Messages

151

General Software Discussion / Re: Strategies for international travellers regarding new US Customs seizure policy

« on: August 03, 2008, 07:09 PM »

'terrorism' and 'child porn' - 2 magic phrases that the US govt (and the corporations who run it) can use to get anything they want, no matter how draconian, passed into law. Meanwhile, the people in this country are more concerned with reality television and watching talk shows while their freedom has been taken away. We deserve this for voting a criminal thug into power 2 times in a row.

152

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« on: July 24, 2008, 03:21 AM »

What desktop search app best supports 'smart folders'. The WDS 4.0 saved searches feature is useless because

- the search syntax has a lot more power than is exposed to the user (typical of Microsoft). I'll be damned if I'm typing all of that
- its too damn slow.
- did I say its horribly inefficient and slow? In the search results, try adding another column (like size). It will run the whole query all over again for no reason.

I want to create my smart folders like (docs about work I have created in last week), (all video on my pc > 100mb) etc. I found a lot of references to Blinkx 'smart folders' but it seems they no longer make it.

153

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« on: July 22, 2008, 07:51 PM »

WriteMonkey is quirky and cool. I just spent 10min typing absolute gibberish just to hear the typewriter sounds! Its software with 'personality', I can easily imagine it being on the Mac.

I'm not a writer, but I can't imagine being more productive in it for writing a book than any modern word processor.

154

General Software Discussion / Re: Drop Box lands

« on: July 22, 2008, 07:30 PM »

I am using Live Mesh instead. Dropbox's current limitations (only 2gb, all data has to be in the dropbox folder) are too much. Mesh does l lot lot more than Dropbox, but its not as fast yet.

155

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Whole Disk Encryption Just Wishful Thinking?

« on: July 22, 2008, 07:27 PM »

Just another reminder that no technology is foolproof, secure or reliable enough.

156

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« on: July 17, 2008, 08:13 PM »

What about Vista users? Search-GT doesn't seem to be integrated into Vista as the search provider, which would make it a lot more powerful.

I also WANT indexing. It doesn't have to constantly thrash the hard dosk (WDS 4  is a lot better) and no matter how fast the app, searching an index will always be an order of magnitude faster. Plus you can search on metadata, refine searches etc all without hitting the Filesystem. And you can search offline files and disks, networked pc's etc, I mean the benefits of a good index are just too many!

157

General Software Discussion / Re: A new task manager on the block...

« on: July 14, 2008, 03:04 PM »

When I saw the title I immediately assumed it referred to a replacement for the Windows Task Manager, which is really a process manager. I guess that's what happens when you're a developer

158

General Software Discussion / Re: TrueCrypt 6.0 released

« on: July 08, 2008, 01:43 PM »

Lets say I am at the airport and my laptop is inspected. If I have TC installed, they will automatically assume I have something to hide and interrogate me further. I have no doubt the DHS will have tools to scan a computer to see if it has encrypted containers.

Also the plausible deniability thing works both ways - they can read TC's feature list as well and know that if I'm smart enough to use it, and I have a 10gb encrypted container which only contains 1gb of files, I'm very likely to have a hidden volume in there too! And then its only a matter of time (read waterboarding) before I am forced to reveal its password - since I can't prove I don't have one. It'd be better to have a hidden encrypted partition but even then its pretty easy to see that and wonder about its contents.

And for those who think that "I have nothing to hide, why encrypt at all", anything discovered in a lawful search can be used against you. The laws these days are designed so that pretty much everyone is guilty of infringement, and its very easy to trap us. If you have some mp3's, if you've accessed a website and its there in your cache, have a ripped movie/youtube video, be prepared to prove you have the rights for it, or they can prosecute you, confiscate equipment and lock you up for as long as they want.

Of course I am being paranoid but its the principle that matters, and to me it seems we have very little privacy left at all.

159

General Software Discussion / Re: Question about Firefox Scrapbook extension.

« on: June 30, 2008, 06:37 PM »

Thanks, sent mail to him.

160

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Vista Deck Design Program?

« on: June 30, 2008, 05:52 PM »

Will programs on this site work?

http://www.ideas-for...design_software.html

All of them should run on Vista (as will mostly any Windows software).

161

General Software Discussion / Question about Firefox Scrapbook extension.

« on: June 30, 2008, 05:50 PM »

Scrapbook (http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook/) is my #1 must have addon for Firefox - its where I save anything interesting I come across, and categorize all my research. It serves as an offline browser, website downloader, quick bookmarking, archiving web pages etc. But there are 2 features I wish it had -

- detecting duplicates - if I'm saving a url which I already have
- export/import from other programs like OneNote

I was unable to find an official forum for Scrapbook. Let me know if anyone knows of a better place to ask, or how to implement these.

162

General Software Discussion / Re: Let go of your bookmarks!

« on: June 20, 2008, 04:38 PM »

I find for the sort of things I often bookmark, Google isn't all that useful.

First of all, to Google something I've got to remember what it is first. There's no reminder functionality which bookmarks provide.

Second, try googling "windows xp tips". You get thousands of hits. Which one is that particular tips site I saw a few months ago that had that list of obscure RUNDLL32 functions? Bookmarks to the rescue!

-Jimdoria (June 19, 2008, 02:46 PM)

I know what you mean, but I couldn't help trying out your example.

The google query - http://www.google.co...btnG=Search&aq=f
5th result on page - http://winxpinfo.com...mands_in_Windows_XP/

Don't know if that page has the kind of info you're looking for, but google knows all!

163

General Software Discussion / Re: "The browser is the new OS" ...(really?)

« on: June 18, 2008, 10:27 PM »

My university professor used to say - "Computing tends to reinvent itself every 20-25 years" and its very true. The evolution of
desktop apps to rich/smart client, SaaS, Web 3.0 etc is all just today's version of terminals connected to mainframes.

I firmly believe in it. Global connectivity IS the future.

"No man is an island" is true in the tech world as well.

The human race has to solve the problems of resource disparity and the gaps in wealth distribution, and make technology accessible to everyone. That's a much harder problem to solve than the technology itself, which is almost here today. The entire world should be living in an always on, always connected metaverse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse).

164

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3 Released

« on: June 18, 2008, 10:16 PM »

So why does every Firefox release cycle have to go through this mess with incompatible extensions? IE and Opera addons don't suffer this fate. There are 2 things going on as far as I can tell -

1. the internal Mozilla api's are updated quite often, and are not backwards compatible. So extension author's have to update.
2. FF will check the version number.

That's why you can sometimes trick Ff by updating the version, or disabling the check, but if #1 is in effect that doesn't work.

Both of these are bad design practices. Extensions should never have to keep updating, especially between minor revs, like on each beta and rc. This is where the open source mentality hurts FF - there's little effort on the part of Mozilla to make sure extensions work, since anyone can go fix them if they want to. At least that's what I feel.

165

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 3 Released

« on: June 18, 2008, 04:17 PM »

I am very happy with this release. I love the AwesomeBar and there are little touches everywhere which I like.
I also installed the Nasa Night Launch theme (http://forums.mozill...ewtopic.php?t=547498) which is just fabulous. All my extensions also work. I've uninstalled FF2 at work and home and this is the true test of whether FF3 is good enough to use.

166

General Software Discussion / Re: Let go of your bookmarks!

« on: June 16, 2008, 11:50 AM »

I end up using the FF Scrapbook extension a lot more than bookmarks - it saves a complete copy of the webpage which is usually enough for what I want, without needing to load the site, so it can be used offline as well and is an excellent way to save information. Since it remembers the url of the page, it also serves as a bookmarking tool.

167

General Software Discussion / Let go of your bookmarks!

« on: June 15, 2008, 10:20 PM »

Topic of discussion - bookmarks are not needed, all you need is a search engine!

I've invested a lot of time and effort in bookmarking any site which I find useful or interesting, and then organizing and syncing those bookmarks using various tools and online managers like del.icio.us etc. And I hardly ever use them. This is what ends up happening -

1. if its a site you visit frequently, its going to be in your browser history, or saved session in Firefox as well.
2. if its not, chances are good its a reference site. In this case you're better off using google or any social bookmarking service to find it based on what you'r elooking for.
3. A lot of the sites you've bookmarked are probably dead/moved/no longer current.

Maybe I'm the only (insane) user who has hundreds of bookmarks, yet hardly ever uses them when looking for something.

168

General Software Discussion / Re: Comparison of Windows file copy replacement software

« on: June 10, 2008, 11:44 PM »

How does the robust copy function built into xplorer2 compare? From what I've seen xplorer2 uses the default shell handler for copies on the same drive, but its own copy between drives, and also has a queue, skip/abort/yes/no-to-all/pause features.

169

General Software Discussion / Re: Duplicate documents search with similarity/fuzzy logic ?

« on: June 04, 2008, 12:27 AM »

Thanks, but a diff/merge utility won't be enough, because it would need to check thousands of files against each other.

170

General Software Discussion / Duplicate documents search with similarity/fuzzy logic ?

« on: June 03, 2008, 08:30 PM »

One of the projects I'm working on has a huge number of document files  (html, rtf, txt, word) many of which contain duplicate content. They contain things like article abstracts, full content and archived copies. So there are a lot of duplicates, however the files are not the same. There are things like 2 files with same content but different html title, or 1 file which contains the text present in 3 others etc. Its all big mess

Usual duplicate finders will not work. I'm not sure if there is any tool that can help me - I need something which will identify duplicate snippets by examining the file contents, and then intelligently recognize how it maps to duplicate files, and which ones can be deleted.

Any suggestions are welcome.

171

General Software Discussion / Re: File Sync questions

« on: May 14, 2008, 03:09 AM »

Pathsync looks neat - small, simple and does the job, and I like open source. What tweaks did you add?

172

General Software Discussion / Re: File Sync questions

« on: May 13, 2008, 05:24 PM »

    I don't have a computer in the place where we prepare food, so item 4) is an
    everything-but-the kitchen synch.

-cranioscopical (May 13, 2008, 02:07 PM)

That made my day

173

General Software Discussion / Re: Your fav' audio CD burner?

« on: May 13, 2008, 01:29 AM »

Anyone posting on these forums is in my book an expert user and knowledgeable enough to figure out most any program. So its ok to recommend a bunch of small efficient programs. But what the normal user?

What do I get for my girlfriend or parents? They want to do all the usual stuff - burn discs, rip movies and music, make photo dvd's and albums etc. Roxio/Nero suites are designed for people like them. But should I tell them to install these bloated monstrosities on their pc (which is not as fast or recent as mine anyway)?

174

General Software Discussion / File Sync questions

« on: May 13, 2008, 01:17 AM »

1. Do you use file syncing?
2. What do you use - program (SyncToy, SuperFlexible), service (foldershare, dropbox), or hardware (Raid 1) and across how many computers?
3. Do you prefer to have the data live only on your pc (foldershare) or in the cloud (dropbox, Live Mesh)?
4. Worth paying for?
5. Would you use it for backups? This is interesting to me because for most people, having an automated sync is a great backup strategy (compared to none), but then there are the dangers - i.e. deletes/bad data are also sync'd.

I think there is a lot of work being done in this area and a lot of scope to help make data easier to deal with for most people. As a developer I know the problem is non-trivial (multi-way sync resolution, transactional commits, differential syncs etc) yet to most users its a simple concept (keep 2 copies of my data).

Its an interesting space to watch.

175

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« on: May 13, 2008, 12:53 AM »

I thought I'd post my config, nicely generated by Mr.Tech Local Install


Generated: Mon May 12 2008 22:49:33 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

Enabled Extensions: [33]
- AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox 6.9.88 - Allows the use of Roboform in Firefox.
- Better Gmail 2 0.3.5 - Enhances the new Gmail interface with Greasemonkey user scripts.  Only compatible with the NEW Gmail interface.
- Better YouTube 0.4.2 - Enhances YouTube with Greasemonkey user scripts.
- ColorfulTabs 2.0.11 - Colorful Tabs colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appeal of the interface.
- CustomizeGoogle 0.72 - Enhance Google search results and remove ads and spam.
- CuteMenus2 2.1 - Iconifies your menus and popups with XP skin.
- delicious.com Bookmarks 1.5.44 - Access your bookmarks wherever you go and keep them organized no matter how many you have.
- delicious.com IncSearch 1.10.1 - This extension is a incremental search UI for delicious.com(http://delicious.com/), You can find bookmarks very quickly.
- DownloadHelper 3.0.3 - Download videos and images from many sites
- Drag de Go 0.2.5 - This extention allows you to execute several commands using Drag and Drop Gesture.
- Enhanced History Manager 0.5.8.05.1 - Flexible History Management
- File Title 1.3 - "Save as" title as default like in IE
- Find Toolbar Tweaks 1.2.1 - Tweaks display and function of Find Toolbar.
- Firefox Showcase 0.9.4.8 - Easily locate any tab you've opened in Firefox.
- FireGestures 1.1 - Executes various commands with mouse gestures.
- Fission 0.9.5 - Progress bar in the address bar (Safari style).
- FlashGot 0.9.9 - Enables single and massive ("all" and "selection") downloads using the most popular external download managers for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD (dozens currently supported, see Extension's Home Page for details). FlashGot offers also a Build Gallery functionality which helps to synthetize full media galleries in one page from serial contents originally scattered on several pages, for easy and fast "download all".
- Greasemonkey 0.7.20080121.0 - A User Script Manager for Firefox
- Linkification 1.3.3 - Converts text links into genuine, clickable links.
- MR Tech Local Install 5.3.2.6 - Local Install power tools for all users. (en-US)
- Multiple Tab Handler 0.2.2008050601 - Provides features to close (, reload, etc.) multiple tabs at once.
- No Squint 1.0.1 - Zooms text by user-configurable percentage
- OpenDownload 1.0.0 - Allows you to open any file from the internet into the OS assigned program.
- Orbit Downloader Firefox Integration 2.02 - Download files,social music,video and streaming media easy and fast.
- PicLens 1.6.3.2361 - Discover More
- ScrapBook 1.3.3.3 - Helps you to save Web pages and organize the collection.
- Session Manager 0.6.1.13 - Saves and restores the state of all windows.
- Stop-or-Reload Button 0.2.2 - Turns the stop and reload buttons into a single one. When you can stop, you have a Stop button, otherwise you have a Reload button. (Like Safari)
- SwiftTabs 0.3.3.1 - You can move to the next tab or the previous tab and close the current tab with a key.
- Tab History 1.0.4 - Links opened in a new tab retain their history.
- Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6 - Tab browsing with an added boost.
- Title Save 0.1d - Save web page with the page's title as name.
- Yet Another Smooth Scrolling 2.0.7 - Replaces scroll behavior with both mouse wheel and cursor key into fully customizable natural smooth one.

Disabled Extensions: [2]
- Autocomplete Manager 2.3 - Provides advanced features for the address Autocomplete component.
- iGoogleBar 0.5.2

Total Extensions: 35

Installed Themes: [2]
- Firefox (default)
- Kempelton 2.0.3 - Clean, modern, easy to use icons.

Installed Plugins: (
- Adobe Acrobat
 - Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape
- DivX Web Player
 - DivX Web Player version 1.4.0.233
- Microsoft® Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin
 - np-mswmp
- Mozilla Default Plug-in
 - Default Plug-in
- RealPlayer Version Plugin
 - 6.0.12.1662
- RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit)
 - RealPlayer(tm) LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In
- Shockwave Flash
 - Shockwave Flash 9.0  r115
- Silverlight Plug-In
 - 1.0.30401.0


Most of these are 'nice to have', but Scrapbook, and to a lesser extent CustomizeGoogle, PicLens, and Tab History are ones I couldn't live without.