Topics

1

General Software Discussion / SoftMaker Office 2018 announced (beta available)

« on: October 24, 2017, 01:33 PM »

My favourite office suite will come in a shiny new 2018 version, and there's a beta available!

A few quotes from http://www.softmaker...maker-office-windows

Direct exchange of documents with Microsoft Office

Skip the annoying import and export: SoftMaker Office 2018 uses the Microsoft formats DOCX, XLSX and PPTX as its default file formats. This lets you edit your documents in Microsoft Office directly and without conversion.

With SoftMaker Office 2018, you can switch at any time between modern ribbons and the classic user interface with menus.

-http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office-windows

Upgrade fees: Standard - only €/US$ 69.95
Upgrade: only €/US$ 49.95

Pro (includes dictionaries and "Administration with more than 270 group-policy objects" - only €/US$ 99.95
Upgrade: only €/US$ 59.95

2

Living Room / KRACK - WPA2 Vulnerability Exposed

« on: October 16, 2017, 01:45 PM »

This subject is beyond me, but I was a little surprised to see that there wasn't a thread on this already...

Researchers have disclosed a serious weakness in the WPA2 protocol that allows attackers within range of vulnerable device or access point to intercept passwords, e-mails, and other data presumed to be encrypted, and in some cases, to inject ransomware or other malicious content into a website a client is visiting.

-https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/severe-flaw-in-wpa2-protocol-leaves-wi-fi-traffic-open-to-eavesdropping/

Some more on this:

https://www.krackattacks.com/

In layman's terms, to an end user, what are the potential harm that can be done, according to the wise world of DC'ers?

Edit: To answer this myself, straight from the source:

We discovered serious weaknesses in WPA2, a protocol that secures all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. An attacker within range of a victim can exploit these weaknesses using key reinstallation attacks (KRACKs). Concretely, attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted.   This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on. The attack works against all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware into websites.

The weaknesses are in the Wi-Fi standard itself, and not in individual products or implementations. Therefore, any correct implementation of WPA2 is likely affected. To prevent the attack, users must update affected products as soon as security updates become available. Note that if your device supports Wi-Fi, it is most likely affected. During our initial research, we discovered ourselves that Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys, and others, are all affected by some variant of the attacks. For more information about specific products, consult the database of CERT/CC, or contact your vendor.

The research behind the attack will be presented at the Computer and Communications Security (CCS) conference, and at the Black Hat Europe conference. Our detailed research paper can already be downloaded.

-https://www.krackattacks.com/

3

Living Room / USB HDD enclosure or what?

« on: October 08, 2017, 11:12 AM »

Hi. Time to call on the wisdom of DC again... I've got an old hard drive laying around and have never got around to doing anything with it, but figure it's about time. There's most likely nothing of interest on it, except to please my curiousity, if the HDD even works. I only recently picked it out of the computer it came with. But what I'd like some help figuring out, is how to access it? Preferably something cheap, something like a simple USB HDD enclosure that I can put the old HDD in and plug into my laptop. Would love some suggestions for an enclosure or what I'd need to have a chance of seeing what this ancient piece of computing contains (it was made in 2000 if I remember correctly, and I probably used it until about 2005).

Thanks, people!

4

General Software Discussion / Total Commander 8.50 final released

« on: February 20, 2014, 03:03 AM »

Total Commander 8.50 final is released!

It can be downloaded from www.ghisler.com

As usual the update is still free for all registered users.

What's new? There are many new functions this time. The most important are:

File operations:

• F5 copy: First copy all files where the user doesn't need to be asked and skip all with errors, ask at the end
• F5 copy: Option to verify files after copying them.
• F5 copy: Option to keep paths relative to current folder while in branch view (Ctrl+B)
• Select and copy related files, e.g. *.jpg > crw*.cr2 selects/copies raw files only if there is a related .jpg file
• F8 Delete: Only warn at the end if folders couldn't be deleted
• F8 Delete: Always use new delete method when VistaDelete isn't set in wincmd.ini, but show our own delete confirmation dialog if the system dialog is disabled
• Support unpacking of more archive formats: 7zip, new RAR5 format, as well as -lh6- and -lh7- (LHA)
• RAR with encrypted file names: Show archive content after entering password
• Pack/unpack files: Option to remember last entered password until TC is minimized, Windows goes to standby, or the screen saver starts
• Alt+F5 pack: New option to leave out the names of the selected folders when packing each folder to a separate archive
• New wincmd.ini options CopyLinks and IgnoreLinks to handle file system links
• FTP/file system plugins: When editing a file with F4, the file will automatically be re-uploaded when saved in the edfitor. No need to close the editor any more. Change via Edit/View options.

User interface:

• Support for touch screen devices: Tap on icons to select files (configurable), long tap to open context menu
• Support for high resolution screens (high DPI)
• Drive drop-down list (Alt+F1/Alt+F2): Show links to "My Computer" and "My Documents" Configurable via. ShowExtraDrives in wincmd.ini
• Drive drop-down list (Alt+F1/Alt+F2): Open context menu directly in the list without choosing a drive first
• Show exclamation mark to the left of some options as a warning, e.g. that files may not go where the user expects them to go, like during copying from branch view, or when packing and unpacking
• Show file size and last modified time also in virtual folders like connected MTP devices like Android phones/tablets
• Button bar: Support multiple internal and/or user-defined commands on a single button e.g. cm_SelectAll,cm_Copy
• Progress dialog: Show number of files/bytes in more functions. Switch to files/bytes remaining by clicking on the numbers
• Show thumbnails in virtual folders like libraries
• Option to remember position of background transfer manager in system menu (click on top-left icon)
• Improved background copy dialog: Show number of copied and selected files and bytes, add button "Foreground"

Search function:

• Search for text supports any combination of ANSI, ASCII, UTF-16, UTF-8 Unicode and office XML/EPUB at the same time
• Skip a folder by clicking on its name in the status line (with confirmation). Also allows to just pause the search
• Open in separate process via Alt+Shift+F7, so TC can still be used during the search
• "Feed to listbox" also when searching in archives, on FTP servers and file system plugins
• Search for duplicate files: Search by plugin fields, e.g. name parts, file extension etc.
• Search for duplicate files, Feed to listbox: New dialog box to select files inside the groups of duplicates, e.g. by newest, oldest etc.

Other functions:

• Compare by content: "Resync comparison from here" now also works after editing the files
• Create/Verify CRC checksums: Also support SHA256 and SHA512 formats
• Show hidden/system files now split into separate options for hidden and system
• Option to get more items in various history lists, set via wincmd.ini: HistoryLen for directory history, OldCmdLineCount for command line. MaxItemsInComboBox for comboboxes in F7 New Folder, Alt+F7 Search, Num+ select files etc.
• Lister, right click menu: Directly search for selected text via Google in default browser (configurable)

A list of additions and corrections, also for previous versions, can be found in the history file.

5

Find And Run Robot / Setting "Large Icon Slides" won't display icons

« on: February 17, 2013, 04:10 AM »

Having an issue with the "Large Icon Slides" setting, as it won't display any icons in the FARR search window. Small icons display just as expected, but none of the large icons work for me...

I'm using the latest FARR on Win8. I noticed in the latest release thread that user daylessland had a similar issue. I can try an older build and see if that works, just point me to a download link

Icons are displayed as expected in explorer.

6

Living Room / New Windows install - How should I organize SSD, HDD, user folders?

« on: December 28, 2012, 03:37 PM »

Recently bought a new laptop (may be returning because of some pixel errors, but that's another topic...), and I'm installing Windows 8 on it. Not really looking for opinions on choice of OS, but definitely looking for some help in organizing this thing.

It's the first time I have a computer with two drives and Win8 will obviously go on the SSD (120GB), but unsure of pretty much the rest. I'm thinking that program files will go on the SSD (default c:\Program Files\) except portable apps (something like c:\Programs\). But what would you recommend for the user profiles? I'll be the only one using the computer, but should I move the complete Users folder to HDD, only my profile or nothing? There are tons of guides to move and symlink the users folder, but I'm really unsure if that's the best way, especially since having tested this, I get some issues with System Restore (not in itself a deal breaker, but I'm worried that something more important may break eventually).

Should I let Windows do whatever it wants with my user profile, but create my own Docs folder and use this instead of My Documents? What about AppData...?

With my Win7 machine I redirected C:\Users to D:\Users which has technically worked fine, but I'm not sure if there's any point in doing this as opposed to just make cusom Docs folders.

There's some good advice and discussion in this thread: SSD usage recommendations - https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=25795.0
I do wonder, however, if there's any new considerations since that thread was last posted in? Also, I'd love to hear how other Win8 users have their system setup.

7

General Software Discussion / Total Commander 8.00 beta released

« on: September 17, 2011, 02:10 PM »

There's a new public beta of Total Commander out these days: TC 8.00 beta 1!

The major change is that this is the "first version with both 32 bit and 64 bit versions."

A few other additions (from the list of changes):

- Added: Show number of bytes handled and total bytes when copying, packing, unpacking (also with plugins) (32/64)
- Added: Show number of files handled and total files when copying, packing, unpacking (also with plugins) (32/64)
- Added: Search function (Commands - Search): In field "Search in", a list file can be specified like this: @c:\path\searchfile.txt. The format can be ANSI, UTF-8 or UTF-16 (both with bom). The file must contain one file/dir name per line, absolute or relative (32/64)
- Added: Multi-rename tool: Use 'a' as number of digits for auto width depending on number of files, e.g. [C:a] or [C10+10:a] (32/64)

Of course this version still honours the life time license.

Download can be found here (3.15MB): http://www.ghisler.com/whatsnew.htm
Discussions can be found here: http://ghisler.ch/bo...d/viewforum.php?f=23

8

General Software Discussion / Programs close when switching to battery power (Win 7)?

« on: January 09, 2011, 03:26 AM »

Ever since using Win7 for the first time, I've had this issue where whenever I switch from AC to battery power, several programs will close. I've googled this, but couldn't find anything related to this, so I'm calling out to the DC community for some help 

I've yet to see why some programs close while others don't. Examples of programs that will close when I "pull the plug": FARR, WordWeb Pro, Logitech SetPoint. At first I thought it was related to using a startup manager (Chameleon), but it doesn't seem like it, because some programs aren't controlled by Chameleon, while others are. I can't see any connection to where the programs are started (registry, startup folder, current/all users). Any idea what I need to do to stop this behaviour? My laptop is usually plugged in, but sometimes I need to rely on battery power and it's annoying to see several programs close whenever that happens...

It's probably some oversight on my part in power settings somewhere, but I'd love to get some help with this Thank you!

9

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Tool to easily disable/enable hardware device

« on: March 23, 2010, 02:58 PM »

I've been looking for a tool that lets me easily (shortcut, hotkey) disable and enable a hardware device.

Reason: I recently bought a new laptop that has an annoying whining noise coming from the speaker. It's not really noticeable when I listen to music, watch a video, etc. i.e. something with sound, but when I don't want to listen to anything, it's annoying. Disabling the soundcard makes the noise go away. Ideally I should get a new laptop, but I'm not too hopeful that the problem will be fixed with a new laptop (more people with same problem), and I'm hoping for a BIOS and/or driver update that'll fix the problem... 

...anyway, as long as the problem persists it would be great to have a tool that I can use with a hotkey to toggle the soundcard easily. I'm on Win7 x64, btw. I've tried MS' devcon, which is a "command-line utility [that] functions as an alternative to Device Manager" (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272), but apparently it doesn't work on Win7 (not disabling/enabling anyway, it reads the list of devices all right).

I'm sure an AHK script could be written for this purpose and I'm hoping for some assistance from one of the fine coders of DC 

10

Found Deals and Discounts / Download SoftMaker Office 2008 for free, and SoftMaker donates money!

« on: December 14, 2009, 09:31 AM »

Talk about donationware...

Softmaker Office 2008 is available for free, with the added bonus of the Softmaker company donating 10 Euro cents for each completed download! Great office suite and great deal!

http://www.loadandhelp.de/home-en.html


taken from: http://www.loadandhelp.de/home-en.html

From http://www.betterpla.../companies/softmaker :

EVERY DOWNLOAD COUNTS! www.loadandhelp.com

Download a full-featured office suite and HELP PEOPLE at the same time: Up until December 31, 2009, you can download an unlimited version of SoftMaker Office 2008 for Windows – free of charge and without obligations. What's more: for every successful download, SoftMaker donates 10 Euro Cents to charity projects here on betterplace.org.

Please show your support and spread the word: The more people download SoftMaker Office, the more SoftMaker will donate, and the more projects here on betterplace.org will be completed. So, please tell your friends and colleagues about this campaign.

We will account for every completed project and the money we have donated. This means that everybody can be sure that their download accomplished something good.

It's simple: You download, we donate.

SoftMaker Office 2008 comes with:

- TextMaker, the friendly, full-featured word processor
- PlanMaker, the reliable, full-featured spreadsheet
- SoftMaker Presentations, an alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint

SoftMaker Office reads and writes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files with highest fidelity. It offers the full feature set of a high-end office suite and works beautifully even on older computers and on netbooks. It can even be copied to a USB flash drive and then runs on any Windows computer without installation.

11

Adventures of Baby Cody / Norway

« on: August 31, 2009, 08:13 AM »

Baby Cody, you're invited to Norway!

If you want to see the snow, then I suggest you wait until December before coming here, but you're obviously welcome any time

Looking forward to seeing you!

12

General Software Discussion / Command line e-mail checker

« on: July 17, 2009, 03:49 PM »

Anyone know of a command line e-mail checking program for Windows, supporting IMAP? I've found several for sending e-mail, but I'd like one that'll check several IMAP accounts, and output at least number of new e-mails and preferably also some more details.

I posted it here to hear if you know of any programs like this, but might make another post in the IDEA-section if nothing surfaces.

anyway, thanks for reading in

13

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Natural line sorting in file

« on: June 22, 2009, 03:23 PM »

Ok, I suppose any decent text editor should be able to sort lines based on alphabet or numbers, but I'm looking for a tool that can sort lines based on Natural order sorting, i.e.

from this:

1. some text
10. yet more text
1011. Text
2. more text again
4. more text

to:

1. some text
2. more text again
4. more text
10. yet more text
1011. Text

No GUI necessary, btw. command line tool would be perfect

thanks!

14

Found Deals and Discounts / EditPad Pro discounted at Bits du Jour on December 18

« on: December 11, 2008, 02:23 PM »

Like the topic title says, the EditPad Pro editor is available at a discount (61%: you pay just below $20) on December 18.

EditPad Pro
A Powerful, Flexible, and Convenient Text Editor (And Word Processor)

I've only just downloaded the free trial, but a simple search here at DC reveals several positive reviews and remarks about this editor. So question is: Should I?

15

General Software Discussion / Collectorz.com... again!

« on: November 29, 2008, 05:15 AM »

One more strange and unpopular decision by this company. There have been issues before, mainly concerning their changed upgrade policy.
See here: https://www.donation...23.msg59808#msg59808
and here: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=8807.0

This time they're announcing version 6 of their Movie Collector software. So? Well, the main change is that they're gonna stop using multiple sources to search from when adding/updating movies in your collection, and only use their own database. The reason why I'm posting this complaint, is that they don't want to listen to the so-called "vocal minority" and instead only focus on getting trial users to purchase a license. They've already changed the behaviour of Book Collector, even with several complaints.

I suppose they're at least somewhat honest about their intentions.

Too bad their products are the best of the bunch (at least before v6 of Book and Movie Collector), or I'd switch in an instant. Please recommend other collection apps that can search multiple sources, and that listens to the "vocal minority".


Some major edits since trying to be more reasonable about disagreements.

16

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007 / New Getting Organized Experiment?

« on: September 24, 2008, 01:34 AM »

Have anyone thought of starting a new GOE? I personally needs Getting Organized more than ever, and although I've progressed a few small steps, I could definitely use the extra motivation that a DC GOE would give.

Or is Getting Organized already mission:Accomplished for you all?!?

GOE 2008? GOE 2009? GOE Winter 08-09? Anyone else thought of this?

17

Circle Dock / Circle Dock on FreeDownloadaDay.com

« on: September 08, 2008, 03:05 PM »

Kind words

http://www.freedownl...al-dock-for-windows/

TBH I haven't tried Circle Dock, but I sure will. Promise!

18

LaunchBar Commander / Suggestions for the Next Release of LaunchBar Commander

« on: August 16, 2008, 05:02 PM »

This "forgotten" program by mouser was mentioned during a conversation on #donationcoder (IRC) earlier, and I had a few requests for the next version, so let's hear them:

• Rightclick-> delete/move/edit/context menu. For quick'n'easy editing of an item.
  
• Better skinning. mouser already said he wanted to use the same skinning engine as FARR, but I thought I'd post this request anyway.
  
• Possibility to view the launchbar even if preferences are open. The current behaviour is a bit annoying, since the bar will disappear when I'll want to change some settings (skins, for instance)...
  
• Auto-calculate height/define a height. I can't see this anywhere. Personally I'd like to have 16px icons on 20px buttons on a 24px high bar. Ability to define this in the preferences would be much appreciated!
  
• Working file-dropping and scripts. Well, the tabs are there in the node-definition but they're not functional yet

Please post additional requests in this thread and I believe we'll eventually see an even greater LaunchBar Commander!

19

Find And Run Robot / [request] "Fuzzy search" only after first character

« on: August 05, 2008, 08:48 AM »

Don't know if that topic subject made much sense, but let me explain. Non-contiguous pattern matching (i.e. fuzzy search) is very useful, but I find myself only using it like this: Search for Movie Collector, type 'mocoll' or similar, not like this: 'vicoll' (both match). Ok, that didn't make much sense either  The difference is that in the way I search, I always use the first character of what I'm searching for, in this example that is of course 'm'. So my request is that as an option, the non-contiguous pattern matching should only match results that has the same first character as I typed!

Did I finally make sense?

Type: 'mocoll' would match 'Movie Collector', 'more collages.doc', 'more cool lettuce.xls' (fictional...), etc, but not 'emoticon collection', 'grandmother's cold lobster soup.doc' or similar (great examples, huh).

20

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Screenshot aliases using MiniCap

« on: July 24, 2008, 10:54 AM »

mouser's excellent Screenshot Captor does pretty much everything you need for screenshot capturing (and more) but isn't exactly a tiny lightweight app. But it's baby brother MiniCap is a command line based screenshot capture app. This makes it ideal for the quick screenshot capturing tasks, and also ideal for FARR aliases!

You'll find MiniCap here: https://www.donation...r/MiniCap/index.html

I've put together a package that includes some aliases as well as a fresh build of MiniCap itself. These aliases should cover a range of screenshot options but adding or editing should be easy enough.

to install this you would put the minicap directory in your FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\Installed directory.  That alias subdirectory is marked as Read-only from within FARR so that it can be easily updated.

-mouser

To use, type 'mcap' which will present you with the following commands

Command	Description
Screen capture	Captures current screen
Last active window capture	Captures the last active window (i.e. active before launching FARR )
Select region capture	Interactive capture of region (traditional style mode -- locked to current screen of multimonitor)
Object capture	Interactive capture of object (red box mode)
Red box region capture	Interactive capture of region (red box mode)
Capture to clipboard	Copy the interactively selected image to clipboard
Border shadow capture	Add a nice border and shadow to interactively selected image
DC Review capture	Autosaves to "%MYDOCUMENTS%\reviews\$appname$\$windowtitle$_$uniquenum$.png" I found this was quite helpful when working on a minireview
Multimon capture	Capture entire desktop workspace (all multimonitors if more than one exists)
Delayed screen capture (4 secs)	Wait 4 seconds before engaging capture of current screen
Help with MiniCap	Launches the MiniCap helpfile

Thanks goes to mouser for both a lot of help and suggestions while making the aliases and for updating MiniCap and adding several new features. Looking at several other aliases was also very helpful, so if you've released a pack of aliases I've probably looked at it in awe

Latest version, 1.3, can be downloaded from my dcmembers webspace!

screenshot:

21

Living Room / Per-user file associations

« on: June 06, 2008, 04:35 AM »

Finally I found a solution to set per-user file association! I've been looking for this for quite some time, but never found a software that would let me do this.

Then I came across the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\ which is where file associations are stored for current user (obviously). Maybe it's been mentioned here before, but this really has been bugging me so I thought I'd just post here in case anyone else was looking for it.

Now it's as simple as copying the key from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\ and changing the default open command in the latter. That way there's a default system association, i.e. .doc -> MS Word, that's overridden by the current user's setting, i.e. .doc -> TextMaker/OpenOffice/whathaveyou

Now if only there was a piece of software that would let me do this without bothering with the registry, I'd be happy. Any takers? It would make for a nice coding snack, I suppose.

22

General Software Discussion / Software to create crosswords?

« on: May 19, 2008, 02:11 PM »

I'm going to create a couple of crossword puzzles for educational use (kids) and would like to know if anyone here has any experience with a decent piece of software for such a task?

Preferably free software, but I'd consider something inexpensive as well, ie. < $20(ish)...

I've googled a bit, obviously, but most of my findings are either too expensive for my use or they don't seem very good.

Any help is much appreciated!

23

Found Deals and Discounts / RexexBuddy on BitsduJour 6 MAY

« on: April 29, 2008, 09:08 AM »

RegexBuddy
Regular Expressions Made Easy!



Bits du Jour will have a 51% discount on RegexBuddy on May 6th! That's $19.95!

http://www.bitsdujou...software/regexbuddy/

RegexBuddy is an amazing tool to help you out with regular expressions. Personally I'm a few light years away from actually knowing decent regex, but with the aid of RegexBuddy I've certainly been able to accomplish the things I've wanted and learnt abit along the way. Highly recommended!

Do a search on DC and you'll see quite a few positive remarks about RegexBuddy!


edit: Added links. duh.

24

Found Deals and Discounts / EssentialPIM Pro on BitsDuJour

« on: March 19, 2008, 02:56 AM »

My PIM of choice is discounted on BitsDuJour today: http://www.bitsdujou...re/essentialpim-pro/

We know that it's an old-fashioned idea, but we really do believe that a computer's primary function should be to make our lives easier, especially when it comes to the day-to-day.

That's why we love offering Personal Information Management (PIM) software to our readers. The best of them provide power, flexibility, and enough features to coordinate and simplify just about any aspect of your life.

EssentialPIM is, without a doubt, one of the best PIMs available. It is refined, intuitive, secure, attractive, feature-laden, elegant, customizable, integratable...

from BitsDuJour

25

Point Motivator / Bug? Doesn't remember settings...

« on: January 19, 2008, 08:10 AM »

I've got Point Motivator to run on startup (apparently it will then be in the All Users-startup. Should preferably be in Current User, IMO), and I then keep it running all through my logged on session. But I've noticed that it seems PM doesn't save its settings if I log off while it's running. It doesn't lose any records or anything, but the options aren't saved. I need to close PM manually to keep any changes to the options.

Can anyone confirm this? Try to change the setting start minimized to the opposite of what you've currently got, then log off and log in again and see if Point Motivator has saved your setting. Thanks.