source:geekandpoke.typepad.com

Primul autoturism electric produs in Romania va fi lansat saptamana viitoare de Dacia, chiar in incinta uzinei termo-nucleare de la Cernavoda.

Producatorul de la Mioveni a ales acest inedit loc pentru lansarea noului Model Logan Electrolux din ratiuni extrem de pragmatice, mai precis consumul de 10.000 de Megawati/ora al noii masini.

Construita prin eforturi intelectuale exclusiv romanesti, noua masina electrica va costa aproximativ 10.000 de Euro, dar va avea o autonomie de doar 200 de metri, respectiv lungimea cablului electric prin care este alimentata.

Since PHP is so powerful, it is natural one would like to develope Windows applications with it. GUI extensions such as PHP-GTK and Winbinder allow users of the PHP command line interface to display GUI widgets in Windows, but the problems of distribution and code exposure still remain. The PHP command line interpreter must be included in any distribution, and the code is left as a text file.

There are a few open source PHP to EXE “compilers” out there, such as PriadoBlender and Embeder that utilize the PHP SAPI to include PHP code in executable files, but most still leave the PHP code plain or obfuscated in such a way that it is accessible to anyone who has a few minutes. PriadoBlender includes you code in an encrypted file, but it’s not much different than running the command line interpreter as the decryption code is exposed as plain text PHP inside the executable. I wanted to find something that would not allow recreation of the exact code. There are a few commercial applications out there that will do this, but they are ridiculously expensive, and inaccessible to the open source community.

In my search for a more elegant solution, I saw a few mentions of the bcompiler extension for PHP that seemed to do everything I wanted; it would join the code and the EXE file, and the code would be converted into PHP byte code, making it much harder to view and reverse engineer. The need for the PHP runtime DLL was still present, but that seems to be true of every PHP compiler, and is akin to the runtime libraries needed for Visual Basic applications.

The only problem was, you needed MS Visual Studio to compile two essential files, and only one was easily accessible. There isn’t much information on bcompiler, but eventually I found this article that mentioned the only known existing copy of the file I was looking for could be found packaged with another program by the author of bcompiler. Even when I did find the two essential files, I found they didn’t work with my PHP runtime, and had to use the one included in the above mentioned package.

Considering how useful bcompiler is, it’s a shame that it is so hard to obtain all of the components needed to produce usable EXEs. So now that I’ve collected all of the needed files, I’ve compiled the compiler script into a stand alone EXE. I present it as PHC, a PHP compiler. It is included in the PHC-SDK, which also includes the full source of PHC as well as a few simple examples to get you started, including two utilizing Winbinder to produce GUI widgets

Download the PHC-SDK with PHC v0.11 (updated from 0.1 because it seemed many people were downloading 0.1 which doesnt work in WinXP)

[UPDATE: PHC has been obsoleted by phc-win]

Nothing says Happy Holidays like a snowman!

A pair of rock doves (Columba livia, a.k.a. street pigeons) get it on in Pershing Park

source

The Problem

Unfortunately, World of Warcraft is full of immature idiots and spoiled children. In spite of all the intelligent, considerate players in the game, they really start to come out of the woodwork when something unusual is going on. Like another player who is multiboxing. Any time I go to a populated area I am constantly harassed by these like. Here are some of the common types of idiots I interact with as a multiboxer.

The Genius

This player knows you’re doing something wrong and breaking the rules, and they’re going to tell you about it. It’s cheating, botting, or some other offensive abomination of gameplay. When I first started to get these idiots, I would try to educate them about the legitimacy of multiboxing.

However, I have never been able to get anything across to them. So now to handle these geniuses, I simply tell them to report me if they are so damn smart. I wish I could watch their conversations with the GM.

The Pest

This is the one that irritates me the most. This is the player that follows you and either says incoherent gibberish or puts you on autofollow and won’t go away. They say stupid things like “wat ur doing????????????????LOL” and such.

I had the worst encounter once in Durotar with a hunter who put me on autofollow. Any time I would go to attack something, he would try to attack it first to steal it from me. I had to employ some misdirection and instant spells to get my kills. Eventually he got bored and left.

The Buffer

This one isn’t so bad, but after running into 2-3 of them in a row it gets annoying. This one thinks you definitely need their buffs, so they follow you until they have buffed every one of your characters. This happens to everyone though, not just multiboxers.

The Excessively Amused

I think this is the second most irritating type. This is the player who just thinks what you are doing is the most hilarious thing they have ever seen. They come up and say things like “LOL,” “HAHAHA,” or some similar emote. I try asking them what is so funny, but they can’t really give me a good answer. Five players in a group is not funny!

I had one today who came up and laughed at me and then ran away. I asked what was so funny and he said “are you kidding?” No, I’m not telling a joke. In fact, I haven’t done anything funny yet, so stop laughing!

The Hater

This player hates you and everything about multiboxing. They spit at you, fart on you, and tell you that you’re a loser. I don’t know what their problem is, but it probably has something to do with either losing to a multiboxer in the battlegrounds or being so poor they can’t afford more WoW accounts to multibox themselves. Or they are too dumb to do it.

Yesterday I was in Orgrimmar with several level 70’s around me reinforcing each others hatred for multiboxers. It was a rather harsh environment, but I just merrily danced with them and avoided responding to their incendiary comments.

The Poor Child

You know, $75 a month for five accounts is really not a lot of money. I think a lot of people probably spend more on their cell phone. However, there are these poor children in World of Warcraft who are on an allowance and think you are some spoiled rich kid who gets everything in the world, including five WoW accounts. No thank you, I have a full-time job and $75 is next to nothing for me to afford. Ask your mommy to raise your allowance.

The Exception

These are the players I love to interact with. They come up and ask intelligent questions if they are not familiar with multiboxing, or they strike up an interesting conversation if they know more about it.

These players are nice, curious, and mature, and I wish they were more plentiful. I’ve had conversations about different multiboxing strategies, received intelligent questions about how to do it and how to get more information, and just chit-chatted about random other things not related to multiboxing. Thanks for making the game worth playing.

What are some of the most annoying experiences you have while multiboxing?