Messages

51

General Software Discussion / Re: AVG Antivirus Plans to Collect & Sell Your Personal Data to Advertisers?

« on: September 21, 2015, 08:41 PM »

The problem with Microsoft's anti-malware efforts is that it only alerts on detection of cracks and keygens while blissfully letting evil through.

Other than OS upgrades, when was the last time you saw the MSE *engine* upgraded (not signatures)?

52

General Software Discussion / Re: Newer password keepers/form-fillers - anyone using Dashlane or 1Password?

« on: September 21, 2015, 08:37 PM »

The Master Password as a way to access one's sticky account was addressed in the beta forum.

Someone complained:

This is UNACCEPTABLE. I do NOT want to use my Master Password to access my Sticky Account. No assurance you can offer is adequate. I want StickyPass, or a reg code that licenses my software.

Give the present direction, you force me to change my Master Password with every upgrade where I have to reach my account. I want no part of the cloud, and that includes Master Password in in form/hash/salt.

Their reply:

That's exactly what it does not. We never ever use MP as a string for hashing. MP is used only locally to prove that you can decrypt a random string used later as an access token. Basically it is the same situation as if you download a special DB encrypted by your MP, containing just a registration string to prove you can decrypt it.

53

General Software Discussion / Re: AVG Antivirus Plans to Collect & Sell Your Personal Data to Advertisers?

« on: September 20, 2015, 12:37 PM »

Oh, not only can it be right....it gets worse! According to this article:

http://www.techspot....-can-sell-users.html

An AVG spokesman explained that AVG has always sold users' data and it has always been disclosed in previous versions of their privacy policy, but it was not laid out in a plainspoken way.

And evidently this new transparent privacy policy is already up on AVG's site for anyone to peruse themselves.

54

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox drastically bleeding market share

« on: September 20, 2015, 12:30 PM »

I don't know why everyone's surprised that Firefox's market share is dwindling. This is exactly what is expected to happen when a company turns its back on its founding mission statement and becomes what the company founders professed to hate...and was the reason why they founded the company in the first place.

55

General Software Discussion / Re: Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« on: September 19, 2015, 05:59 PM »

I wasn't talking about deleting anything. I was talking about the fact that if you installed it, and it immediately had this list, it just culled it from your OS.  It didn't cultivate this list itself.  It was just revealing what was there.

-wraith808 (September 18, 2015, 03:50 PM)

I could be wrong, but I think the point Tao was trying to make is not where this list came from or why the list was there, but why would a browser have access to the last 15 days activity on his PC? For what purpose did the developer program this 'feature'?

I, for one, do not see why a browser would need to keep track of any of my activities other than browsing & download history. If a web browser is keeping track of what videos I watch, what Word documents I open, and what files I copy to what directories then that browser needs to be uninstalled. I have never used SlimJet and if this is not the kind of activity Tao means then please ignore my ramblings.

56

General Software Discussion / Re: Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« on: September 19, 2015, 05:53 PM »

Can you say more about this means?

-TaoPhoenix (September 18, 2015, 12:49 AM)

Tao, you can read a Mozilla blog entry here that talks about WebExtensions, Electrolysis, and the road ahead. They have huge aspirations and say it will make for a better browser. Time will either prove them right or wrong. Not everyone at this point shares their opinion.

57

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Windows 10 a trojan?

« on: September 19, 2015, 05:46 PM »

I'm always a bit stunned when I hear how bad the internet packages are in the States
Here (.de) it's always flat rate (which is no guarantee of speed though).

-tomos (September 18, 2015, 05:00 PM)

The problem here in the US is we have such vast areas of land that have a very, very low population density & it just isn't cost-effective for the service providers to build the infrastructure and backbone to access those remote places. The result is a lot of people have to rely on satellite and other horrible methods in order to obtain internet access.

58

General Software Discussion / Re: Newer password keepers/form-fillers - anyone using Dashlane or 1Password?

« on: September 19, 2015, 05:29 PM »

Oh, that seems to have the perfect feature set for me! Cross-platform, WiFi sync... I'm definitely going to give this a go! The license model nags me a bit, though. Have I misunderstood it, or will you lose premium features once the license period is over? Lifetime license price is a bit steep.

-f0dder (September 19, 2015, 05:04 AM)

I've been a Sticky Password user for years. Love, love, love it....but, holy cow! They have seriously raised their prices!!! I love their product, but I don't know if I can keep recommending them as enthusiastically as I have been at the current price point.

f0dder, wish you would have seen the threads I posted in the Found Deals section a year or so ago before their prices skyrocketed.

Anecdotal story: I can't complain in any way how they have treated me as a customer. I bought Sticky Password v6 on a BitsDuJour special for $8. Version 7 came out and wanted to sync all my stuff to the cloud so I skipped it. Version 8 was released with optional WiFi or Cloud sync (or none at all) and I was getting ready to bite on the upgrade when they announced that all previous paid customers would receive a lifetime license free. So, yeah...$8 for a lifetime license. They earned some good will from me.

I really like how they keep their Firefox extension updated to support the beta versions of Firefox....and when I was in college, it was the only password manager that would auto-fill the login fields on my college's brain-dead log-in page.

59

General Software Discussion / Re: Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« on: September 17, 2015, 10:08 AM »

I assume this only relates to extensions and not Add-ons, since I hadn't heard about it - and if that's the case, it's a good move.

-f0dder (September 16, 2015, 01:42 PM)

I'm hoping you're right, but you most certainly can't tell by reading any of Mozilla's announcements or blogs on the subject. Apparently extensions are extensions and add-ons are add-ons, but extensions are add-ons, too & they use the words extensions/add-ons interchangeably.

I'm hoping your line of thinking is correct, but even then, Mozilla has something coming called "Electrolysis" that's going to turn proper add-ons on their ear in the future.

60

General Software Discussion / Re: Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« on: September 17, 2015, 10:05 AM »

Once again I apologize if this is an idiotic question.

-JavaJones (September 14, 2015, 02:18 PM)

Definitely not an idiotic question! What you suggest is a way to go for developers of forked versions, although it would reset the code base to zero & they'd have to re-integrate all of their tweaks and changes. Another thing using the ESR source code would do is reset the clock on deprecation of the code to zero...but the clock would still be there. In 18 months' time the current ESR code base will be deprecated and we'll be right back to where we are now...except by then the main Firefox line of development will be on Chrome add-ons only.

Opera, as a browser, never worked well for me, but for a lot of people it did & it must have upset quite a few people to be forced to leave something behind that worked the way they worked because running an out-dated browser is running an insecure browser.

61

General Software Discussion / Re: Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« on: September 13, 2015, 02:50 PM »

This is very confused and mostly wrong.

Opera was always at the forefront of browser innovation and a lot of their features were copied by the big guys.  The problem they faced is that it required simply too many resources for a relatively small company to compete with the big guys (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple) and they did not have the clout to get their cross-platform Presto engine considered in the adoption of standards.

-xtabber (September 13, 2015, 10:57 AM)

You (along with NigelH) had very different experiences with Opera than I did. I tried Opera numerous times over the years & every time I did the web sites I visited never rendered properly. I loved what they were trying to do on some fronts, but their refusal to open up to extensions/add-ons and the inability to render the web sites I visited rendered it not a viable alternative for me...or my friends. One friend held on to the dream of Opera longer than most of us, but he was often having to switch to another browser to accomplish what he was trying to do on a lot of web sites he frequented.

The original Opera's market share was abysmal even at its heights. As talented as their programmers may have been, the general public at large did not share their vision. I'm sure there were a lot of people who shared the experience of their web sites not rendering correctly in Opera as well.

And if Opera's biggest failing was the mismanagement of senior management, what chance does Vivaldi stand when it was founded by Opera's CEO, the most senior management member? I'm going to try out Vivaldi once it hits 1.0...I don't want any failings of the technical previews to possibly color any opinions I might form about it.

But to swing this back on-topic, not having the clout is what I'm worried about for Pale Moon, but the second beta of their Goanna engine works remarkably well for being as early in the development process that it is. It's going to be interesting to see how a Firefox fork can exist when (eventually) the extensions dry up.

As for Vivaldi, it's got a lot of work ahead of it if it is going to become the "advanced browser built with power users in mind" that it's advertising itself as. Although, I now see that Vivaldi supports Chrome add-ons as well.

Maybe that's what Pale Moon will need to do in order to move forward as well? Regardless, I guess it may be time to start seeing if my favorite Firefox extensions have Chrome equivalents.

62

General Software Discussion / Re: Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« on: September 13, 2015, 09:42 AM »

you say this at the end of a long post - so I'm not really sure what you're referring to with 'it' (?)

-tomos (September 13, 2015, 03:28 AM)

I didn't want to dilute the discussion of the Pale Moon/Firefox transition with talk of other browsers, but Opera (the original Opera) did not work successfully as a browser. It was based on their proprietary browser engine, Presto, and when users clamored for extensions to functionality, they were shot down. And down also went their popularity and, some would say, their usefulness.

So, there was much grumbling among the Opera devs regarding their browser was dying. The radical decision was made to move Opera to the WebKit browsing engine. Oh, yay. Another Chrome-like browsing experience...except without the Chrome-like extensions. Let's make a browser like Chrome & take everything that users love about Chrome...and not use those parts.

Vivaldi is written by the Opera devs who did not agree with moving to the WebKit browsing engine. However, they must have all flunked History class, because they are ignoring the age-old wisdom that those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. Take the paragraph above I wrote about Opera and Presto, but substitute Vivaldi for Opera and Blink for Presto, and boom! You're accurately predicting the future even better than Nostradamus did.

Yes, there's a huge demographic of people who browse the internet who do not care if their browser doesn't offer any extensions or do not want their browser to use extensions. They are called IE users.

63

General Software Discussion / Re: Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« on: September 12, 2015, 03:09 PM »

I was raising similar concerns a few days back, but nice research into "whatever" the 24 ESR release branch means into Stuff.

-TaoPhoenix (September 12, 2015, 02:02 PM)

Almost replied to your post along with Wraith's but I think you asked enough questions to keep things separated. So....what's ESR? Simple answer is ESR stands for Extended Support Release. Huge companies hate change, but software developers love it when huge companies use their software and ESR releases make a compromise that makes software more palatable to those huge companies.

When a version of a particular program becomes ESR, it's usually an older, established version (such as Firefox v24) that Mozilla has made a firm commitment that they will not add any new features to that version (thereby not introducing any new bugs), but will commit to back-code any bug or vulnerability fixes for a set amount of time (say, 18 months) while the regular software version moves forward to bigger and better things.

Now, how does this affect Pale Moon? Pale Moon was based on Firefox 24, an ESR release, so they were able to make all their coding changes and feature additions safe in the knowledge that if anyone on the Firefox side of things found/fixed a bug or vulnerability, that code would be shared with them. Since ESR releases are used by huge companies, there's a lot of scrutiny by non-Firefox & non-Pale Moon developers/employees meaning more eyes being more likely to find any problems that may exist.

Now, the extended support commitment for Firefox 24 has ended. Firefox's new ESR release is Firefox 31 and it will get the extended support and be used by the huge companies going forward, leaving Firefox 24 behind to be deprecated and forgotten. One may argue that Pale Moon has digressed enough from the original Firefox code by now that this doesn't matter & to a certain extent that is true, but the fact remains is that the Firefox 24 code-base is firmly, with certainty, and forever out of the spotlight being declared obsolete by its creators.

Going forward the Pale Moon team is on their own (which to my knowledge is only two or three people).

I think I'm slightly meta-concerned that Google, well, became "a verb" to replace "web search engine", but then they decided to make Android and are scaring Apple, then they decided "hey, let's do browsers" and A, made Chrome that lots of people like as is, then made *Mozilla* turn add-ons into Chrome Compatible things.

I'm not sure what to make of Google these days and this is coming from someone who has an Android phone & tablet sitting on his desk right now and wouldn't have it any other. Just yesterday my friend were reminiscing about the days when Google's mission statement was Do No Evil. When was the last time we heard anyone at Google utter those words?

So now that Pale Moon is going to decide to make their own engine, did someone "super-trap" them into that?!

No, no one was trapped, scammed, or anything like that, but for a while now Mozilla has tied the browser engine version to the browser version and that's really started to become limiting to Pale Moon. Something needed to be done so the Pale Moon browser could move forward on its own and that's what needed to happen: a browser engine of their own.

But so - if people can't just do old school "let's do FF forks", are we getting meta-played into something? So Mozilla is Doing Things, Pale Moon has been a serious leading contender spin, I'm using a 3rd tier one by Comodo called Ice Dragon, Vivaldi is trying to re-undo Opera-ish-things, and sky only knows what MS's Edge means into all of this!

Life is full of paths and those paths intersect and branch off in different directions. Spend all your time at an intersection straining your eyes to see what's down the end of all those paths & you'll end up going nowhere. I can see real benefits into moving to Chrome add-ons where there's a unified extension scene & not having to upgrade your extensions every time you upgrade your browser. However, I'm a little worried about all the telemetry and "suggested sites" that are just veiled advertising that's being added to Firefox. Fortunately, if you dig deep enough you can turn it all off, but it's a little troublesome the way things are heading.

I just want non-sleek old style menus where all 70 features are there, and people don't go "yay simple, so we can trick you into us hiding behind gear icons into cutting huge swaths of features!"

If you want your old Firefox UI back then check out the Classic Theme Restorer extension. It goes a long way to making things look sane again.

The Opera and Vivaldi developers just don't get it & I don't think they'll ever be more than niche products.

64

General Software Discussion / Re: Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« on: September 12, 2015, 02:50 PM »

I agreed with you up until this point.

-wraith808 (September 12, 2015, 12:27 PM)

Well, that wasn't a point. It was a question. An open-ended, non-biased question to spur discussion. I have yet to form an opinion on Firefox's actions yet and just threw that in there to get the opinions of the DC hive mind.

65

General Software Discussion / Pale Moon and Firefox - The Honeymoon Period is Over

« on: September 12, 2015, 10:18 AM »

Pale Moon is one of the most popular alternative browsers available. Having access to Firefox extensions, Firefox compatibility, and a pre-Australis interface without telemetry being transmitted in the background are just some of the reasons why people have chosen to use Pale Moon. However, what a lot of people don't know is everything is about to change. A lot.

Pale Moon has been enjoying a golden age of development having been based on the Firefox 24 ESR release. Maintaining Firefox compatibility & having the benefit of leading security experts examining the Firefox source code for vulnerabilities has given the Pale Moon team a leg up in staying current with features, security, and performance.

However, Mozilla has ended support for the 24 ESR branch of the Firefox code and it has been deprecated. There will be no more work done on it by the Firefox team nor will independent security experts be examining its code. It has been left to wither in the field. All further development and security evaluations will fall solely upon the small Pale Moon team.

To further the divide between the Firefox and Pale Moon browsers, the Pale Moon team has decided to abandon the Gecko engine and develop their own, code-named Goanna. This holds numerous advantages for them moving forward. However, this is more code that they will solely be responsible for to ensure that no vulnerabilities crop up in the code.

Last, but certainly not least, is a change that may very well be a devastating blow for the browser. Mozilla has declared that extensions will no longer be supported by Firefox in the future and the browser will be moving to a model that exclusively supports Chrome add-ons.

This begs the question of what's the point of using a Firefox clone that is no longer a Firefox clone? Furthermore, what good is a Firefox clone that doesn't have active development of extensions to increase its functionality?

Also, in a similar vein, why use Firefox over Chrome?

66

General Software Discussion / Re: HELP! AMD Catalyst update broke my PC - How best to reinstall Windows 7?

« on: September 12, 2015, 10:15 AM »

it's absolutely sensible to get your hands on a spare cheap video card and try it -- it sounds like that may be your problem.

-mouser (September 12, 2015, 09:31 AM)

If a person has techie friends, they often have one or more video cards laying around doing nothing they might let you have.

67

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: AppSumo presents SitePoint Premium deal of a lifetime

« on: September 08, 2015, 06:57 PM »

Off topic: Innuendo please set a custom avatar for yourself in your profile -- someone who has been around as long as you have on this forum deserves a recognizable avatar!

-mouser (September 07, 2015, 01:16 PM)

Maybe I'll come up with a totally awesome avatar....but probably not. We'll see.

68

General Software Discussion / Re: Readon HD 7310 Blurred text with overall faded look

« on: September 08, 2015, 06:53 PM »

It is a Toshiba Laptop using the built in screen.  I am using the highest res.  1366 x 768 which says Recommended.  I suppose I could try some of the 12nn x 768 for grins.

Edit:  I tried all the other resolutions and the text looks even worse.

-MilesAhead (September 07, 2015, 07:32 AM)

That it's a laptop adds another layer of complexity. Some laptop manufacturers have customized mobility drivers that one must install in order to have a satisfactory experience. Installing vanilla drivers off the AMD site results in sub-par performance.

69

General Software Discussion / Re: urgent free AVG expired request!

« on: September 08, 2015, 06:48 PM »

As a more general answer I should say that I'm more of a satisfactionizer than an optimizer when it comes to system tools -- once a tool works well enough i tend to stop looking for the best tool..

-mouser (September 06, 2015, 01:38 PM)

I wish I was more like that. I don't rest until I feel like I have the best tool for the job and even then I keep an eye out going forward just in case something changes and something else becomes better.

70

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: AppSumo presents SitePoint Premium deal of a lifetime

« on: September 07, 2015, 12:08 PM »

I have been a member of their support staff for the last 2 years, and very recently promoted to Support Manager. I have disclosed my affiliation on every thread that I have started about any SitePoint/Learnable deals, since I started working there.  And I don't post about all of their deals...just the more exciting ones.

-app103 (September 07, 2015, 08:18 AM)

That's very cool and congrats on your promotion. I wasn't trying to hint that anything untoward was happening. I don't get out much and my attention-span varies depending on the day so I figured I just missed something.

71

Living Room / Re: Take the xkcd weird correlation survey

« on: September 07, 2015, 12:06 PM »

five
random
words
um
one

 

-wraith808 (September 06, 2015, 02:41 PM)

One might argue that your first three word choices aren't random choices at all.

72

General Software Discussion / Re: Mind mapping software

« on: September 07, 2015, 11:56 AM »

Hm-m-m ... would that be the lifetime of the software, the developer, or me  ?

-barney (September 06, 2015, 07:33 PM)

My guess is yes to all three...whichever ends first.

73

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Privacy Concerns

« on: September 07, 2015, 11:51 AM »

Indeed those are the new forum's default avatars...which, I admit, are better than the new forum's old 'new' avatars which were weird squiggly images of which the system chose to make mine an unsightly orange.

I never had an avatar. Never use an avatar wherever I go & now since the forum switch I'm toying with trying to make a clear/invisible/transparent image to see if that will work to 'fake' not having an avatar.

74

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: AppSumo presents SitePoint Premium deal of a lifetime

« on: September 06, 2015, 02:13 PM »

Yes, our primary focus is web development & design, and there is very little that would be of use to anyone that wasn't interested in these topics, specifically.

-app103 (September 05, 2015, 10:16 AM)

Our? SitePoint is your employer? Just curious.

75

Living Room / Re: Take the xkcd weird correlation survey

« on: September 06, 2015, 02:08 PM »

I took their survey just because I know it'll throw off all their results.