Messages

6451

ProcessTamer / Re: Unreported bug in Process Tamer (v2.11.01)?

« on: April 20, 2010, 09:16 AM »

Dr. Bob: Thanks for the suggestion. I knew somebody would probably critique my configuration list, so you've not disappointed!   
I already use Sysinternals' AutoRuns to govern my startups, and "Startup Control Panel" would do much the same job, I think.

What have we here? Oh no! Eyes hazing over with red...anger...must destroy...cannot stop...nooooooo!...not that!...not a rant!...
----- START OF RANT ------
I have every good reason for using Force Kill, and PT has proven to be a boon and a time-saver for me. Even after being unticked in startup, some proggies spawn themselves and reset themselves afresh as a startup, when I inadvertently install them or even just allow them to update themselves.
Rather than have to untick them time after time in AutoRuns, PT allows me to "fire and forget" - just kill 'em by brute force if they ever surface as a process. I can clean up the startup lists at my leisure, then.

For example:
(a) the persistent and annoyingly trojan-like AdobeCrap proggies when you update any Adobe product;
(b) the annoyingly trojan-like AskCrap proggies when you click "accept" by mistake when hurriedly installing some other proggy update that has the AskBar proggy concealed/bundled within it;
(c) the persistent and annoyingly trojan-like Micro$oft Messenger (which I rarely use, preferring to use Trillian for all my chat media), when a Windows Update runs.

CGuard, SeaPort, AdobeFlashCrap are all in the same category as the above.

I get PT to Force Kill the ImpulseCrap ones because they install with Fences (which I like a lot and always use). Unfortunately, Fences is set up so that it will not run unless Stardock Impulse is present and properly starts (presumably before it can issue an Error return). No amount of Autoruns tweaking or deleting of Stardock Impulse seems to alter this, so I let it start up and then PT kills it, and Fences then seems to load quite happily. I couldn't get this degree of control over Fences before I had PT, and was about to ditch Fences until I figured this trick out. (I have mentioned this in another thread elsewhere in the DC discussion forums.)

So you might now begin to see why I say that "...PT has proven to be a boon and a time-saver for me...".

I also always try to ensure that newly spawned instances of these annoying proggies are blocked by ZoneAlarm. They all try to "phone home" via some TCP/IP address or URL, but Zone Alarm won't let 'em without my say-so. I must have about 20 proggies blocked thusly in ZoneAlarm - including the above. That 20 includes, for example, about 9 AdobeCrap/FlashCrap proggies, and several Micro$oft ones (including Windows MediaPlayer, Windows Workflow Foundation, Microsoft Register Server).

All these petty annoyances can make my blood boil, but, thanks to PT (and ZoneAlarm), I can chillax bro' - well, most of the time anyway.
----- END OF RANT ------

6452

Best Archive Tool / Re: Versions??

« on: April 20, 2010, 06:00 AM »

@MohKraats: The review was of what is now probably a decidedly out-of-date version of WinRAR, but it would probably be more relevant if the date and version were referenced in the write-up.
Though competitive products are always leap-frogging each other, a current review might still place WinRAR in or near pole position. It has always been pretty good.

One of the first things I would usually do on getting  a new Windows-based PC is uninstall WinZIP (where installed) and use the "native" ZIP functionality that was built into the OS. Then, for non-zip, I would install WinRAR, because it handles such a wide range of compression formats, and because I prefer RAR for my archives (better compression).

However, I don't think I had never heard of IZARC until I read your post.
Since the version of WinRAR I have been using since 2003 is v2.30 (!) I shall try IZARC out - and it's a good price too (FREE) - so thanks for the reference.

Update: Just downloaded IZARC now. There's quite a good write-up on it (Editor's Review) at Softpedia, and a short one (Editor's Pick) at Brothersoft.

6453

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007 / Re: Lifehacker thread on GTD modificiations

« on: April 20, 2010, 04:57 AM »

Actually, I hadn't noticed this thread before either, and I am an avid "GTD" user.
For years I have looked for a tool or a combination of tools that would replace the DOS-based PIM (Personal Information Manager) Lotus Agenda, which provided me with a perfect GTD system since 1990. To make full use of the thing required you to have the capacity to be logical and able to think in terms of structured and complex cateqories, and it helped if you were a techo (familiar with computer technology), so it was not everybody's cup of tea.

Lotus Agenda's development ceased, and it was made progressively more obsolete by the newer Windows-based technology.
Which was why I actually became quite excited when I started to see the potential for Gmail + labels + filters to do some of the things that I had been accustomed to doing with Lotus Agenda. Some of those - but not all of them by any stretch - have been mentioned in the comments above.

A while back, I installed a Firefox add-on called "GTDInbox for Gmail". I found that by using this together with the add-on Better Gmail2, with the inbuilt categorisation tool "Folders for Gmail" (based on a Greasemonkey script) turned on, I was able to work towards roughly 60% of the power of Lotus Agenda - though it's a bit kludgy. You could experiment with these tools to assess how useful they could be for yourself. It requires setting up properly, in a structured manner, as did Lotus Agenda. I think the future for this Gmail-based approach to GTD is full of potential though.

I had one disappointment: I had been using an incredibly nifty and useful Greasemonkey script with Gmail called "Labellinks4gmail". It was a far more flexible categorisation tool than "Folders for Gmail"), but I had to use the latter because the "Labellinks4gmail" script was broken/defeated by the latest mods to Gmail.

Hope this makes sense and is of use to someone.

6454

ProcessTamer / Re: Unreported bug in Process Tamer (v2.11.01)?

« on: April 20, 2010, 03:42 AM »

Not sure if this might help, but I thought I should mention it - because I had a similar "problem" with Process Tamer not longer after I started using it, some time ago.
It seemed to be not obeying the rules that I had set up. Then I discovered that PT seems to be sort of "case-sensitive" (or at least ASCII-value sensitive).
One of my pet hates is Acrobat's AcroTray. I had a rule in PT to kill it, but after Adobe Acrobat Reader was updated, AcroTray started up and PT seemed to ignore it. Then I realised that the currently-running version of AcroTray (as shown in Process Explorer) was in a different case to the rule I had previously set up.
The only way I could make sure it got killed was by defining the rule 3 times, thus: (I guess this this covered the common permutations of case in the name)
   A. AcroTray.exe
   B. Acrotray.exe
   C. acrotray.exe
The clue I had to case being somehow involved in this was in the PT alphabetic sort on process name in the PT Configuration GUI. For example, if you look at the screenshot attached, you will see how instance B is below A, and C is half-way down the list below that.

6455

General Software Discussion / OffiSync + Google "Cloud" (e.g., Docs, Sites) + Google SaaS (Apps) + MS Word

« on: April 14, 2010, 11:19 PM »

EDIT: This is from my blog site "Optimising the Consultant's Laptop" on Placeless Office.
The short story: Just go to the links below.

The background:
Over the years I have done a lot of work in documentation, and two things stood out as being very useful in that work:

• MSW (for "Microsoft Word"): Since 1998 my dependence on MW has grown. Then, I had to embark on a journey to become a "power user" of MSW, when faced with some major documentation tasks on a large and complex documentation project. I initially read "Taking Word for Windows to the Edge" from cover to cover, to begin that journey. Over the years, MSW has been continually refined and improved by Microsoft. It is an amazingly powerful document creation/editing tool - though sometimes I still miss the power of Macintosh Publisher (I think that was it's name) from the '80s.
• MSS (for "Microsoft SharePoint"): I originally became involved in MSS through managing the installation of a SharePoint site for a client, and later in using SharePoint sites as document repositories and collaboration/workflow tools. MSS is a powerful document management and collaboration tool, and integrates beautifully with Microsoft products IE and Office, but it is still very much a proprietary tool.

OffiSync: Last year (2009) I installed a Microsoft Office Add-In called "OffiSync", which enabled me to link to documents in Google Docs. By that stage, Google was clearly setting up to provide cloud-based document management and collaboration that looked set to eventually eclipse SharePoint.
When I installed OffiSync, I was very impressed at how it aimed to tie Microsoft Office into the Google Apps/Cloud. Up until now, however, I have used it only a little, as it seemed a bit slow/kludgy. I was in "Wait and see mode".

Looks like my waiting is over. Whilst Google's increasing range of cloud-based apps/services was itself disruptive and made for some very useful services, it seemed to me that OffiSync built on that range in such a way that it could potentially be a tremendously productive step forwards.
With Google's latest superb updates to Google Docs and today's updates to OffiSync, I have to say that this potential now looks like it could be realised.

See for yourself anyway:
Website: OffiSync
Video: Using Google Docs with Microsoft Office and OffiSync
Video: Using Google Sites with Microsoft Office and OffiSync
Video: Co-Authoring with Microsoft Office with OffiSync

6456

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: DBISAM Engine Errors for Clipboard Help & Spell -

« on: April 14, 2010, 07:52 PM »

Just a note for the forum:
Mouser requested, and I have provided, details of the trigger for the error (DBISAM Engine Error #11949 SQL parsing error) and its symptoms.
He has been doing some problem analysis and resolution and has has given me a new test version of CHS .EXE to try out - and it not only seems to fix that error, but also seems to make CHS more stable and well-behaved overall.   
Over time, I have come to depend more and more on CHS        - so this is very heartening for me.

6457

Site/Forum Features / Viewing posts and comments in the forum

« on: April 13, 2010, 08:11 AM »

I use Google Reader to aggregate and view all posts from blogs and forums that I am interested in .
That gives me a view with one line for each post or discussion comment.

Google Reader automatically presents me with one-line lists of all posts since I last marked them as read.
If I (say) don't want to see all the comments in all the threads, but only the NEW posts, then I can sort (for example) for "-Re:" in Donation Coder -  and look at it in list view. That shows me all of the new posts - they don't have "Re:" in the subject line.

Hoping this could be useful to someone out there.

6458

General Software Discussion / Update feedback on Networx

« on: April 13, 2010, 07:53 AM »

Thought this feedback might come in useful.
I have been using NetWorx for about a year now. Originally, my laptop had been the sole user of the connection (via a WiFi Access Point), but now we have two laptops that share the connection via the same WiFi Access Point.

The other week, we blew our bandwidth cap. This was no surprise, as our ISP had automatically emailed us to warn that we were approaching 80% utilisation of the capped limit. However, I had rather wished that I could use NetWorx to monitor all bandwidth utilisation for that line, but I had assumed that it could not do that except across a LAN.

Today I was playing around with the NetWorx settings on the two PCS we have that use the line, and - somewhat hopefully -  I tried ticking the box in the "Advanced" tab that said "Synchronise usage data with other NetWorx instances on the network".

To my pleasant surprise, both laptops' instances of NetWorx almost immediately picked up each others' data, and on both laptops you could see the bandwidth consumption by user within laptop, or as an aggregate total for all users.

NetWorx is currently up to v5.1.1 as of 2010/04/14. This usage data synchronisation, together with its nifty reports and bar charts, make NetWorx a very good piece of free software.

6459

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: DBISAM Engine Errors for Clipboard Help & Spell -

« on: April 13, 2010, 02:43 AM »

@mouser: Oops! Sorry! Looks like I spoke too soon.
This error seems to be becoming consistent and frequent - no longer infrequent/episodic:

---------------------------
Error..
---------------------------
DBISAM Engine Error # 11949 SQL parsing error - Missing expression in SELECT SQL statement at line 2, column 1
---------------------------
OK  
---------------------------

When it happens, the main CHS window pops up OK when I press Ctrl+Alt+A, but the Quick Paste Menu does not appear when I press Ctrl+Alt+Q.

I am using the steps as per my earlier post (above) as a workaround, but this is tedious.
Any ideas on how to fix would be gratefully received.    

6460

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: DBISAM Engine Errors for Clipboard Help & Spell -

« on: April 13, 2010, 02:17 AM »

@mouser: Just posting this for the record.
I have been episodically getting this error message with Clipboard Help+Spell: (this is from a Copy/Paste of the error message box)

---------------------------
Error..
---------------------------
DBISAM Engine Error # 11949 SQL parsing error - Missing expression in SELECT SQL statement at line 2, column 1
---------------------------
OK  
---------------------------

I took the action:

• go to CHS "Backup/Maintenance" tab, then click in upper right "Verify or Repair Database.." (per mouser's instructions).
• click on "Accept".

- but the error repeated, so I:

• shut down CHS
• restarted CHS
• went through the above steps
• shut down CHS
• restarted CHS

That seemed to do the trick.

Kudos to mouser.     

6461

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Note-taking Software for Windows (FREE)

« on: April 10, 2010, 03:27 AM »

@note-taker: I won't attempt to answer your specific questions as that would result in my trying to justify my POV, and that would be irrational - albeit human - and a potentially unproductive use of my time.

"When given the choice between changing one's mind or proving one's point of view, most people get busy on the proof." (JK Galbraith)

So, just take what I wrote as my POV please. The only reason I wrote what I did was to give you some feedback that might be a useful addition to the ad hoc collection of  other peoples' POVs that you had referred to previously.

I say this because POVs generally have no basis in statistical validity and do not constitute a valid argument, so cannot be legitimately used to prove anything rational.
From experience, I would suggest that if you challenge people's POVs or push them into a position where they feel obliged to justify their POV, then they will usually try to oblige (though it is irrational to do so, QED), and then they could tend to clam up and not give you much more of their POV because the whole experience seemed just too unrewarding and tiresome/difficult.

6462

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Note-taking Software for Windows (FREE)

« on: April 09, 2010, 12:14 AM »

@note-taker: Thankyou for your initial post and subsequent comments on this.
As an avid seeker of the ultimate PIM (Personal Information Manager) and Note-Taking or Information-Gathering tool, I read this discussion with keen interest.
I have gone over all the information provided on the website (http://www.knowledgenotebook.com/).
My conclusion is that Knowledge Notebook certainly looks very interesting - very impressive too - but, because of several of the points raised in the discussion and the website, I am rather reluctant to try Knowledge Notebook out. I shall defer the idea of trialling it for now, until some of the apparent constraints are sorted out and you are able to be more open about your strategy for the marketing and development of KN. (i.e., I shall adopt a "Wait and see" approach.)

6463

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: O&O DiskStat 2 Pro (Easter promo)

« on: April 08, 2010, 12:12 PM »

@lanux128: Many thanks for this. Very useful.
I also downloaded a trial of O&O Defrag v12 (I have v6).
By the way,  way I found and fixed an installation problem with O&O Defrg - with a little help from the O&O Helpdesk.   

6464

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Partition Wizard Business Edition - free registration limited time offer

« on: April 08, 2010, 12:04 PM »

@40hz: Many thanks for this!

6465

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR Plugin: TimeZone [Update version 1.3.3]

« on: April 06, 2010, 06:54 AM »

@Perry Mowbray: Thanks!     

6466

General Software Discussion / Re: Today is Document Freedom Day! (March 31)

« on: April 02, 2010, 05:23 AM »

@zridling: You might not realise this, but you have just duplicated the link I had already provided above, where I wrote:

There's an interesting and very recent reference to Micro$oft and its commercial behaviours in regards to OOXML here: Microsoft Fails the Standards Test

6467

General Software Discussion / Re: Today is Document Freedom Day! (March 31)

« on: April 01, 2010, 02:58 PM »

@f0dder: Yes, I noted that you regarded OOXML as being more sucky than ODF.   
In answer to your Q:

"Why did the article have to be that long?"

- I have no idea.

6468

General Software Discussion / Re: Today is Document Freedom Day! (March 31)

« on: April 01, 2010, 12:42 PM »

@f0dder: You mentioned OOXML in your sucky diatribe there.

There's an interesting and very recent reference to Micro$oft and its commercial behaviours in regards to OOXML here: Microsoft Fails the Standards Test

6469

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« on: April 01, 2010, 05:46 AM »

I haven't read all the comments in this thread, but has anyone suggested Google's Picasa?
Up until Picasa came out, I was a confirmed ACDC user, but after playing with Picasa and seeing how it integrated with Gmail and online Picasa albums and other Google services (the list is growing), and how it had tags, categories, search, +++etc., I abandoned ACDC. To me, ACDC became a niche dinosaur - a very good one, but a dinosaur nonetheless.

6470

Living Room / Re: Important Information Regarding Changes To The Use of DonationCoder

« on: April 01, 2010, 05:35 AM »

  Had me believing it for a moment. Good one. April Fool's.

6471

General Software Discussion / Re: Today is Document Freedom Day! (March 31)

« on: April 01, 2010, 04:25 AM »

@JavaJones:

"I just had what I thought was a reasonable expectation that a document made in one version of OOo would open in a slightly later version of OOo and look the same"

Yes, well, I would suggest that there is fat chance of that, because your expectation - though probably quite reasonable - would tend to run against normal and observed commercial corporate behaviours.
I say this because of - and at the risk of seeming overly pedantic - the following points:

• The need to provide backwards compatibility for computer-based document files has been an issue since the '80's, and it is still an issue today. (e.g., witness this discussion thread.)
• Commercial software concerns are obliged to work to maximise their software sales and profitability, and hence maximise shareholder returns. (QED)
• To do this, the software manufacturers have usually opted for the old favourite marketing method called "Lock-in". They thus persist in setting a de facto standard for what are proprietary document file formats. These formats tend to necessitate (what a surprise - NOT) that their software be used to variously open/view/update/print the documents. (QED)
• Arguably the greatest offender is probably the monopoly Micro$oft, with their various MS Office formats. Arguably the second greatest might be the opportunistic Adobe with the .pdf file format. However, to be fair to both companies, they have put considerable development resources into ensuring that new software versions (e.g., Word 2007) can not only read older document formats, but also can output in some of those formats - if that is what the user chooses.
• These commercially-driven  behaviours will tend to continue - because they work - until a newly-emerging disruptive technology is introduced.
• The initial response by the dominant/monopoly players to a new, disruptive technology is naturally to deny, obfuscate and generally try to destroy the new technology. If they can't do that directly, then they may try buying the technology and shutting it down (e.g., Google and EtherPad?), or just downright stealing it and offering it as their own product (e.g., MicroSoft and "Double Space" versus Stac Technologies and "Stacker").
• If the new, disruptive technology survives this baptism by fire and starts to become pervasive, then it may well become ubiquitous and set a new de facto standard. This would be unlikely to happen without resistance from the established market players. Open Office has arguably been able to move some way towards this, but it is bogged down by a standards "committee" process run by Open Standards evangelists, and clearly it is not being managed commercially if basic things like maintaining backwards compatibility are being omitted/overlooked.
• An example of a new and disruptive technology that emerged in 2000 was Cerulean Studios' "Trillian", which was (still is) a superb IM aggregator for IRC, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo and MSM. It was a fantastic boon to the user. You no longer needed to have the proprietary and peculiar IM software to use each of these blessed chat media. All your contacts were known in Trillian, and it didn't matter which chat media your friends, family, or colleagues were using - you could manage them all via Trillian. The response of those media owners was absolutely classic and predictable - e.g., try to kill it; change their proprietary message protocols every day/week to frustrate Trillian's operation. Didn't work. Trillian survived. (Crikey! I've been using Trilian for almost 10 years!)
• One of the more recent disruptive technologies that seems to have become ubiquitous overnight is Google Docs. If you do not see what it's potential is for disruptiveness on several fronts, then you probably haven't played with it enough, or not thoughtfully enough. There is nothing much that the established market players seem to be able to do about this one except mimic it (e.g., Microsoft Windows Live and Windows Live Sync), or drag their feet on the way to the "open" standards party (e.g., as Adobe would seem to be doing).

Hope this helps or is of use, or at least interesting to someone.

6472

General Software Discussion / Re: Today is Document Freedom Day! (March 31)

« on: March 31, 2010, 04:25 PM »

@zridling: About that slogan in the banner image, "Liberate your documents!"

What if your documents don't want to be liberated, eh? Have you ever considered that?   

Enquiring minds need to know.   

6473

General Software Discussion / Re: Question - Does anyone know of such a program? - Data organizer

« on: March 31, 2010, 06:46 AM »

@skwire: Could I ask you some Qs about myBase please:

• How long have you been using myBase for?
• What are its pros and cons?
• What plugins/addons have you purchased for it, and how did they fare in your view?

(Thanks.)

6474

Living Room / Re: Ars Technica on the problem with adblocking

« on: March 30, 2010, 09:04 PM »

@f0dder: I suspect that we have approached a point of relative ignorance in this discussion, beyond which neither of us (well, certainly me, anyway) really knows enough about or is qualified to discuss what we are discussing. Without further research on our part, or input from others who know more, we may be unable to throw any new or useful light on the subject.
I only know what I know about surfing using AdBlocking and anonymity "cloaks" (both serving important principles of freedom to me) from what I have experienced having used or experimented with different software including, for example:

• JunkBuster
• Privoxy (which "..is based in part on code originally developed by Junkbusters Corp. and Anonymous Coders.")
• Guidescope
• Hoster
• Proxomitron
• AdBlock
• NoScript

As an example, you don't know about how AdBlock seems to affect browsing in Chrome, but I do, having used it. That doesn't make me an expert though.

JunkBuster really did minimise my bandwidth utilisation (as explained in a post above), but it I gather that its technology may have effectively been made obsolete by changes in other technology (e.g., including SSL). I recall reading a paper by a software developer (it might have been for SpeakFreely) where he said he was giving up on the idea of privacy of information because (I think) he said it had all been made virtually impossible by the default use of NAT technology in the modem/router.

My view is that if DonationCoder coders were up to the challenge of picking up the threads of JunkBuster and Privoxy (say), and developing from what the developers in Junkbusters Corp. and Anonymous Coders had done, then that might be really interesting.

6475

Living Room / Re: Ars Technica on the problem with adblocking

« on: March 30, 2010, 11:20 AM »

@f0dder: Well, I did preface my comment with "I could be wrong, of course...". However, it does seem that the modern AdBlock does download the crap, display it momentarily (in Chrome) and then remove it from the display. (This has been mentioned by someone else in this discussion thread, above.) As far as I am aware, JunkBuster did not do this.

You ask "Do you have any detailed information on this?" Well, I might have, and it will be in the .ZIP file I linked to.
For example, In the FAQ file, it says this:

Can web sites tell that I'm using the Internet Junkbuster?
With the default options the proxy doesn't announce itself. Obvious indications such as Keep-Alive headers are deleted, but sites might notice that you can cancel cookies faster than any human could possibly click on a mouse. (If you want to provide a plausible explanation for this, change the User Agent header to a cookie-free or cookie-crunching browser).

But when certain options are used they could figure out something's going on, even if they're not pushing cookies. If you use blocking they can tell from their logs that the graphics in their pages are not being requested selectively. The add-forwarded-header option explicitly announces to the server that a proxy is present, and sending them wafers [a kind of dummy cookie] is of course a dead giveaway.

The key words there are, "are not being requested selectively".