Registration or Licensing for an Adobe Air software [closed] - apache-flex

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I am making a Adobe Air software which needs to work on Windows, Mac and Linux. One of the issues that has confused me is the registration/licensing process.
Basically, I want users to try out the full version of software for a month and then buy if they find it useful. What I am not able to figure out is how the licensing would work on all these platforms.
There are no registries in Mac and Linux where I can store the trial information.
If I somehow maintain things locally in a db, post trial, if the user simply uninstalls and re-installs the software, the trial would start again for 30 days.
Don't want to store things in filesystem as that's not even close to actual authentication.
Doing an online activation of the software is a little resource consuming and has network dependency, so that option is also out of scope.
What way should I choose? what other options do I have? Does adobe provide any support for this... any 3rd party libraries that I can use for free?

I use LimeLM (https://wyday.com/limelm) to do licensing for my Adobe Air app (Windows and Mac, no linux). Like you I have a 30 day trial, LimeLM has a trial feature which is tied to the hardware, so uninstalling/reinstalling won't give users another free trial.
LimeLM requires network activation BUT you can allow for grace periods, so someone must connect to the network, say, once in 30 days of use to activate.
I agree with the above post that EncryptedLocalStore is a good idea as well.
Unfortunately the licensing options for Adobe AIR is limited. LimeLM is functional and cheap (they don't take a cut of purchase price). I looked at NitroLM, which is very expensive (I think they take 30% of purchase price) and very complicated - I could never make sense of it. Zaqon also is out there. I didn't like the way their licensing interface looked to our users. LimeLM was the most flexible.

Have you tried EncryptedLocalStore? Data stored in ELS remains even after app uninstallation.

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Winfor vs WPF vs WinRTmarketshare [closed]

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Having experience in java (awt and swing) and also in html and javascript I have moved and in my new country found a job in a consulting company as a developer.
I also had experience doing some stuff in c#, but never touched the GUI part.
I have seen that the most of our clients are using .net, so I have decided to update my knowledge in .net and also learn about the GUIs while I have no assigned client.
But my problem is that for the GUI part I can see there is:
Windows forms
Windows Presentation Foundation(WPF)
WinRT
Universal Windows Platform (UWP)
asp.net
I understand all of those are not the same, some are compatible with each other (winform and WPF) and others are not. Syntaxis is different and also the elements available to create the GUI. I have searched and even coded some basic examples and found out even the way to program (events vs databinding) changes a lot. I also read several discussions about the pros and cons for each one.
Now, taking into account my context (big company, not a startup) which one of the above technologies should I focus into? and by this I mean: Which one has a bigger marketshare in 2016 or will have more action in the near future (I know it's impossibe to predict technology in 10 years but lets say 2-3 years). Is there any statistics or any official position from Microsoft about wich one will be the standard?
Thank you for taking the time to answer.
Edit: For those who didn't understand and are down voting my question saying is opinion based: I am not asking for which one you prefer. I am asking is there's some statistics or an official position from Microsoft about this.
Some of you say you cannot compare different technologies because it is like to compare programming languages. This has been done, because I am not asking to compare the technology itself but the marketshare. If you want to compare javascript with .net and abap MARKETSHARE you can use the tiobe index.
If you dont know the answer simply do not say anything, but not pretend people cannot ask things you don't know about.
Edit2: Finally I found what I was looking for.
For desktop application
42% use Windows Forms, 46% WPF and 8% UWP
More data available at http://www.telerik.com/campaigns/devcraft/net-developer-report-for-2016
WinForms is very old technology, so better choose something new.
If talk about vacancies now, I think that ASP.Net is leader. What would be in future - have no idea. Azure? ASP.Net Core?
WinRT (Windows Store 8.1 Apps) and UWP are have much in common but not extermely popular yet. Advantage is that you can write your apps already for desktop, phone, XBox, raspberry pi and more devices.
WinRT Windows 8 Apps are depricated.
WPF is nice. Better start learn .Net Core Apps (they are crossplatform)
Xamarin crossplatform apps are also popular now. You can write C# apps for Windows, iOs and Android.

How to deal with Wordpress updates and client sites? [closed]

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We're making a lot of websites for multiple clients and we always had some problems figuring out what to do with "Updates". We're starting building Wordpress sites and there's almost a plugin update every week. Since our sites use WPML and Woocommerce, there's a lot of conflicts happening with unreliable WPML updates and other plugin with security flaws (revolution slider in my case).
I've just received an email from my client's hosting and he wants us to make updates from WP 3.8.1 to 4.0 but I know there's an intensive conflict job coming up. I usually use the 'Disable all wordpress updates' plugin to hide 'em all from the wp-admin.
I wish my project had enough budget to build custom sites, but that's not the case here.
I just want to know how Wordpress agency are with that. It doesn't look that professional to tell a client that updates aren't necessary.
First of all, you of course bill them for the time you spend on your clients websites. Better yet, sign some kind of support support agreement where they pay you a monthly fee for having their websites kept up to date and maybe uptime monitoring. You can also include a few hours per customer for support and small development tasks per every month(it's usually nice for the clients to have even if they don't use it every month). This is a nice way to get some steady income and fill the time gaps when you have less to do.
You should also state in the agreement when you build the website that future updates and fixes is NOT included in price. You can give the clients a short period the report errors and bugs in the website and after that you will bill them for any extra time.
Secondly, get the right tools to optimize your time. I recommend ManageWP or InfiniteWP. ManageWP is slight better in my opinion and it is a hosted solution, but has a higher price if you have many clients(per client pricing model). InfiniteWP is a free self hosted solution(you set it up on your own server), where you only have to pay for the modules you use. You will need a few modules to get the functionality you need, but it's still much cheaper than ManageWP if you have many clients.
For uptime monitoring I recommend Uptime robot(simple and free for up to 30 websites) or Pingdom a better service with a lot of nice tools, for example performance monitoring, but also a much steeper price.

Premium ASP.NET hosting [closed]

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I know there are a million ASP.NET hosting options, but what are the premium options if you have some money to spend and want maximum performance and uptime? We currently use MaximumASP and they are generally great. I know another good option is Rackspace. Does anyone have any other suggestions? This is one of those things that is hard to Google, because everyone calls their hosting option premium or professional.
I'd say Rackspace is a good choice, but I use discountasp.net because I needed .NET 3.5 SP1 hosting with SQL 2008 and they delivered.
If you want something between shared hosting and Rackspace dedicated, check out their newly acquired cloud offering. I've been using it for a few months with a lot of success.
http://www.rackspacecloud.com/
The obvious choice would be to get a dedicated server, other than that I love: DiscountAsp.net as they always have the most up-to-date frameworks on their servers. Useful if your trying a new technology such as when MVC was in beta
I have used SoftSysHosting for a multitude of clients, and they have never let me down...plus, their Customer Support is excellent, accompanied with a Knowledge Base of FAQs.
I use ORCS Web for one of my sites. I've never had any problems with them in over 2 years. They asked me to fill in a survey a few months back asking what I thought of their support and I had to admit that I'd never really had to use them beyond the initial setup.
You should consider AppHarbor. AppHarbor provides sophisticated scaling and load balancing and a catalog of great add-ons. We also provide tools to make it easier for developers to move their code onto the platform using their favourite revision control tool (Git is supported and the platform is integrated with Github, Bitbucket and Codeplex). Here's a good overview of How AppHarbor Works.
(Disclaimer, I'm co-founder of AppHarbor)
Terremark.com
http://www.terremark.com
Managed Hosting and Enterprise Cloud options.

How have you ever interacted with a Nabaztag? [closed]

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The Nabaztag I ordered has arrived. I know there is an API to interact with the critter from your own software. Have also seen links to libraries in Perl and .NET among others, and have started work myself on a simple .NET Compact Framework 3.5 library for interacting with the bunny from my mobile phone.
I have seen at least one application claiming to interact with the Wifi bunny: the TFS Build Notification application by Rob Aquila. (Not related to this question, but this does look like a nice app to have running on a central monitor in a large TFS Team...)
I'm just curious to experiences by other people with the Nabaztag:
Have you ever used the Nabaztag API to interact with wireless rabbits?
What did you do? Is it freely available to try it out on my bunny?
How did you like working with the API? Did you just use the HTTP API yourself or did you use a library? And if so, which library did you use?
Even if you did nothing with the API yourself, what applications and/or websites do you know of that can interact with a Nabaztag?
Any other tips?
This is a bit of a shameless plug for my employer, but someone wrote a quick and dirty Perl script to make a bunny read out log events from ZXTM (Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager).
The Perl script (and further up that page, how to plug it into ZXTM)
Video of the bunny
VMware image of ZXTM suitable for use on a desktop to try this out
I extended the start on a python api wrapper that others had made, and have a few apps (ugly control panel, personal weather and traffic reader, Google calendar events of the day). They are all available for download at www.mcgurrin.com/nabaztag.
I created a CruiseControl.net plugin with it. Had some issues with the default API because it is not that good documented, so needed a lot of experimenting. Furthermore it is not that easy to develop to the default API.
So i made an .net API (c#) which abstracts the violet api away and gives you more help while developing, specially while creating choreographys (pain in butt they are Yoda would say).
Currently both are not available to the general public but i am in the process of releasing.
Things that can be neath to implement on your bunny, i don't know, local traffic information (nice to have) new releases for music you like, interfacing with your phone? (send command from phone to bunny)
Hey peSHIr, congrats for getting a rabbit. Now as violet got bought by Mindscape, it's sure it'll continue living...
I would like to develop funny stuff for the rabbit as well, but it seems like a big fuss and it's hard to get started - I checked out several APIs and proxys to get a grip on it - found many projects but either useless or outdated. Although it's written in PHP, the OpenNab Project seems to be one the fewer active around. Maybe worth to check it out?
http://opennab.sourceforge.net/
I hope Mindscape will provide a better API, or even better, open source the rabbit!

From admin to dev [closed]

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Recently a friend of mine had gone from a high level NOC position to a developer. Before that he was just doing the help desk stuff. He has no degree, only the usual MIS/networking certifications and as far as I know only tinkers with code on the weekends. I can see where in some scenarios having a good understanding of configurations, packets, users, OU's, etc would be extremely beneficial to a developer.
My question is this, how many full time developers started off this way? Even how many people dual wield the responsibility of developer/systems administrator/network administration?
I'm sure that this is a fairly common scenario. I've spent 12 years in I.T. and I find that as time goes on, the real income comes from being a specialist (DBA, coder, etc.) as opposed to a generalist (network admin, helpdesk).
It's actually the path that my career is taking. I'm not quite a full-time DBA or developer but that's where I'm heading.
I'm also willing to bet that the people skills I've picked up along the way (helpdesk support, network admin, systems analyst) will help me in my DBA/Developer career. Skills I don't feel I would have gotten had I jumped right in to a coding career.
Indeed. I think developers should know the platform they are building software for. If a dev has worked as sysadmin before, he will know how to integreate his software well. Some Windows-Desktop-App related "integration smells" that come to my mind:
App does not run unter normal-user privileges (run on properly secured enterprise desktops? oops!)
App requires write permissions to all kind of system folders (security? oops!)
App stores user settings in 'nonstandard' locations like %programfiles% (backup? permissions? oops!)
App does not provide silent-installable setups (deployment? oops!)
Etc..
A real sysadmin would never write software that has one of the above integration smells. Really.
It's quite common in small companies. I did that for some time - developing the software we sold to customers, keeping the network going, and adding features to the database as needed for a manufacturing company of fewer than 20 people.
You wear many hats in a small business.
But I started off programming microcontrollers in high school, so I can't claim this is where I started.
It is very helpful to have a working knowledge of all these systems as a developer.
-Adam
The overlap of developers and admins happens quite a bit. Our last admin developed on the side just so he'd have a better understanding of what he was helping support. When he left I became the admin just because I tinkered with admin stuff on the side to know how my software was being supported.
A broad understanding with a few focuses is what I'd say is best for any technical professional. Then with a bit of study you can change to meet whatever need may arise.
I've seen it more the other way where a programmer also "admins" the servers and sometimes network. I've definitely been in that position.
I would think it can easily go the other way as well where an admin can start programming systems, but from my experience it's not as common. Whenever I ask a server admin or network person "do you program too?" most of the time the answer is "no".
I think it might be easier for programmers to cross the line because when you are programming a system unless you always have an admin available you need to be able to set up your own environment and that usually includes setting up a server.
I started off as a NOC operator, eventually working my way up to a senior network engineer position. During the last 2-3 years of my tenure at my previous company, I picked up a fondness for programming and started teaching myself everything I could on my own time. Around 2005, I left said company for a small startup and still work there today as as the admin and primary developer.
The one challenge I impose upon myself is to not make admin changes at the drop of a hat to satisfy programming challenges. I must force myself to code in a way that any application I make can be redeployed elsewhere with minimal privileges, despite the fact that I can do pretty much anything I want with our own servers. It's a fine line between performing both duties well and performing one duty badly due to the needs of the other.
I'm here.
Although I've been tinkering with code since I was a child, my first full-time job was being a system administrator, a DBA and other related roles.
Afterwards I worked full time job as a developer, and now I'm both a developer and a security researcher.
Also, I managed to complete M.Sc in CS.
I believe that such transitions are possible, and very beneficial, as you get a wider view on your field of work.

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