Recent Posts

826

General Software Discussion / Re: Learn how to donate without paying!!

« Last post by timns on December 15, 2010, 04:40 PM »

Or one could simply dip into one's own pocket, send a few bucks and get back to something productive

I cannot help feeling that these companies are using our charitable motivations to build a cheap marketing list for later on.

827

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Color Warlock

« Last post by timns on December 14, 2010, 09:14 PM »

"Hey, nice #9F8170"
"Thanks, I just had it stuffed'  

828

Living Room / Re: Where do you get your news from?

« Last post by timns on December 12, 2010, 05:31 PM »

two things which really grate:

-timns (December 12, 2010, 03:22 PM)

If these are your only beefs, you'd have to give these guys a solid "A" ! 

-AndyM (December 12, 2010, 05:19 PM)

I know, I know. I must be getting old and crotchety... 

Thanks for the other suggestions folks - I'll 'try a few sites out' over the coming days.

829

Living Room / Re: Where do you get your news from?

« Last post by timns on December 12, 2010, 04:08 PM »

I'd guess the speech marks are to show they're quoting somebody, which will often mean quoting hype.  So, it's perhaps a word to the wise that the quoted comment should be taken with a big pinch of salt.

-rjbull (December 12, 2010, 03:47 PM)

I'm sure you're right. But I would like to get some danged facts in that case, not conjecture dressed up as real news. For a long time I had a contract with one of the big news agencies up in London and it was often quite shocking to see real news come in, and then a few minutes later hear how it'd been overdressed by the 'reporters' (sic) who clearly felt that things needed juicing up a bit!

830

Living Room / Where do you get your news from?

« Last post by timns on December 12, 2010, 03:22 PM »

I use http://news.bbc.co.uk which seems to give reasonably solid coverage, but they do two things which really grate:

1. They run ads! The BBC is supposed to be funded by UK TV license fee payers
2. Use of speech marks around 'everything'. Feels like every headline has to have gratuitous apostrophes 'left, right and centre'

Example: Kosovo's PM 'ahead' in election.

'ahead'? he's either AHEAD or NOT. Ugh.

So: where else is going to give me good, balanced reporting on current events?

831

Living Room / Re: I just gotta vent

« Last post by timns on December 11, 2010, 02:56 PM »

Turn on Quick Edit Mode under Properties->Options then you only need to right-click in the window to paste.  To copy text, left-click drag-select, (ie. highlight), then right-click.

The almost absolute first thing I do on a new install

-4wd (December 11, 2010, 02:46 PM)

Nice. Live and learn eh?

Thanks. 

832

Living Room / Re: I just gotta vent

« Last post by timns on December 11, 2010, 01:16 PM »

Don't MS have some sort of style guide for menu layouts?

I mean, ok, it happens because I wave the mouse around wildly and click randomly, but come on...

833

Living Room / I just gotta vent

« Last post by timns on December 11, 2010, 01:05 PM »

In the name of all that's holy, who put 'Close' next to 'Edit' in the cmd window's menu? What's 'Close' even DOING in the MIDDLE of the menu? 

Sweet cracker sandwich! Just closed two windows in a row when trying to paste... 

834

General Software Discussion / Re: slock - anyone using it still?

« Last post by timns on December 10, 2010, 09:52 AM »

Ah Mr f0dder, thank you. No, I have only run this image on one of the dev machines here. I'll have to stick the image on an old portable drive and see if it'll launch from other VB's too.

Reasonably confident that we're ok, but you're right: one needs to be sure.

835

General Software Discussion / Re: slock - anyone using it still?

« Last post by timns on December 09, 2010, 10:12 PM »

Actually, that's quite interesting - doesn't that imply that registration is not tied to hardware IDs?

As such, you should be able to extract whatever method it uses to store the registration info and that should enable you to install it on any machine, (if you can be bothered now you have a working solution, that is).

-4wd (December 09, 2010, 10:03 PM)

It comes up with a whiny message about the hardware having changed, but then lets you in... not very impressive IMHO, but thank god it's got that little loophole. I just tried the same trick with our own software, but that's more militant and refuses to run.

836

General Software Discussion / Re: slock - anyone using it still?

« Last post by timns on December 09, 2010, 06:58 PM »

Ok - I cloned the disk, and after only an hour or so of repair-bsod-repair again-bsod-repair-etc etc. I now have a working VirtualBox version of our ailing old license server.

Marvellous suggestion chaps, and not too painful in the end.

837

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR Plugin: TimeZone [Update version 1.4.2]

« Last post by timns on December 08, 2010, 05:01 PM »

Up/Down is used to move the item up or down in the list. You double click to edit, then you can Up & Down to your heart's delight... at least that's what I can do here?? Is that not working for you?

-Perry Mowbray (December 08, 2010, 04:49 PM)

No, not really. I can move the bottom-most item up just one step, then it gets 'stuck'

Other items seem to be movable, but I can never get anything to the top slot, nor move the top one down.

No biggie - I have just edited the ini file instead 

838

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR Plugin: TimeZone [Update version 1.4.2]

« Last post by timns on December 08, 2010, 10:30 AM »

Sorry for the delay in posting this... I was expecting feedback and it never came and I forgot  

I think I've fixed the current path bug (thanks CleverCat), but would appreciate feedback (as it was never apparent on my machine)

New version in the first post of this thread and on my site if dcUpdater hasn't downloaded the new version for you..

Please let me know if that fixes it for you too...

-Perry Mowbray (December 08, 2010, 04:29 AM)

Yes it's working now. Just one minor thingie:

Options screen is squashed:

(Although the tips tell me what the items are, so it's perfectly usable)

Really nice utility.

EDIT: the Up/Down buttons don't seem to work properly

839

Official Announcements / Re: Does Santa skip you during the holidays? Cody won't forsake you

« Last post by timns on December 07, 2010, 09:49 PM »

mouser was probably telling him a shaggy dog story 

840

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR Plugin: TimeZone [Update version 1.4.1]

« Last post by timns on December 07, 2010, 09:38 PM »

I've got an update to put up tonight... sorry everyone: I did fix it and sent it to someone to test but it didn't get past that...

-Perry Mowbray (December 07, 2010, 09:28 PM)

Ah! Good man - I could really use this thing... wish I'd discovered it years ago.

841

General Software Discussion / Re: slock - anyone using it still?

« Last post by timns on December 07, 2010, 09:07 PM »

No, it's our software, but several of our clients are either unable or unwilling to accept updates. So if they lose a PC and need to re-install, it's up to us to support them with what they have on that old CD we shipped to them back in the day.

I'm sure you've run into similar situations.

842

General Software Discussion / Re: slock - anyone using it still?

« Last post by timns on December 07, 2010, 06:27 PM »

Forgot to mention that the key generator itself must be 'registered' to run. And of course, there's no-one left any more to create the key for the key generator! 

-timns (December 07, 2010, 12:11 PM)

Unless the software validates itself over the net or, (as f0dder said), is tied to machine identifiers I would have thought you'd be able to pull the registration info from wherever it's hiding, eg. registry, file, (AD is also a possibility), etc.

However, the very first thing you should be doing is creating a raw drive image of the machine for backup.  I say raw because you don't know what kind of registration magic is used and it's better to be safe.

Is that the one by TSM Inc and does no one keep registration info/emails where you work?

-4wd (December 07, 2010, 05:59 PM)

No, it's by "crypto central" and it seems they went down the lav some time ago without doing the decent thing and making their code available to registered users.

The problem is that when you install their software, you then have to send a certificate which contains all sorts of PC-specific information, and get an activation back. And of course now, we're simply screaming into the void.

843

General Software Discussion / Re: slock - anyone using it still?

« Last post by timns on December 07, 2010, 04:33 PM »

Ok I should give that a go - I slightly misunderstood what mouser was saying.

Turns out the ol' fella was making a really good suggestion, I was just too dim to realise 

844

Site/Forum Features / Re: Request for help: graphic designer/writer to make an old-timey 2-page wackyness

« Last post by timns on December 07, 2010, 04:28 PM »

If I'm allowed to write stuff like I used to on the old CodexTransportica site, I'd be up for it...

845

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR Plugin: TimeZone [Update version 1.4.1]

« Last post by timns on December 07, 2010, 12:26 PM »

Are we in trouble with this plug-in? I have similar problems on my Vista machine here:

- Cannot get into the settings (FARR just closes)
- No times are downloaded into the Data folder

846

General Software Discussion / Re: slock - anyone using it still?

« Last post by timns on December 07, 2010, 12:11 PM »

Forgot to mention that the key generator itself must be 'registered' to run. And of course, there's no-one left any more to create the key for the key generator! 

This is why they should've bought the source code - I could then have simply re-built the stupid thing without the license check.

847

General Software Discussion / slock - anyone using it still?

« Last post by timns on December 07, 2010, 12:07 PM »

This has to be worth a go: does anyone on DC have any experience with slock? It's a software licensing/protection system that disappeared a few years ago. I've tried in vain to track down the developer, but no luck.

The story is that we have one piece of software left that uses this license scheme, which we will need to support for years to come, and the key generator that came with the program is only installed on one remaining PC here at the office. If that PC ever dies we're in big trouble.

In an incredibly short-sighted move, the company did not buy the source code for the key generator, so now I am looking around for a way to get it installed and working on a backup machine.

Long shot: anyone got that 'certificate builder' lying around?

848

Developer's Corner / Re: (Train Wreck) Multidimensional Dynamic Array in ASP

« Last post by timns on December 06, 2010, 07:08 PM »

So you only have a maximum of 10 vendors? Those arrays (10,1000) may be the wrong way around? (1000,10)?

849

Developer's Corner / Re: (Train Wreck) Multidimensional Dynamic Array in ASP

« Last post by timns on December 06, 2010, 04:40 PM »

Shouldn't these 2 lines use iCount too?
(You're indexing using iCount later on)
         ar_nVend00(iVends, 0) = Split(Request.Form("nVend00" & iVends), ",")
         ar_pVend00(iVends, 0) = Split(Request.Form("pVend00" & iVends), ",")

Also, your loops are one step too big - shouldn't they stop at iCount-1 and iVends-1?

for i=0 to iCount-1
for iV=0 to iVends-1
response.write(ar_nVend00(iVends, iCount) & "Vend ->")
next
response.write("br<br>")

850

Official Announcements / Re: Preparing for a new master DonationCoder server

« Last post by timns on December 06, 2010, 12:58 PM »

We use GoGrid for our servers and they have been rock-solid.

http://www.gogrid.com/

You know it occurs to me that someone at one of these providers should have enough foresight to think that hosting a DC server would be a good way to get a lot of very cheap very good publicity to a highly-targetted audience, and show a bit of support for a very active development community.