Recent Posts

876

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ?

« Last post by mwb1100 on February 20, 2011, 04:32 PM »

I mainly use SVN right now.  If I were starting from nothing, I think I'd consider Mercurial over SVN - it seems less complex than Git and seem a bit more Windows friendly.  TortoiseHg seems to be as featured as TortoiseSVN (and I think that this is a testament to the TortoiseSVN project, since I think that TortoiseHg used that as a starting point).  I'm considering converting my personal SVN repository to Mercurial, and hosting it on https://bitbucket.org/ where you can have free private repositories.  If bitbucket ever goes away, that's not a big deal since any workspace I have is essentially a full backup of the repository.  Moving my hosted SVN stuff was a bit of a pain when my 1st hoster dropped their free plans.

I think that for most projects (even with a DVCS), you'll still likely have a central 'repository of record' (where your official builds will work from), but I think the especially in a single user or very small team environment, not needing a central server can be really nice.

If you're going to be working on Linux kernel stuff, Git is the obvious choice.

All that said, SVN is still a fine choice, and if you're going to be working with a team that's already familiar with it, I'd lean in that direction.

877

General Software Discussion / Re: Red Gate Software - Another freeware app goes payware.

« Last post by mwb1100 on February 20, 2011, 03:36 PM »

Just as an FYI, anyone put off by Reflector freeware going away might want to keep an eye on JetBrains, makers of ReSharper (R#).  Apparently they're planning on including a decompiler in R# 6, and are planning on providing a free stand-alone version:

  - http://blogs.jetbrai...lone-tool-to-follow/

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Living Room / Re: An Optical Illusion

« Last post by mwb1100 on February 15, 2011, 09:38 AM »

The bars behind bars effect didn't really hit me either, but what I see is that the light colored  squares around the black bars have a definitely different hue than the light colored squares in the rest of the image (I'm assuming that they in fact have the same color).  Maybe it's my laptop monitor, but I'm surprised no one else mentioned the effect.

879

Living Room / Re: I'm so old, I remember when people paid Microsoft to use their software

« Last post by mwb1100 on February 14, 2011, 11:42 AM »

Why can't the Android OS be designed in such a way where it can be installed without any special modding onto all iphone devices?

-superboyac (February 14, 2011, 11:25 AM)

I think the problem isn't on Google's side, it's that right now the true customers for phone hardware are the carriers, not you and me. And the carriers decide that phones should be locked down (for supportability as well as for 'lock-in').  One thing that might help move the system software to be generically installable - at least on some devices - will be systems that aren't phones.  Touch-like Android devices and/or tablets that are useful without being phones.

If we ever get true carrier-transferability in the states, it might happen for phones as well.

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Developer's Corner / Re: Software Licensing

« Last post by mwb1100 on February 13, 2011, 10:55 PM »

What's so special about MPL that i see many softwares are adding it to their license model these days ?

-mahesh2k (February 12, 2011, 01:12 PM)

It's similar to BSD or Ms-PL. It makes the component/library usable in closed-source or proprietary software.

-Renegade (February 12, 2011, 11:21 PM)

However, it's different than BSD (I'm not familiar enough with Ms-PL to comment on it) in that if you modify the MPL software, you have to make the source code for those modifications available.  From the MPL FAQ:

The MPL has a limited amount of 'copyleft' - more copyleft than the BSD family of licenses, which have no copyleft at all, but less than the LGPL or the GPL.

As I understand it, merely linking MPL code to your code doesn't 'infect' it like it would with GPL code (at least that's my understanding).

881

General Software Discussion / Re: Should MS open up Windows Update to 3rd parties?

« Last post by mwb1100 on February 08, 2011, 03:34 PM »

One thing Microsoft *should* do is provide a framework/interface/control panel for auto updates so that there's one place to go to manage these things.  Actually, MS should have done that a long time ago - back when they provided a standard place to go to uninstall.  They don't need to host the update, just provide a standard control panel to manage updates for installed software.

3rd parties could still decide to do things their own way (just like they can for uninstall), but there would be incentive for vendors to plug into the 'standard' way to manage updates.

It would be quite nice to be able to go to one place to be able to enable/disable auto updates, or manually launch update processes.  All those stupid little icons that insist they be allowed to show up in the notification area and those annoying pop-up messages can just go away since they'd have no reason to exist anymore.

A guy can dream, can't he?

882

Living Room / Re: Unable to compete with the Kindle, Apple wants a cut of ebook sales

« Last post by mwb1100 on February 02, 2011, 03:38 PM »

But Sony never gave in to that.

-superboyac (February 02, 2011, 01:05 PM)

Largely because the American recording industry threatened to sue and legislate Sony into oblivion if direct digital to digital copying was implemented on the minidisc system.

-40hz (February 02, 2011, 02:53 PM)

I'd have guessed that it was more because Sony was one of the media companies who didn't want music to be easily copied.  Don't forget that Sony was the outfit that put a rootkit on CDs to control what you could do with the music on a computer (though that was long after minidiscs came out).

883

Found Deals and Discounts / JetBrains RubyMine - more than 50% off (expires 15 Feb 2011)

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 31, 2011, 12:57 PM »

If you're using Ruby (whether on Rails or not), you might want to look at JetBrain's RubyMine IDE:

  - http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/index.html

I'm by no means Ruby expert, and I know next to nothing about Rails.  However, I found RubyMine helpful in understanding and debugging some rake (a Ruby-based 'make' tool) scripts.

They're running a discount until 15 Feb 2011 ($29 - regularly $69, which works out to a 58% discount):

  - http://blogs.jetbrai...-price-for-everyone/
  - http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/buy/

884

Living Room / Re: I Predict You Are A MURDERER~!

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 29, 2011, 05:41 PM »

Only if you say it with your head inside a bucket. 

-app103 (January 29, 2011, 02:31 PM)

I'd be tempted to try, but I can't fit one over the tentacles. 

-40hz (January 29, 2011, 02:56 PM)

Perhaps this item would work better for you?

885

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Revo Uninstaller Pro 50% OFF

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 29, 2011, 05:07 PM »

mwb .. I think Curt was talking about how he originally found the page.  That it came up during from some normal use, without a crack in the house.

-Steven Avery (January 29, 2011, 04:56 PM)

I thought that Curt was just going to the link that Bionic71 stumbled on in a Google search?

886

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Revo Uninstaller Pro 50% OFF

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 29, 2011, 04:50 PM »

So, the warning was wrong in every aspect.

-Curt (January 29, 2011, 04:32 PM)

The URL is normally only given to people who have a cracked version of the software - the message isn't the result of a test on your installation, it's just the text that's on that web page.

Kind of like if someone else's medical diagnosis found its way into your mail by mistake - that wouldn't mean that you have whatever health problems were found for that other person.

887

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: JetBrains' PyCharm

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 27, 2011, 04:55 PM »

Did anyone on DC get a coupon code for PyCharm that they aren't planning on using?

I could have sworn I got one, but can't find it in my mailbox (did they send the code via email, or did they just give it to you on a website?)

888

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: DVDFab DVD Copy *GAOTD*

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 27, 2011, 04:53 PM »

Unless they've done something special for GOTD, the app will continue to work after the subscription runs out, but no more updates.

However, the nature of this kind of application is that it becomes less useful without updates because DVD publishers continually change the techniques used to copy protect DVDs.

889

General Software Discussion / Re: LastPass - What are your thoughts?

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 21, 2011, 04:52 PM »

I use Passpack, myself.

-allen (January 21, 2011, 01:53 PM)

Thanks for reminding me of this - I tried this briefly a few years ago but couldn't remember the name when I was looking into password managers again.  I'll have to take another look at these guys.


As far as 'having complete control' over my password storage, I also lean toward this point of view and I'm planning on also evaluating the community version of Clipperz running on my own little server.

But my laziness is a major force against running Clipperz on my own (I'm world-class lazy as well as a champion procrastinator - it'll be amazing if I manage to finish up this post)...  I think that as long as I keep my banking passwords out of an online manager like LastPass or Passpack I could probably live with a major screw-up that resulted in a leak.  Not entirely sure though.

890

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 21, 2011, 10:05 AM »

At first I thought you were talking about taking this other thread to the next stage: "USB Daisy-Chaining gone haywire"

But in all seriousness - I'd probably just reboot (as aggravating as that is).

891

Living Room / Re: Fake GSM base station tricks target iPhones

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 20, 2011, 05:20 PM »

There were people at a hacking conference stupid enough to be carrying an iPhone?!? I thought they banned those things a long time ago because of their pathetic security...

-Stoic Joker (January 20, 2011, 03:55 PM)

I wonder if the attack was really targeting something iPhone-specific. iPhones use an Infineon GSM chipset - I'd guess it (or a closely-related attack) would be effective against many Infineon-based phones.  Then again, I'm assuming that Infineon isn't exclusive to iPhone.

892

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 Breaks Week Numbering

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 17, 2011, 02:12 AM »

Saturday, January 1st, should be week 0, as the MSDN states (in the documentation for the Calendar Control) that week 1 is the first week of the year with 4 days in it. But Windows 7 appears to want to call it week 1. Which (of course) throws off the week numbering for the entire year.

-Stoic Joker (January 16, 2011, 04:37 PM)

Can you post some code (or be quite specific about the Calendar control/class you're using)?  The MSDN docs for the Calendar class's `GetWeekOfYear()` method indicate that you have to pass in a CalendarWeekRule that would specify whether the 1st week:

• starts on the first day of the year
• is the first full week
• is the first with 4 days in it

Are you using something else, or could you possibly be passing in the wrong CalendarWeekRule value?

See http://msdn.microsof...r.getweekofyear.aspx

893

Living Room / Re: Forum / Thread Etiquette

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 17, 2011, 01:46 AM »

Personally, I think for one or any member to have the ability to block all posts from one person (twit feature) would be the downfall of the good spirit of this site.

-cmpm (January 16, 2011, 03:31 PM)

My understanding is that twit filters are a per-user setting, so they wouldn't prevent the 'target' from posting.  It just would make it so that if (for example) I never wanted to read another thing that mouser wrote, I could have the system help me out with that instead of having to avert my eyes.

Since it's a personal setting, I see no particular problem with enabling it (no one can force anyone to read posts anyway).

Are they something else on DC's forum software?

On the other hand, I doubt it would be a much used feature on DC anyway. In my experience, even the worst devolution of threads here never even comes remotely close to what happens on some usenet groups.

894

Developer's Corner / Re: C# & Visual Studio Problem

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 16, 2011, 11:37 AM »

So, just to be clear, the *program* works fine if you have a constant `false` controlling the `if` - the problem is that the debugger is unable to deal correctly with variables scoped to the `else` clause.  Is that a fair summary?

895

Developer's Corner / Re: C# & Visual Studio Problem

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 15, 2011, 10:30 PM »

Has anyone heard of this kind of wonkiness before?

-Renegade (January 15, 2011, 09:54 PM)

By some coincidence, I was just looking at a bug report for C++ that indicates the debugger has trouble 'finding' variables declared in an `else` clause (at least sometimes):

  - https://connect.micr...t-see-some-variables

I have no idea what extent the debugger for C# uses same or similar code to the debugger for C++, and even if I did I'm not sure how this factoid would help you.  But I posted it anyway, just because it seems similar.

896

Developer's Corner / Re: C# & Visual Studio Problem

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 15, 2011, 09:28 PM »

Does it happen just for this project or does it also happen if you create a new, simple project?

897

Living Room / Re: Can we stop with the diagonal screen length thing?

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 07, 2011, 10:58 PM »

Non-widescreen displays are increasingly rare, so it's not really that much different than it used to be...

-JavaJones (January 07, 2011, 10:45 PM)

You're right.  I suppose it's an old dog/new trick thing for me.

898

Living Room / Re: Can we stop with the diagonal screen length thing?

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 07, 2011, 10:37 PM »

In my experience, diagonal was all that was ever used for screens dating back to when the only thing they were used for was TVs.  It wasn't a problem then since all screens had the same aspect ratio, so the measurement was always pretty much apples to apples.

But you're 100% right - once we started getting different screen ratios, a diagonal measurement doesn't cut it anymore (though a 54" screen is prety damn big no matter what).

899

Living Room / Re: Fodder for history buffs

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 07, 2011, 04:29 PM »

I hope I'm not a party pooper, but most (if not all) of these explanations of phrase origins are fables.  Thankfully, the actual origins often still quite interesting.

There are several people who make serious study of this kind of thing, and one of them publishes a newsletter that I find to be an entertaining read.

Here are links to what the "Word Detective" has to say about many of these stories:

An arm and a leg - (I found it quite surprising that the oldest print use of this phrase he found dates only to 1956!)

The phrase "cost an arm and a leg," meaning to cost a great deal or an exorbitant amount, is simply a hyperbolic figure of speech comparing the cost of something to the grievous loss of two important limbs.  There isn't really any "story" behind the phrase, other than the desire of whoever came up with the metaphor to impress the listener with the outrageous price of something.  Unfortunately, as is often the case, we have no way of knowing exactly who coined the phrase, although it hasn't been around as long as you might think.  Surprisingly, the earliest known use of "cost an arm and a leg" in print dates back only to 1956, in Billie Holiday's autobiography "Lady Sings the Blues"

-http://www.word-detective.com/032404.html

chairman:

"Chairman" dates back to the 17th century as does, interestingly, the shorter form "chair" meaning the person in charge of a meeting. "Chair" in this sense actually had an odd sort of double birth. In the 1600s and subsequently, the noun "chair" was used as symbolic shorthand (a process known as "metonymy") for the person who sat in the chair of power, much as "the Crown" was used to refer to the King or Queen or "the White House" is used to mean the current presidential administration

-http://www.word-detective.com/112304.html

bigwig:

And now onward to the wonderful world of wigs. Once upon a time (the 1700's, to be precise), there was no hairspray and no blow-driers. Every day was a bad hair day, as it had been for most of human history. Consequently, almost everybody above the poverty line -- men, women, and sometimes even children -- wore wigs. But not all wigs were equal. While Joe Schmoe trudged through life wearing his ratty little two-shilling bargain number from Wigges 'n Stuffe, Lord Gotrocks sported a luxurious, expensive, and, of course, very large wig. Regular folks found these rich people and their fancy wigs so annoying that by the early 1800's "bigwig" had become a mocking slang term for the wealthy and powerful. And though the wigs are mostly gone (or at least a lot smaller), "bigwig" is still used as slang for someone who probably isn't as important as he thinks he is.

-http://www.word-detective.com/100699.html

Mind your own beeswax:

The story you've heard about "beeswax hiding pock-marks" has been circulating on the internet for quite a while and, like most stories of this type, was almost certainly dreamt up out of whole cloth by someone working backwards to explain the phrase "mind your own beeswax." While it is true that beeswax (defined in the literal sense by the Oxford English Dictionary as "The wax secreted by bees as the material of their combs?") has long been used in cosmetics, the phrase "mind your own beeswax," meaning "mind your own business," has nothing to do with the wax of bees. "Beeswax" in this phrase is simply a jocular variation on the word "business." It's a little joke, in other words, and quite a useful one at that, since telling someone to "mind your own beeswax" conveys the meaning of "mind your own business" without any unpleasant overtones of hostility. "Mind your own beeswax" first appeared around 1934.

-http://www.word-detective.com/072302.html

P's and Q's - (he's not certain of the true origin, but leans towards the following)

Another theory, drawn from the schoolroom, is that any child approaching the mystery of penmanship soon discovers that the lowercase "p" is devilishly easy to confuse with the lowercase "q." Thus, the theory goes, generations of teachers exhorting their small charges to "mind your p's and q's" created a enduring metaphor for being attentive and careful

...

I'd pick the schoolroom theory as being the most likely source. It makes sense right out of the box and sounds like the sort of thing teachers say.

-http://www.word-detective.com/042805.html

Brass Monkeys

The slang term "brass monkeys" is actually a shortening of the phrase "cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey." (Common variants of the phrase almost invariably specify a more risque element of the monkey's anatomy, but we'll go with "tail" for purposes of this column.) While a brass monkey might seem an outlandish item, such knickknacks were, in fact, quite popular in Victorian drawing rooms, usually found in sets of three, set in the classic kitsch "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" pose. Given that brass monkeys were the Lava Lamps of the age and thus never far from the Victorian mind, their use in the phrase is not surprising. Of course, given the shocking dearth of brass monkeys in modern living rooms, it's also not surprising that the phrase seems so mysterious to us today.

-http://www.word-detective.com/back-r.html

And a 'debunking' of the naval origin story:

The infuriatingly popular (but nonetheless incorrect) explanation for the phrase that you encountered usually posits that the cannonballs were piled into a pyramid within the "monkey" frame. This is indeed a common practice at historical monuments on dry land, but would be a terrible idea on a deck rolling and pitching at sea.

Evidently, at least in the British Royal Navy, cannonballs were stored in holes cut in planks mounted close to the guns, an elegant method assuring both security and easy access. Furthermore, while the young boys assigned to bring powder to the cannon deck from the ship's magazine were apparently known as "powder monkeys," there is no record in contemporaneous accounts of life at sea (which are plentiful) of any storage device called a "monkey."

-http://www.word-detective.com/111606C.html

Anyway, I hope that anyone who considers this post as putting a damper on any fun this topic might be, should visit the Word Detective site where you'll find many well-researched and entertaining explanations of word and phrase origins.

900

Living Room / Re: Fodder for history buffs

« Last post by mwb1100 on January 07, 2011, 02:11 PM »

Hmm - I thought there was going to be something about f0dder's childhood or something here.