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Messages - TheQwerty [ switch to compact view ]

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26
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini Review of SugarSync and DropBox
« on: April 21, 2010, 11:41 AM »
I just did a bit more research, and from what it appears, the perfect cloud solution just isn't there.
Have you looked at JungleDisk or any of the other Amazon S3 solutions?  I'd be curious to know where you find them failing.

27
Living Room / Re: Apple Attacks Adobe
« on: April 18, 2010, 10:12 AM »
I've been wondering since all this started if a class action lawsuit from a number of developers who have either:
1) Had their apps approved and then without warning removed from the App Store
2) Had apps approved that make use of the frameworks that are now 'illegal' from section 3.3.1
... would stand up in court.

I'm sure Apple's dev TOS gives them the ability to do all this, and change the rules of the game during the game, but has such an agreement really been tested?



I struggle to understand how any developer is willing to work in Apple's prison (wall-garden is too positive a name) when they show so little respect for developers as a whole and have no problem secretly killing off your business at any time even if you were following their asinine rules.


As an aside, I'm not very familiar with the various options for mobile ads, but perhaps 3.3.1 is also about pushing developers into adopting iAds over AdMob or others?

28
Living Room / Re: Amazon.com == AMAZING!
« on: March 11, 2010, 12:01 PM »
I've only been a Prime member for 1 year, and I love it except for one thing...

Because it's so convenient I've ended up placing a ton more orders, and don't take too much care to consolidate them into larger purchases.  As a result I sometimes feel guilty about the increase in my carbon/waste footprint as a result of all these smaller orders.   :-[

Though that's entirely user error and I can't think of anything Amazon can do to help. :P

29
I mainly use Quicken offline and my bank/credit cards' sites online.  I did try Mint once when they were starting and had problems getting it to pull my transaction data, but I'm sure that's improved.


Something to keep in mind when trialing any of these services.. be sure to research their data retention policy and the options they provide for closing your account completely.

When I left Mint I had a number of problems and the account existed for a few months even after I had tried to delete it.  I ended up changing all my passwords (to incorrect ones in Mint and new ones for the accounts) but I never felt good about it until I couldn't log in at all, and even now I wonder what traces may remain in their databases.

30
Living Room / Re: People are really (really, really) stupid
« on: February 20, 2010, 07:54 PM »
...once they got to the site that looked totally different than Facebook...
To be fair, Facebook changes the layout of their site more than any other that I know, and the changes tend to be more than just small tweaks as well.  They've effectively trained their users to expect nothing to be where it was the last time they used the site.

31
Seems like a good idea, but I'm really getting frustrated with all these sites and services that rely on videos to explain everything.  If you are going to force me to watch a video to understand anything at all about your product, I've already lost all interest.

Also, what happens if you don't click to support anyone in the month? Does your money just go to them then or does your support mean even more the next month?

32
Found Deals and Discounts / O'Reilly Ebook Deal of the Day
« on: February 08, 2010, 11:35 AM »
O'Reilly has a daily deal on an ebook where they typically (always?) bring the price down to $9.99.
Not sure how long they've been doing this, but I just found out recently, and have already taken advantage twice.

There isn't an actual link to a page for the deals but there is a box on the ebooks section about the current one and here's a link to their daily deal RSS feed.

When you buy an ebooks thru oreilly.com you get lifetime access to the book, and whenever possible we provide it to you in four, DRM-free file formats — PDF, .epub, Kindle-compatible .mobi, and Android .apk ebook — that you can use on the devices of your choice. Our ebook files are fully searchable, and you can cut-and-paste and print them. We also alert you when we've updated the files with corrections and additions.

Some recent titles:
  • R in a Nutshell
  • Making Things Talk
  • Search Patterns
  • CSS Cookbook, Third Edition
  • Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
  • Beautiful Testing
  • Make: Electronics
  • The Social Media Marketing Book
  • Using Drupal
  • Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition
  • The New How
  • Masterminds of Programming
  • The Sustainable Network
  • Your Body: The Missing Manual
  • Head First iPhone Development

33
Developer's Corner / Re: GUIDs...
« on: January 28, 2010, 08:24 AM »
It appears not everyone feels bad about this wastefulness; proceed with caution lest you become an accomplice...
http://wasteaguid.info/
http://twitter.com/guidwaster

34
Developer's Corner / Re: Resources for learning Mercurial?
« on: January 28, 2010, 08:04 AM »
Use Mercurial, You Git from Google's cache.
But in case that is down as well...
<h2>Tuesday, February 5, 2008</h2>
<h3><b>Use Mercurial, you Git</b>!</h3>

It's a land rush of revision control, I tell ya!  Among the <a href="http://en.wikipedia....rsion_Control_System">stable of eager candidates</a> for best-loved DVCS, <a href="http://git.or.cz">Git</a> and <a href="http://www.selenic.com/mercurial">Mercurial</a> seem to be the two tools capturing the most programmer heart-share for now.<br /><br />Git is admired because Linus Torvalds wrote it, but Mercurial is <em>better</em> because he didn't.<br /><br />Developers with refined sensibilities are in a tough spot right now.  We'd clearly like <em>something</em> to take the place of centralized tools like Subversion.  But why, oh why, does it have to be Git?  Let's examine the hype and the reality:<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://mjtsai.com/bl...5/subversion-to-git/">The user interface is... not too bad</a>"</cite></h4><br /><em>False.</em>  I've heard dozens of authors whining about Git's usability.  I thought maybe they were overstating the case, or were just confused.  Then I tried Git.  If anything, they were being too kind.  Git polluted my /usr/bin with nearly <em>150</em> distinct binaries.  Mercurial has <em>one</em>.<br /><br />And if you think that you only need one or two of those commands for daily use, you're an optimist.  Check out the <a href="http://rubinius.ligh...jects/5089/using-git">"easy use" guide</a> from, by the way, an awesome Ruby project.  You're expected to juggle, depending on how you count them, about ten commands, just for day-to-day work.<br /><br /><blockquote>The <code>git rebase</code> command will save your changes away, update the topic branch, and then reapply them.... Warning! If you are sharing a branch, you must use: <code>git merge master</code>...  Rebase causes the commit layout to change and will confuse anyone you've shared this branch with.</blockquote><br /><br />Huh?  <a href="http://static.flickr...03564_7281ad0588.jpg">Blah blah blah Ginger blah blah</a>.  For day-to-day use of Mercurial, you only need <code>hg fetch</code> to get code, and <code>hg commit</code> to give code.<br /><br />Git apologists will tell you that you need all these extra commands because Git was written with the "UNIX philosophy" of small tools that do only one thing, and do it really well.  Which brings us to our next myth.<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://git.or.cz/">Git... consists of many commands that do one thing well</a>"</cite></h4><br />O RLY?  From <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/210045/">Git's own gurus</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Git checkout can do three separate things:<br /><ol><li>Change to a new head.</li><li>Revert changes to a small number of files.</li><li>Create a branch.</li></ol></blockquote><br />Those are pretty massively different tasks.  So much for "doing one thing."  I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to debunk the "well" part.  Hint: try using git for any non-trivial project.<br /><br />Having lost the simplicity argument, Git-folk will try to tell you that the reason they dumped 150 pieces on your floor was so that you can build your own revision control software:<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/131312/">It's not an SCM.... I bet you could make a reasonable SCM on top of it, though</a>"</cite></h4><br />That was from Linus himself in the early days, though Git's recent admirers echo the same sentiment: <cite>"<a href="http://utsl.gen.nz/t...n/intro.html#wtf-why"><code>git</code> is first and foremost a toolkit for writing VCS systems</a>."</cite><br /><br />Who cares?  I ordered a version control system, not a toolkit for building one!  If I'd wanted building blocks for rolling my own, I'd have gone to Home Depot and bought a 1 and a 0.  You can build any software you like out of those, including a source control tool.<br /><br />Mercurial is a <em>working</em> DVCS right out of the box.  Why not use it?<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://wincent.com/a.../one_of_the_thin.php">The model is rock solid and infallible because it is simple.</a>"</cite></h4><br /><em>Horseshit.</em>  I've even unwittingly <a href="http://rubyforge.org...November/004583.html">repeated</a> this stinker myself.  Let's break it down a little.  <a href="http://utsl.gen.nz/t...ntro.html#yay-simple">Quoth</a> the explainers (alongside a rat's nest of UML, to boot):<br /><br /><blockquote>The core Git filesystem can be explained as four types of objects: Blobs (files), Trees (directories), Commits and Tags.</blockquote><br /><br />Unfortunately, no, it can't.  The core of Git may well be <em>implemented</em> as four kinds of things.  But to get even the most basic tasks done, you need to know repositories, working trees, branches, remotes, masters, origins, index caches, and a bunch of other unexplained concepts.<br /><br />The manual pages are no help, for the same reason that "look it up" is no help to someone with a spelling question.  You have to know the name of the command before you can look it up.  And the commands are so obliquely named that there's no way to reason upward from what you know about the alleged "four kinds of objects" to make an educated guess as to which of the 150 commands you're supposed to use.<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/">Git on Windows is only officially supported using Cygwin</a>"</cite></h4><br />This is another way of saying, "Git is not supported on Windows."<br /><br />I <em>like</em> Cygwin -- it's one of the few things that raises my (mandatory) Windows experience at work from "completely unbearable" to merely "excruciating."  But forcing my teammates to download and wrestle with the Cygwin setup, much less learn Bash, makes Git a complete non-starter in the one place where it could do me some good.<br /><br />Punting to Cygwin, in this day and age of awesome scripting languages (like <a href="http://www.python.org">the one Mercurial is based on</a>) is basically shouting to the world, "I can't be bothered to do my job properly."<br /><br />Actually, speaking of scripting, using Python is <em>exactly</em> why Mercurial can be so scriptable and extensible without dumping 150 inscrutable binaries into your /usr/bin.<br /><h4><cite>"<a href="http://kubasik.net/blog/2007/01/04/19/">git is reliable</a>"</cite></h4><br />I wanted to believe this.  Really, really wanted to believe it.  Unfortunately, Git fails at the most fundamental of source control tasks -- so much so that I'm going to have to take that up in a different post.<br /><br />The short version is that Git encourages and even requires you to tamper with your project's source history, and that is a recipe for disaster, not reliability.<br /><br />In summary: Git was created by a brilliant mind and is maintained by a posse of smart, motivated developers.  But it's a stinker.  Its power might justify the agonizing experience of using it, if there weren't any better alternatives.  There are.<br /><br />Code in good taste.  Use Mercurial.<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE</strong> <em>2008-2-6, 9 PM</em>.  In retrospect, a discussion on reliability should just be about data integrity: having a repository that's resistant to crashes and hardware failures and such.  The concerns in the final section -- discovering how to get data reliably out -- are not a pronouncement on the resilience of the repository format.  They have to deal with usability and coherence.  "Reliability" as a fuzzy human term is too broad a word here.

Posted by undees at 9:55 PM


Edit: Changed quote to the source of the article, so links are included.

35
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: XYplorer File Manager
« on: October 20, 2009, 06:31 AM »
Just as a cross reference: https://www.donation....msg181696#msg181696

The price of XY will be going up in 2010.

36
Just a heads up for anyone considering XYplorer, its price will be making a jump in 2010:
http://www.xyplorer....tsnew.htm#prices2010
New Prices in 2010!

19-Oct-2009
The addition of power features like Dual Pane, Mini Tree, Tags & Comments, Search Results Caching, Custom Toolbar Buttons, Undo/Redo, and Action Log, will be reflected in next year's prices:

Lifetime License
     NOW:  single € 29.95 -- US$ 44.95 -- £ 28.95 each
    2010:  single € 49.95 -- US$ 74.95 -- £ 44.95 each

Standard License
     NOW:  single € 17.50 -- US$ 24.95 -- £ 16.95 each
    2010:  single € 29.95 -- US$ 44.95 -- £ 26.95 each
   
Home License
     NOW:  single €  9.95 -- US$ 14.95 -- £  8.95 each
    2010:  single € 19.95 -- US$ 29.95 -- £ 17.95 each

37
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Left 4 Dead for $15 (50% off)
« on: September 29, 2009, 07:42 PM »
Thanks for the heads up Deozaan!

In case anyone is thinking about mulling it over (like myself) or hoping to gift it, the deal is only good for 3 days (starting from 9/29).
http://store.steampowered.com/news/2877/

38
General Software Discussion / Re: Will Win7 last as long as XP?
« on: September 12, 2009, 08:04 PM »
a) My netbook is already running the RC.  If I can find the time between when I get my copies and the end of the year both it and my desktop will be upgraded.

b) I don't think it would be wise for Microsoft to let 7 stand as long as XP did (I'd say at most 4-5 years).  Nor do I think Apple, Google, and Ubuntu (or other distros) will afford them the chance.

c) I pre-ordered an upgrade copy of Home and Ultimate, but I also enrolled in one of the Launch Events where attendees supposedly get a free copy, so one of those pre-orders may be canceled.

39
DC Gamer Club / Re: Batman Arkham Aslyum (coming in Sept.2009)
« on: August 18, 2009, 06:43 PM »
You had me scared for a second.
The PC version comes out September 15, but the console version is still listed as next week.

The 360 version was good enough to get me to pre-order it, but I'm still expecting to be ultimately disappointed. Though, indeed the graphics were quite nice and detailed.

40
Crapware is in the eye of the beholder, apparently.

Seemingly respectable software now tries to bundle all sorts of crapware. Have you tried installing Flash recently? They try to sneak the Google Toolbar on you.

Anyone tried installing iTunes or Quicktime in the past decade? They bundle each other.

Anyone tried installing Java? I think it tries to bundle Yahoo! Toolbar or OpenOffice or both.
I'd venture that most of the people installing Flash have heard of Google, in fact they probably used it to find the installer. iTunes and Quicktime are both made by Apple and meant for media playback (for the most part), so it's not that big of a surprise that they bundle them together.  I believe certain features of iTunes do rely on Quicktime, and now that Apple offers the ability to download Quicktime alone without having to go on a scavenger hunt, it's not too bad.  Like Flash, I'm sure most of the people installing Java have heard of Yahoo! Toolbar, and I believe they only show an advertisement for OpenOffice while installing.

I wish these companies weren't trying to force all of this onto our computers, but it's become a bit of standard practice for freeware.


The problem I have is the amount of other programs Digsby is pushing but even more frustrating is how they went about installing the grid client. Sure, they have a lite installer that doesn't offer all of this (though you still have to opt out of things at the end), but the distributed client is installed in both cases.

Just as a test I did a fresh install of Digsby in a VM.  This is using their normal installer and installs Digsby version 23485.
  • First, you are asked to accept that you will install Digsby and accept their TOS and Privacy Policy.
    On this same page you are informed of the InstallQ installer's Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
  • Do you want to opt out of installing the Yahoo! Toolbar (EULA and Privacy Policy)?
  • Do you want to opt out of installing MyFreeze NetAssistant for IE (EULA and Privacy Policy)?
  • Do you want to opt out of installing SmartShopper (Terms of Use and Privacy Policy)?
  • Do you want to opt out of installing a trial version of Registry Power Cleaner (EULA and Privacy Policy)?
  • Do you want to opt out of installing a trial version of PC Confidential (EULA and their Privacy Policy is the same as Registry Power Cleaner's, as they're both from WinFerno)?
  • Do you want to opt out of installing Desktop Weather from The Weather Channel (EULA and [url=http://www.weather.com/common/home/privacy.html[/url]Privacy Policy[/url])?
  • Do you want to opt out of making My.Freeze.com your browser's home page?
  • Do you want to opt out of making Yahoo! IE8's default search?


Note that most of the EULAs that you'd be accepting are not on the product's actual page but rather Freeze.com, so there is no way for me as a user to know without a doubt they are current or even applicable to the version of software they'd be installing.

Also, there is absolutely no mention aside from the TOS that they'll also be installing the distributed computing client.  Though at least you now have to opt into enabling it via the Help->Support Digsby dialog.  They include a link there to their own site explaining what the client does, but it's rather vague.  They don't mention what project your computer will be working on, or even who the client comes from; instead it's referred to as the "Digsby Research Module."


I feel I'm pretty well versed in software, and I've only heard of Yahoo! and the Weather Channel here.  The rest of these sure have names that sound exactly like programs that advertise all over the Internet and are usually crapware.  It's one thing to bundle programs from your own company or other well known companies, but what the InstallQ installer offers is a lot of programs that are from neither.  They all look like crapware to me.

Go ahead and be the judge for yourself, but in my opinion this is a whole new league of disgusting.



As I said, my main problem is how they installed and previously enabled the grid client, in addition to how they've handled the fallout.
  • No mention of the client during the install except for in their TOS.
  • No mention of the client in their change log.
  • No official mention appeared on their website.  This has since changed, but last night about the only thing I could find were some blog posts about how they were thinking about adding one, and a few forum posts.
  • I'm fairly certain you aren't shown their TOS when Digsby auto-updates itself, so you aren't made aware of changes.
  • Hours after this broke and was made well known they hadn't updated their site to address it.  They had no problem sending out a mass message begging for votes on the Lifehacker poll, but they kept quiet on this.  (They may have sent something out after I uninstalled it - but clearly I wouldn't know.)
  • Instead of admitting that they made a mistake by including it without making users aware, they mocked some of the complainers and did not take their concerns seriously. This goes back at least 8 months.
  • When finally addressing the topic, they didn't apologize for their actions.  It's a little thing that goes a long way.
  • They've been trialing this out for months, and there were several complaints about it as well as their lack of communication.  They clearly felt a mention in the FAQ and TOS would be enough and ignored the users who argued otherwise.  In the end, I don't believe they even graced us with that mention in the FAQ until today.
  • It's not like this is the first time the users have had to complain about the opt out attitude that Digsby has.  They went through this multiple times when trying different installers and using InstallQ.
  • They now claim they were going to make us all aware in good time, they just hadn't finished coding up a decent interface for it.  That's fine, but why is it enabled then? With the many hours of EULAs and Privacy Policies they expect users to read during install, it's hard to believe they might put users before money. A user who has no idea the client is running won't disable it, and the longer it's running the more money they earn.  If they didn't see how this would be viewed as negative by the users, then I'm not so sure they should be programming in the first place, and I certainly have less trust in their software.


Again, I have no problem with grid computing, and actually think Plura Processing is an interesting way for developers to cover their costs, but it should always be clear to the user and only ever something that user's must opt into.  I can even swallow the pain of opting out of everything InstallQ offers me, but all of this makes it really hard to trust that what they show and tell users is accurate and all their program does.



Sorry about another long post, but this type of sneaky behavior really upsets me and it damages the user-developer relationship for every application out there by making it even harder to build any trust.

41
I'm sure by now some of you have read this but...
20090813-2208_13_0906 -.png

Hold everything! They are going to use my computer for "searching the web" without explicitly asking for my permission? What exactly are they indexing, and how do I know they aren't accessing something illegal with my computer? Why are they trying to hide this in the first place?

To be fair, they do give you a way to disable this absurd nonsense—though they bury the setting behind a "Support Digsby" item on the menu, with no clear description on exactly what they are doing with it. It's clear they are abusing their users, but since they technically explain it in the TOS and let you disable the feature, they weasel out of any responsibility.

In other words, besides the many many pages of crapware they make you opt-out of during the normal install, the latest update also includes a client from Plura Processing, which is enabled by default. There's no mention of it in the installer or change log - just a brief blurb in the TOS:
15. USAGE OF COMPUTER RESOURCES.
You agree to permit the Software to use the processing power of your computer when it is idle to run downloaded algorithms (mathematical equations) and code within a process. You understand that when the Software uses your computer, it likewise uses your CPU, bandwidth, and electrical power. The Software will use your computer to solve distributed computing problems, such as but not limited to, accelerating medical research projects, analyzing the stock market, searching the web, and finding the largest known prime number. This functionality is completely optional and you may disable it at any time.

This client is a distributed computing piece, which crawls the internet.  According to a comment on Reddit most of the work their client is doing goes towards 80 Legs, which looks to mostly be about crawling, analyzing, and cataloging the internet.

What Plura Processing and 80 Legs are doing doesn't seem too bad, but the way Digsby has once again tried to sneak things onto their users' computers is despicable. When they were in a poll on Lifehacker.com for best IM client they had no problem messaging all their users about the poll and their need for votes, but even after they were caught doing this they have not added a message to their change log or installer, and I doubt they've sent out a message to the users who haven't already uninstalled their crap.


Personally, I'm hoping that Plura Processing views the mention in the TOS as insufficient and refuses payment to Digsby. The way I read their website
Plura® requires that all affiliates fully disclose and obtain permission for the utilization of such resources. This is important as we want such utilization to be completely transparent and voluntary.
makes it sound like they'd be perfectly within their rights to do so, since Digsby implemented it as an opt-out instead of opt-in.

42
my understanding is that they were only supposed to verify that the code works, not decide based on efficiency, etc. and that they could not "re-open" the contest unless there was some violation of the rules.

do you have any more info about this and links?
Well for links, just look at what you posted, none of them have an official statement that Ensemble won. :P  And the official Netflix blog says that they'll begin verifying: http://blog.netflix....n-closes-but-no.html

Qualified entries will be evaluated as described in the Rules. We look forward to awarding the Grand Prize, which we expect to announce in a few weeks. However if a Grand Prize cannot be awarded because no submission can be verified by the judges, the Contest will reopen. We will make an announcement on the Forum after the Contest judges reach a decision.
So maybe not taking performance into consideration, but there's also ...

Thanks. In fact, this is a very happy day for us - our team is top contender for winning the Grand Prize, as we have a better Test score than The Ensemble. (Probably this is the first post revealing this in the forum smile)
Which led me to believe that the leaderboards are not calculated on the full/exact data set that the winning algorithm will be tested on.

Don't really know.. but I wouldn't get ahead of yourself congratulating The Ensemble until Netflix has made an announcement. Certainly not with results as close as these.

43
Note that no winner has been chosen yet.
Netflix is going to evaluate the entries and also take performance into consideration before they select one or re-open the contest.

44
So what's the actual license that they are distributing this with?
Last I checked (never) Disney hadn't open sourced the Hannah Montana trademark and image.

45
I can elaborate more on that point here if you'd like, but people over in your forum start foaming at the mouth every time someone brings the point up over there.
I only see 4 threads that mention descript.ion over there and none of them exhibit said users. In fact the most negative thing about it is that Don finds it "crap compared to tags.dat."  We've gotten in debates over there before, but usually things remain rather civil. (DP aside.)

2nd: I am not XY user and I will never be. Why should I post anything on their forum then?
-fenixproductions (June 16, 2009, 07:39 AM)
Well then it seems silly to complain that XY doesn't support it, does it not?  If the desire for such a feature is so small that no one wants to bring it up on the XY forums, how can anyone expect that feature gets implemented?  It's a bit backwards to think that Don (who is the only person behind XY) should scour the internet looking for features to implement for people who "will never be" XY users, when he already has wishes of his own and his community on his to-do list.

46
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: XYplorer File Manager
« on: May 29, 2009, 10:14 AM »
A beta of dual pane has arrived: http://www.xyplorer....c.php?p=33013#p33013

47
Nice! :Thmbsup:

It's speedy and the presentation (even the list view) looks good.

A couple of comments/suggestions:

1) Consider renaming the Active Hotkeys tab or having separate tabs for Active and Inactive hotkeys.  I was a bit confused when seeing inactive hotkeys listed on the active hotkeys tab until I found the Show Active Only option.

2) While selecting the modifiers and key groups before scanning allows you to scan for less shortcuts, checking everything didn't seem to take that long.  It might be more useful if you just scanned for everything and then allowed the user to filter the results based on selected modifiers and key groups.

2a) Extending that a bit it would be nice if the user could filter it even further by somehow entering keys.  Say I wanted all shortcuts that use F1, I could sort the list, but I think a filter would be better.

3) While you cannot determine the program associated with the hotkey, you could allow the some user entered data.  In particular, if you allowed the user to group hotkeys, enter the program they are associated with, and maybe a small note of what they did, it would become so much more useful.  Obviously, it would fall on the user to ensure this data is updated and accurate.  Granted, you'd probably have to replace the list view to do this cleanly, but with such a feature it would turn the program into something I might even consider purchasing for a small fee.


Keep up the good work!

48
Most people are probably aware of it, but you can always get a very recent version of Gooogle Chrome from which all the auto-update and call-home-to-mama-google features have been surgically removed. Works great for me and it is my standard browser for the laptop (since the UI is so space saving)- even online banking is no problem.
The tamed chrome version is SRWare Iron:  
http://www.srware.ne...ware_srware_iron.php
I've always found this (and similar projects) a bit ironic.  "Don't trust Google? Well try this version from someone you know even less about!"

It's great that Chrome is OSS and thus the community can fork it however they please, but as a user I don't feel any more comfortable.  I don't have the time to diff the source and ensure they're removing evil and not adding some of their own, and with there being multiple forks (and growing) it's rough for any of them to develop much of a community.

(I'm not targeting SRWare in particular, but all of the Chrome forks that claim to be less evil.)

49
Living Room / Re: Conficker - The Facts
« on: April 09, 2009, 07:32 AM »
It's a curious time to release the update, well assuming it's from the same people and not from someone else who has created a way to exploit Conficker itself.

The last two variants took about a month from their "activation" dates to be updated, this one is within 8 days.  I'm betting they've already reached the maximum infections and unless they refocus on infecting rather than updating, those numbers will continue to decline, so it makes sense to release the update sooner.

However, I'd think waiting just one more day would have been more beneficial with the Christian holiday and people having/taking off work.  It raises an interesting question of which spreads faster the actual updates or the news about the updates?

50
Living Room / Re: Conficker - The Facts
« on: April 09, 2009, 06:55 AM »
Well it looks like it may have started to update to a new variant:
http://blog.trendmic...-variant-in-the-mix/
https://forums2.syma...dac/ba-p/393454#A260

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