiki software fits my needs

« Last post by wraith808 on June 13, 2011, 10:43 AM »

^ Thanks!  I'd actually never heard of that...

8188

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: Newsletter for May 5th, 2011 - "Calming Breeze"

« Last post by wraith808 on June 12, 2011, 11:07 PM »

I did too? 

8189

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by wraith808 on June 12, 2011, 10:27 AM »

The device is still capable of tying personally identifiable information about you to the book, and remotely deleting or modifying it. There are no laws that I'm aware of that would keep Amazon, or any other company, from doing either of these things, or simply recording your behavior quietly, as the collected data awaits a sales opportunity or subpoena. Can't do this on a massive scale with physical books.

-doctorfrog (June 11, 2011, 11:29 PM)

There are outlets other than b&n and amazon for purchasing non-drm books.  And if one of them actually modified something on the device that you didn't purchase from them, that would be a very bad thing for them (and pretty stupid also, as most would have backups - or in the case of a couple of outlets you can re-download).

-wraith808 (June 12, 2011, 08:50 AM)

Which sites do you know of? I am always looking for some good non-drm sites to buy ebooks for my kindle.

-Josh (June 12, 2011, 09:38 AM)

http://www.fictionwise.com (a shadow of their former self since b&n bought them... but still have multiformat non-drm books)
http://www.ereader.com (basically a different view of fictionwise.com in my experience)
http://www.fsand.com (science fiction and fantasy)
http://www.angryrobotstore.com/ (science fiction and fantasy - no kindle support, but they recommend using calibre to convert)
http://www.baen.com/ (one(?) of the only publishers that I know of to get on the non-drm ebook bandwagon - sci-fi and fantasy)
http://www.webscription.net (baen uses them for distribution, though they have publishers other than baen)
http://www.smashwords.com/ (indie authors and publishers)

MobileRead Wiki also has a list, though I haven't tried any of them not listed above.

8190

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by wraith808 on June 12, 2011, 08:50 AM »

The device is still capable of tying personally identifiable information about you to the book, and remotely deleting or modifying it. There are no laws that I'm aware of that would keep Amazon, or any other company, from doing either of these things, or simply recording your behavior quietly, as the collected data awaits a sales opportunity or subpoena. Can't do this on a massive scale with physical books.

-doctorfrog (June 11, 2011, 11:29 PM)

There are outlets other than b&n and amazon for purchasing non-drm books.  And if one of them actually modified something on the device that you didn't purchase from them, that would be a very bad thing for them (and pretty stupid also, as most would have backups - or in the case of a couple of outlets you can re-download).

8191

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for advice, tips, wisdom: Adding my 1st Mac into the [tech] family...

« Last post by wraith808 on June 11, 2011, 04:37 PM »

it should make for an excellent cautionary tail.

-Stoic Joker (June 11, 2011, 04:25 PM)

Already looking at it as demonic, eh?

8192

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for advice, tips, wisdom: Adding my 1st Mac into the [tech] family...

« Last post by wraith808 on June 10, 2011, 02:45 PM »

I was thinking that the first piece of advice would be... don't?

8193

General Software Discussion / Re: iBooks vs Stanza displaying an epub on iPod Touch/iPhone

« Last post by wraith808 on June 09, 2011, 04:27 PM »

The ebook is Modern Perl, which is provided by the author in epub format as well as PDF. Notice how Stanza cuts off the long lines, which is a known issue with Stanza. However iBooks is painfully slow on my iPod Touch and is generally considered inferior for good reason. Yet it wraps the whole line and displays it.

-daddydave (June 09, 2011, 03:08 PM)

It's not long lines by themselves, AFAIK, but the formatting of long lines.  I haven't really had that problem with my technical books for that reason.

8194

Living Room / Re: Tablet Discussion - in the market to buy

« Last post by wraith808 on June 09, 2011, 10:46 AM »

And that's what I get:
 (see attachment in previous post)

-phitsc (June 09, 2011, 05:04 AM)

Wow. Crazy!

-Deozaan (June 09, 2011, 06:53 AM)

Definitely crazy.  Here's what I see:


I wonder if Amazon Prime makes a difference in Kindle prices...

My dream is that one day Safari Books will add a 3 or 5-slot bookshelf subscription level at no more than $10 per month (a little less than half the 10-slot level).  Combine that with some improvements to their mobile and offline support and I wouldn't hesitate to subscribe.

It's not that the 10-slot level isn't a good deal, but it's wasteful for my needs - like always ordering a foot-long sub but never eating more than 6".

-TheQwerty (June 09, 2011, 06:48 AM)

I have a free offer for Safari for a 45 day trial with Effective C#... how is it?  I've always brushed it off because I can't see renting books.  But looking at it closer, I guess it would make sense.  I have so many outdated books because of the rate of technology changing, so maybe I need to change my view of things.  Can you only see them on the website?  So can you use them if you're offline?

And yes, I use a variety of outlets for getting books these days. O'Reilly and Manning are my two go-to's for this kind of stuff.

8195

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 08, 2011, 06:17 PM »

I've used Tortoise SVN with the Express editions of Visual C#.  Can Mercurial or GIT either one be used with these Express versions, or do they only function with the Professional/Enterprise versions of the Visual Studio IDE?

-kyrathaba (June 08, 2011, 05:31 PM)

Both of them operate on the files, so the version of VS shouldn't influence whether they work.  If you're talking about integration with the IDE, that's a different story- you can browse the add-ons in VS to find the git-extensions and see if you can install the SC provider.

8196

Living Room / Re: Tablet Discussion - in the market to buy

« Last post by wraith808 on June 08, 2011, 03:36 PM »

For the books I've been buying recently the prices between the two are in parity, though admittedly I have noticed that in many other cases B&N prices tend to be a little more.  And often reference books are moronically priced (on both stores) - for a while I didn't believe anyone at Wrox had a brain because their e-books were only available at prices higher than the dead tree versions' list-prices and came with stupid restrictions on number of downloads and devices.

Personally, the difference has always been acceptable to me since B&N are selling me a less restrictive, but still stupid, DRM format.  My problem with the Kindle has always been their proprietary format platform lock-in.

That said, I find the B&N situation extremely frustrating since it should mean they are in competition with the Sony and Google bookstores which use the same format, and I think that should drive prices down.  Though, I imagine part of the problem is their contracts all ensure they get the lowest price and Amazon can afford to take a bigger loss.

-TheQwerty (June 08, 2011, 08:29 AM)

Definitely agree on the last point.  And to give an example of what I'm talking about in lack of parity- four books that I just bought:
1. Effective C# - Kindle $17.59, Nook $38.39
2. WPF - Kindle $31.18, Nook $43.99
3. Business Practices for Photographers - Kindle $18.58, Nook $19.24
4. C# 2010 for Programmers - Kindle $26.39, Nook $38.39

And I definitely do agree that Wrox is out of their mind in regards to hardcopy vs. electronic prices.

8197

General Software Discussion / Re: Web vs. Device?

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

I'd agree with your assessment Ren- at least until you decide on a device.  One of the main factors influencing my decision not to get out of the iOS garden is now the investment in apps that I have. 

8198

Living Room / Re: Tablet Discussion - in the market to buy

« Last post by wraith808 on June 08, 2011, 07:30 AM »

The original nook was a bit of a crazy experiment (those dual screens) but the e-ink is great for reading and nothing else.  The new nook looks to be getting some pretty glowing reviews, and it's been rooted, but I haven't read much about the experience beyond books.

I got the nook Color only because of the rooting community, and a bit of jealousy after getting my mother one for Christmas.  She likes it but she's only using it for reading.  I liked it as my first tablet, but since I still wanted to use the stock ROM there were quite a few quirks in using it that way.  If you root it and put Cyanogenmod and the nook app on it, you probably end up with a better experience, but you lose some of the stock features (kids books and until recently magazines).

-TheQwerty (June 08, 2011, 06:26 AM)

I was all over the nook, and planning to get my daughter one (I convinced her that digital didn't *have* to replace dead tree- that she could get both...)

But recently, I started to look at prices- and Barnes & Noble might price themselves out of this if they aren't careful.  At first, I was buying because that was the format I already had- but now, comparing to Amazon, it seems that in *every* case, the price at B&N is quite a bit higher than the price at Amazon for the digital formats- even approaching hardcopy prices.  So I'm having a bit of a crisis in e-reading right now.

8199

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 07, 2011, 11:25 PM »

Thanks for your help with this.  I'm going to try to set it up tomorrow.

8200

Living Room / Re: Tablet Discussion - in the market to buy

« Last post by wraith808 on June 07, 2011, 09:57 PM »

Loudly blaring Big Band music with no volume control! ...They should be shot, hacked, and then beaten to death in an Alley just for that. I hit the mute button on the page, and it un-muted itself at the end so I got to suffer the last blasted note of the sound track. Their marketing department should be sterilized immediately.

-Stoic Joker (June 07, 2011, 08:47 PM)

This!