Messages

976

General Software Discussion / Re: needed: tool to sync two HDs/folders

« on: February 13, 2007, 08:29 AM »

Sounds like you don't need bi-directional syncing, but handling locked files is critical.

I know just the (free) program for you: HoboCopy http://www.pluralsig.../Craig/HoboCopy.html

What is HoboCopy?

HoboCopy is a backup/copy tool. It is inspired by robocopy in both name and in functionality. It differs greatly from robocopy, however, in two respects:

   1. It is not as full-featured as robocopy.
   2. It uses the Volume Shadow Service (VSS) to "snapshot" the disk before copying. It then copies from the snapshot rather than the "live" disk.

...

Why Does HoboCopy Use the Volume Shadow Service?

Because HoboCopy copies from a VSS snapshot, it is able copy even files that are locked by some other program. Further, certain programs (such as SQL Server 2005) are VSS-aware, and will write their state to disk in a consistent state before the snapshot is taken, allowing a sort of "live backup". Files locked by VSS-unaware programs will still be copied in a "crash consistent" state (i.e. whatever happens to be on the disk). This is generally a lot better than not being able to copy the file at all.

977

Living Room / Re: Poll : What is the most useless key on the keyboard

« on: February 12, 2007, 10:42 AM »

I have a coworker who actually physically removes his CapsLock key.

For me, I'd kill SysRq if it weren't attached to PrintScreen. Its story is just too sad, at least as I heard it. At a hardware level, this key is what should carry the ctl-alt-del function of Windows: it's interrupt isn't maskable even when some rogue process has run away with your CPU. But MS dropped the ball on this decades ago.

978

Living Room / Re: truecrypt thread orphan

« on: February 05, 2007, 02:01 PM »

It belonged here:
https://www.donation...91.msg51529#msg51529

Thanks!

979

Living Room / truecrypt thread orphan

« on: February 05, 2007, 11:50 AM »

whoooooops!

-nudone (February 05, 2007, 11:46 AM)

Whooooops is right! I've never seen this thread before; how did my reply get posted into it?

980

Living Room / truecrypt thread orphan

« on: February 05, 2007, 11:41 AM »

Earlier it was asserted that NTFS encryption can be decrypted on a different system if one just moves some registry keys. This might be true for XP in a standalone or workgroup configuration, but it is decidedly not true if you're in a domain.

If you attach the drive to a different domain, or if you lose the domain controller, you will NOT be able to decrypt the data. And since the idea here is to keep a backup secure, one must assume that the reason for restoring the backup might be that the domain was destroyed.

So, I second the recommendation of TrueCrypt.

981

General Software Discussion / Re: Installing office 2007 gets me a consistent 20-30% increase in Explorer's CPU?

« on: February 04, 2007, 02:58 PM »

does office2007 come with some indexing service or similar?

-f0dder (February 04, 2007, 02:25 PM)

There's an upgrade to MS Desktop search, including integration with Outlook. If this is the first installation of that, you'll get a bunch of up-front activity as it scans everything. But (a) that should only last for like a day, I'd think; and (b) it doesn't show up in that process either -- it's got its own search indexer process.

982

General Software Discussion / Re: Installing office 2007 gets me a consistent 20-30% increase in Explorer's CP

« on: February 04, 2007, 12:46 PM »

Installing office 2007 gets me a consistent 20-30% increase in Explorer's CPU. according to process explorer, even when the computer is iddle, the process is taking 1/4th of the CPU!

-urlwolf (February 04, 2007, 09:13 AM)

No such problem here  . I've been using Office 2007 since the first beta, and never run into this. Checking Process Explorer right now, explorer.exe is registering 2% or less consistently.

983

Living Room / Re: ASP or C# ?

« on: February 02, 2007, 04:33 PM »

OK, some terminology:

• ASP is the older technology, it works a lot like PHP or ColdFusion. You generally program in VBScript, but IIRC you could use JavaScript if you prefer.
• ASP.Net is the current technology, and is fundamentally different. It uses any of the .Net languages (like C#) to program a model that's more reminiscent of old VB forms.

Either way, you'd need to find a host that has Windows servers. I'm not aware of any of these that are free (although I've seen offers for 1 year free hosting). But if it's just for your own learning, you can still do the development and testing on your own machine, and if you've got a good connection, even let it serve pages for the rest of the universe.

FWIW, ASP.Net doesn't need to be platform-dependent. There's an open, platform-neutral implementation of .Net called Mono. And there's a web environment that takes the flavor of Rails and ports it to .Net, letting you leverage your C# knowledge, called MonoRail. I'm not a dynamic language expert, but I expect that if you've learned C# that you might have a learning curve picking up Ruby. But then, maybe learning is exactly what you want to do.

984

General Software Discussion / Re: RSS reader with firefox engine. local copy of content, and newspaper CSS?

« on: January 26, 2007, 08:13 AM »

Only the top posts (based on personal relevancy to you) appear in the ticker or popup alerts.

-ChrisSaad (January 26, 2007, 12:41 AM)

Thanks for the pointer, it looks interesting. A couple of questions:

• Aside from the eye candy alerts, does it have a more traditional newsreader interface (3-panel thing, or somesuch?
• The relevancy rankings that are mentioned are what I'm looking for. But the site isn't clear on how this works. Keyword watches are mentioned, but that alone won't do it for me. I'm hoping for a Bayesian-type scheme. Does it offer anything like this?

Sounds interesting, though.

BTW, I'm not fanatical about advertising. I'm not opposed in principle to targeted advertising. However, it seems to me that to enable the targeting, you've either got to download the targeting specifications of each ad so that the client can decide if the user will want it (thereby using bandwidth) or send a digest of the user's interests (which is a potential privacy issue).

985

General Software Discussion / Re: RSS reader with firefox engine. local copy of content, and newspaper CSS?

« on: January 25, 2007, 07:54 PM »

What's your experience with attensa?

-urlwolf (January 25, 2007, 06:55 PM)

Honestly, I haven't tried it yet. I'm holding out hope for wTicker, and keeping Attensa (or whatever anyone else can suggest) as a backup.

986

General Software Discussion / Re: RSS reader with firefox engine. local copy of content, and newspaper CSS?

« on: January 25, 2007, 02:39 PM »

I've been using wTicker (http://www.wticker.org/ ) for quite a while. It meets most of your requirements, I think. The rendering engine isn't IE, but I don't think it's Firebird either.

Unfortunately, the developer seems to have abandoned it. You can probably find downloads if you look, but the web site is dead, and I can't get email replies from him.

So I'm in the market now myself. Like you, I want local content. Another must-have for me is Bayesian ranking of articles. I have a lot of subscriptions, but I don't care to spend the time reading all of their output. I'd rather spend the time I've got on the few that appear to meet my tastes the best. The only other candidate I can find with this feature is Attensa (http://www.attensa.com )

987

General Software Discussion / Re: Stickies 6.0a released

« on: January 25, 2007, 08:46 AM »

Just joined yesterday, this is my first post here. And I'm using that one-time-only first post to say:

Yes, this is some pretty sweet software. It's worth at least ten times what he's charging for it.