Another issue is that #@$@# Sircam virus. We're getting bombarded with emails from people who've been infected sending out infected files. I wouldn't be surprised if a good 15% of our internal T1 bandwidth is now being wasted by that.
"craeonics has achieved a new height in saying nothing with lots of words " I think that's my area of expertise!
Thanks for your kind words. Right now, we're okay on bandwith - in June we trippled the amount available to the site. Its purely the number of visitors accessing the database server. We're all very glad to see so many people enjoying the site. Hopefully in a few days things will be back to their normal speedy self.
The WindowBlinds.net libraries get a million page views per month -- a massive number and ad revenues only bring in a few hundred dollars. So if you know of an ad place that is paying out enough to pay for a site of any size, please let us know.
I got a report today that the clock object on Windows 98 leaks a GDI object every 60 seconds which would cause the problem you're talkinga bout. If you have a clock object on DX right now, delete it if you're runnign Win98. We will be releasing a v1.01 shortly
A true shift in the balance of power of skinning -- Mormegil's submissions have put him at the highest ranking skin author for the past few days straight. This is significant because it's the first time since the site began that the leader didn't come from WindowBlinds. Mormegil was an early supporter of DesktopX and now literally tens of thousands of people are learning what many of us have appreciated for a long time - Paul (Mormegil) is an incredibly talented designer, arti
Over the past few days we have broken a few records for the site in number of visitors per day. This is largely due to the increased popularity recently of DesktopX. The main limitation isn't in raw bandwidth but a limitation in server capacity. Our solution is to upgrade the server. A new server has arrived -- a dual 1Ghz monster machine. We are in the process of setting things up and should have it ready to replace the existing server shortly. In the meantime, with several
I dunno, I'm at home and just downloaded a DesktopX theme from here at 300K per sec. We're not tapped out on bandwidth right now.
And it's mainly just a convenience thing. We don't want to have to force people to create accounts just to check out skinnining for the first time. We are implementing a system in which if you download more than say 5 megabytes that you have to create an account. That's a lot of skins though. We wouldn't sell people's email addresses. Not just because of principle (we hate spam too) but just isn't worth the time. If we had 6 million email addresses, that might be something but we're
Not too expensive.
We expect things to return to normal in the next couple of days -- or at least close enough to normal that we won't need to require accounts to download skins. But some itneresting stats: Over the weekend the website got 13,000 new accounts. To put this in perspective, on Thursday the site had a total of around 6,000 accounts (so we have about 20,000 accounts total). DesktopX got 47,000 downloads over the weekend just from download.com. These users naturally came som
Good suggestions and you're right, it would make a difference. If we could get those thumbnails down in size it could help *immensely*. Heck, if we could just flip a switch to where it would use the small thumbnails by default during high traffic that would help too.
Talisman 2.0 is in beta, you can visit Lighttek's website and try it out for yourself. Then you download DesktopX and see how you like it. DesktopX isn't a shell though, it extends your existing shell.
I deleted the little geek's post. If he continues to behave in this way, we'll have to contact his ISP. I don't think the kid realizes how much data a web message board receives when one posts.
Okay, I'm going to regret saying this but I think it needs to be said even if it upsets some people. Sometimes the way skinning community handles ripping is so heavy handed that it is very counter productive. Sometimes it's important to take a step back and decide whether the action you're taking is designed to make you feel better or to accomplish something. To a non-skinner, seeing people get very upset to what amounts to (in their eyes) a few pixels of graphics can
I deleted the post. Looks like we'll have to require valid email addresses to activate accounts.
Paxx is correct - nothing changes for any of us. Just when the server is at unusually high activity, if you want to browse the skin sections, you have to be logged on. If I hadn't made a post, none of the regulars would even know there was a change since to all of us here, the site behaves exactly the same. But log off, go to a section, and it'll give you a message about needing to logon. In a few days, things should be back to some semblance normality. The theory wa
We're up to 1600 new accounts today (which is more than all last month). Cat, all I can say is that the average person has never heard of Windows XP.
It means people who don't have accounts (anonymous users) cannot browse or download skins. That's it. The sections might be slow for those of you with accounts but you can at least reach them. We'll just have to disagree. Most people are unaware of Windows XP still. And XP will introduce the idea of changing your look and feel of Windows. Best of all (for us), you get Windows XP, you get 3 choices in looks. That's it. You want more? Too bad. Unless you get Windo
The Register has done a run down on Stardock's DesktopX 1.0. Check it out.
There is an animated wallpapoer here I believe called Castle.
Is there a way to find out what it sent? I don't have anything particularly confidential on there but still.
Well I did open it up on my home machine. I got an email from Dangeruss, who is a friend of mine that I correspond with regularly, with an attachment that says "Liquid2" which is a skin he and I collaborated on that recently got 100,000 downloads here. So I thought he was sending me an update on it. I clicked on it. I heard my hard drive thrashing so I opened up the task list and killed "SirC32.exe" which was using a lot of CPU at the time. It was right before I went
Now we just gotta get more plugins, scripting, and ability to move objects in there.
It's us that should thank you Mormegil. It's the incredible stuff that you create that really make all the work on DesktopX worth it. And a special thanks for letting us use so much of your stuff as part of DesktopX's install as it really shows off how much nicer DX objects can be. The theme in that screenshot is just one I did for myself. I couldn't include it because it's a "rip" of several themes (Large amounts from Paul Boyer and Shawn Murdock).
JoeUser Forums
WinCustomize Forums