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It's only money if people see them.
How many users have AdBlock on their browser?
How many apps do I use twice if my valuable screen real estate is taken up by unsightly adverts?
And if an app used my bandwidth just to update it's ad supply - how long before it got deleted?
Is your app going to be so useful, so unique, so undo-without-able that everyone must have it? Because if not, then all you will do is drive away potential buyers by the truckload.
The answers by the way: "Lots - because they are truly annoying", "None - because they are truly annoying" and "Measured in nano seconds".
I have learnt that you can not make someone love you, all you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in.
Apathy Error: Don't bother striking any key.
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If he gets his money from advertisers then he doesn't need buyers. People have put up with ads for free stuff for quite some time. The numbers of people who use adblock is not large outside of tech people. The millions of people who use Yahoo Messenger, AIM, and MSN Messenger and never bother to use something like Trillian would seem to disprove your point.
For the original poster, you might be re-assured that the largest and most successful software company in the world is going in the same direction as you are. Microsoft announces ad-supported Office Starter 2010[^].
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To get money from advertisers, he need them to buy space on his app: if his users don't exist, the advertisers will bugger off somewhere more effective.
The examples you give work because they provide a huge target audience to potential advertisers.
I have learnt that you can not make someone love you, all you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in.
Apathy Error: Don't bother striking any key.
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You most likely have some kind of database. When you update the banners get the checksum[^] for the banner file and store that along with the filename in the database. If, when you load a banner, it doesn't match the recorded checksum then you throw an error because of corrupted data files. You can leave the banners in their native format.
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Then I delete all the records from the database. Or add records that point to images I want to see (porn). 
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No records would cause an error. Anyone who is going to go through the trouble of hacking the datastore and calculating checksums of their own custom images is not worth worrying about. The lost revenue from those people is not significant compared to the cost of protecting against them.
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Maybe. Or maybe I'll publish an article on how to do it, perhaps include a script to make it simple for any other interested users.
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Then you are most likley violating the EULA and could be sued. And even if you did that, the number of average users who go looking for utlities of that sort is low. There will always be jerks who break stuff. For the most part it will probably not be worth their while.
Your situation is comparable to telling a store owner he can't have windows in the front of the store because anyone who wanted to could break in by throwing a rock through the window. You could even hand out rocks on the corner in front of the store. Is that risk worth having a concrete storefront? No. And even with a concrete storefront you could potentially steal a bulldozer. Risk versus reward analysis says defending against zealous jerks isn't worth it.
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T M Gray wrote: violating the EULA and could be sued
Bring 'em on! 
T M Gray wrote: situation is comparable
No, it isn't, not really... more like the store keeper covered his windows with product posters and I'm giving out scrapers.
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How many people do you think will attempt to remove the banners?
And how about the support for "I deleted these huge useless files and now the program doesn't work!" ?
If you just put those banners back each time you get internet access, many people will get to see them, so why wouldn't your advertiser pay you?
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Or how would the advertiser know the user didn't?
Additionally, what about times that an ad is displayed while the user isn't watching? I'm going to go take a nap, but I'll leave CP open, many ads will be displayed while I nap... if that earns CP more revenue then I should make it my SOP.
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Hi there!
I've got a question which I haven't been able to solve.
I have a code which involves a huge load of calculations. To keep track of where I am in the calculations I do some "this.Refresh()"-es in my code and I also update some labels.
Regardless, if I click to another application and click my app again, the form is just blank again and it's not refreshed at all. Also when I don't change to another application my form stops refreshing after some calculations. For example say my app does a calculation 100 times and it keeps the user updated about the number of calculations done. I kept looking at it and after the counter (label) reached say 53 it just stopped refreshing.
When I write 'huge load of calculations' I really mean it. The last run took 13 minutes.
So do you have any suggestions? It'd be great to improve my apps.
Thanks a lot!
Han
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You need to perform the long-running code on a background thread. Then, to update the form, you need to use Invoke to avoid cross-thread problems.
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It sounds like you are keeping the main thread busy, preventing it from taking care of the GUI (except for the few times you call Refresh). This is not the right way to handle windows nor Windows.
You need to perform your calculations on some other thread, maybe a ThreadPool one, maybe a BackgroundWorker. And then you need a safe way to have that one update your GUI, and that gets explained here[^].
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles]
I only read formatted code with indentation, so please use PRE tags for code snippets.
I'm not participating in frackin' Q&A, so if you want my opinion, ask away in a real forum (or on my profile page).
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Oh, man, I need coffee... 
"the more logical control.Invoke(delegate {control.Text=text;}); does not compile!"
Should there be empty parentheses after delegate?
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That probably is what I meant to say, however when given
control.Invoke(delegate() { control.Text=text; });
(as it is in my test program) VS2008 complains with
Cannot convert anonymous method to type 'System.Delegate' because it is not a delegate type
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles]
I only read formatted code with indentation, so please use PRE tags for code snippets.
I'm not participating in frackin' Q&A, so if you want my opinion, ask away in a real forum (or on my profile page).
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When this came up last week, I whipped up a little app, including the method:
private void
ToggleEnable
(
object sender
,
System.EventArgs e
)
{
if ( this.InvokeRequired )
{
this.Invoke ( new System.EventHandler ( ToggleEnable ) , sender , e ) ;
}
else
{
System.Windows.Forms.Control c = sender as System.Windows.Forms.Control ;
if ( c != null )
{
c.Enabled = !c.Enabled ;
}
}
return ;
}
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which is a bit of a strange whip as:
1. the return is redundant
2. the EventArgs are unused
3. you are implicitly relying on this being a Control, and sender (if a Control), being both created by the same thread.
Maybe what you intended was this:
private void ToggleEnable(object sender,System.EventArgs e) {
System.Windows.Forms.Control c = sender as System.Windows.Forms.Control;
if (c!=null) {
if (c.InvokeRequired) {
c.Invoke(new System.EventHandler(ToggleEnable), sender, e);
} else {
c.Enabled = !c.Enabled;
}
}
}
(or same without EventArgs)
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles]
I only read formatted code with indentation, so please use PRE tags for code snippets.
I'm not participating in frackin' Q&A, so if you want my opinion, ask away in a real forum (or on my profile page).
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Okay, I'll try to figure something out of this whole bunch of replies
So I understand, that by taking away resources from my main thread, the GUI can't be refreshed, so I have to do the background calculations in a separate thread. I'll try to do that and hopefully I won't have to write again.
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Hankyaku wrote: calculations in a separate thread
always good.
Hankyaku wrote: hopefully I won't have to write again
if you mean rewrite your calculation code, no it remains the same; just launch the method from a thread (or call it from a BackgroundWorker.DoWork handler). If you mean, ask another question here, don't hesitate when you feel a need.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles]
I only read formatted code with indentation, so please use PRE tags for code snippets.
I'm not participating in frackin' Q&A, so if you want my opinion, ask away in a real forum (or on my profile page).
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Sure, I meant the last one. I was completely sure, that I don't have to change my calculation code. I'm just simply not used to multithreading. So thanks for the comment, and in case I don't get it working, you can count on my questions, just as I do count on your answers.
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The nice thing about it is you are using a params.
I did not know Control.Invoke took params, it is not in the documentation, but it does show in intellisense.
[ADDED]
However, your example does not need real data (such as a string in my SetText example), so using EventHandler seems not a general solution. Or do you see a way to generalize without much expense?
[/ADDED]
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles]
I only read formatted code with indentation, so please use PRE tags for code snippets.
I'm not participating in frackin' Q&A, so if you want my opinion, ask away in a real forum (or on my profile page).
modified on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 12:05 PM
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Well, then we both learned something.
(Not about the return; I know the language doesn't require it, but it should, just as C used to require parameters parentheses around the value. "Every method should have exactly one return statement." It at least provides a convenient place for a breakpoint.)
modified on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 12:57 PM
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: I know the language doesn't require it, but it should
I could live with that, similar to breaks in switch cases.
PIEBALDconsult wrote: just as C used to require parameters around the value
you mean parentheses? Did it really? I can't recall; I do recall I used to always put them, and then, some ten years ago, I stopped doing that.
K&R, in appendix A on syntax said:
return ;
return expression ;
but they also did put parentheses on their examples.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles]
I only read formatted code with indentation, so please use PRE tags for code snippets.
I'm not participating in frackin' Q&A, so if you want my opinion, ask away in a real forum (or on my profile page).
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Luc Pattyn wrote: similar to breaks in switch cases
 switches shouldn't use break at all. Stopping (not falling through) should be the normal flow without using a break statement.
Luc Pattyn wrote: you mean parentheses?
Yes... 
A while (years) back, the subject came up and I found that Dennis Ritchie had put some of his old (circa 1974) C compiler code online and I looked through it and found that they appeared to be required, and his 1974 document says:
"
9.10 Return statement
A function returns to its caller by means of the return statement, which has one of the forms
return ;
return ( expression ) ;
In the first case no value is returned. In the second case, the value of the expression is returned to the caller of the
function. If required, the expression is converted, as if by assignment, to the type of the function in which it appears.
Flowing off the end of a function is equivalent to a return with no returned value.
"
That got relaxed some time later, but the habit got passed on to me in the '80s.
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