What compels people to spend hundreds of dollars for PHP forum softwar in Web Development

spearfish — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:11:09 -0600

Hi guys,
I've been looking into forum softwares recently, and actually just started making my own, which I hope to be able to sell for maybe twenty bucks per pop.

There are tens thousands of forums out there running one of the major paid forum systems - (IPB, VB, BB, WSN, UBB), all of which cost close to, or above, $200 for a license and then some for continued support. But then I look, and see that there are tens of thousands of other forums running some of the big free forum softwares (phpBB, SMF, MyBB). For the most part, either through default functionality or mods written by the community, come pretty close, if not surpass the paid softwares (e.g., MyBB has a built in AJAX quick reply).

So, both for reference of my new project, and for my own intellectual curiosity, why do people go with the expensive paid softwares? What can they offer which free forums can't? Why are companies like Invision Power or Jelsoft still in business - What makes their forums better?

Thanks, I'm very curious about the responses!
-Spear

disappearing text in IE in HTML & CSS

jamessy — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:50:09 -0600

Hi all for some reason my text disappears in i.e6 and 7 and reappears when i either click the mouse or move it , and it disappears weirdly so i can see the top half of a line of text only. i am using a cms system so it could be php related but i thought id check on here first incase it is a i.e bug.Any help would be grateful cheers

Preventing the same person from signing up for more than one account in Web Development

gadgetsguru — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:40:45 -0600

OK, so I have a member's only area of my site and I was just curious as to how I would prevent one person from getting more than one account. I've considered verifying their IP address, but the problem is some people have dynamically changing IPs, so that wouldn't work (unless I don't understand how IP addresses work fully). I've also considered verifying user's information against the information currently in the database, but the problem with that is what to check. I have hundreds of thousands of registered members, and many of them have the same first name, or the same last name. I've even had a few people with the same first AND last name, but it's obvious they're different people because of the other account information.

I know this can be done, because facebook.com uses this technique; it's just a matter of figuring out what to validate...

Oh, just so you know, I do not mean making sure an automated program cannot register an account - I already use "captcha images" on my registration form.

Thanks for the help! /biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />

C++ Sound Frequencies in C and C++

sportyh4509 — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:36:08 -0600

[code=cpp]#include<iostream.h>
#include<iomanip.h>
#include <windows.h>
using namespace std;

void main ()

{

cout<<Beep ( , );

system ("pause");

}[/code]

And my question is.. for the beep.. i have to create a tune.. and my teacher would like the happy birthday tune. I need to know the frequencies to put in the "Beep ( , );" ... or do you know of a better way?

Please help!
Thanks!

Designing a Flexible items system (PBBG) in PHP

girasquid — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:36:54 -0600

Hello, all.

I am currently working on a PBBG, which is going to have items that perform various actions on the player. I am trying to design my items system in such a way that it will be easy to add more items in the future, while allowing them to have their own code to perform their actions.

Currently, I have planned on having a column within my [il]items[/il] table, called [il]items.on_use[/il] - inside this column, there would be a function name - and when the item was used, the value within that column would be used in the context of an [il]eval()[/il] statement, to run whatever code was in place for that item.

I have been cautioned many, many times about the danger of using eval() statements - which is why I am asking for help. Is there a better way to do this, that will still allow me the same amount of flexibility? If not, is there a way to 'safely' eval my code(perhaps by forcing it into a specific namespace?)?

Thanks,
girasquid

Licensing in VB.NET

halogod32 — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 21:30:51 -0600

How would i go about making a licensing system for my programs?? Like something that would have them enter a string and then it turn it into a code that would activate the program?? I could probably use the system.cryptography namespace but I have no idea how I would go about doing this.

Computer Science Course Free Online from Stanford in Computer Science

homemade-jam — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:51:55 -0600

Thought this might be interesting for the computer scientists among you (including me)...apparently stanford will be posting all their course content online for the entire public, included is robotics.

For more info...

QUOTE

Stanford University has launched a series of 10 free, online computer science (CS) and electrical engineering courses. The courses span an introduction to computer science and an introduction to artificial intelligence and robotics, among other topics.

Animated Sorting Algorithms in Computer Science

skyhawk133 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:04:09 -0600

David R. Martin, an assistant professor at Boston College, has created a REALLY cool page showing how different sorting algorithms work on different sets of data. It's a great way to see how the sort actually occurs, as well as which sorts are faster.

Check it out here: http://vision.bc.edu/~dmartin/teaching/sor...m-html/all.html

(Hat tip to Scott Hanselman for blogging about it: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ScottHansel...ualSchool.aspx)

Google to Buy Valve in Industry News

skyhawk133 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:28:52 -0600

+

Quote from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwritewe...o_buy_valve.php :

QUOTE

According to a number of rumors this morning, Google is about to acquire the well-known game development company Valve. Valve is best known for its Half-Life games and Steam, a content distribution platform which it uses to sell and distribute PC games from various developers with the help of a desktop client. Currently, Steam distributes close to 440 games and has over 15 million active users. We assume that Google is mostly interested in the technology behind Steam and no so much in the distribution or game development business of Valve.

Steam's technology would definitely be a good fit for Google, which, thanks to YouTube and other ventures, is getting more and more invovled in the content distribution business. On the other hand, though, while pushing out 30,000 Mbit of data is surely no easy feat, we can't help but wonder about why Google would need to acquire them. After all, if anybody has a lot of experience in distributing massive amounts of data, it would be Google itself.

Overall, even though the Inquirer cites "well placed sources," we can't help but wonder if this rumor will pan out to be true. Maybe Google will only take over the Steam part of Valve's business, or the two will announce some form of partnership.

Funny Job Description in Corner Cubicle

skyhawk133 — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:48:15 -0600

I was at dinner tonight talking with some friends and some how the discussion of linux commands came up. I mentioned the "finger" command and @jnakai said his new job involves "fingering" 76% of the time.

Here's a picture of the job description:

Link: http://brightkite.com/objects/b50433a88204...6550030487eb504

He hasn't started the job yet, so he isn't quite sure what kind of "fingering" he'll be doing. But quite funny nonetheless.

Albuquerque BarCamp - Tomorrow (Sept 13 & 14) in DIC Local

skyhawk133 — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:07:05 -0600

(This event was rescheduled from Labor Day to this weekend)

For those of you in New Mexico. If you can make it up to Albuquerque for tomorrow's Albuquerque BarCamp, I'm sure you won't be disappointed. Yours truly will be presenting on Web Analytics, Heat Maps, and A/B Testing. And there are plenty of other great presentations planned.

Details: http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampAlbuquerque

See you there!

Accounting for Freelance Income in Web Development

jjsaw5 — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:21:34 -0600

So I have been doing some freelance work over the past month or so and have made a nice chunk of change from it. I have a regular everyday job and do these other things for people on the side.

So here is my question to you guys. Those of you who freelance for a significant source of income, did you have to register with the IRS?

Are there any regulations, or precautions that I need to take if I want to peruse this a little more? Regarding taxes and such on the money you make?

I've looked around the IRS site but I would like to hear from you guys who have been doing it for a while.

What about selling products on line? That was another thing I was thinking about trying?

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