Messages

1

Living Room / Re: Any good free android scientific calculator?

« on: June 29, 2019, 09:25 PM »

I used RealCalc and was so happy with it that I gladly paid for RealCalc Plus, which I've now been using for many years.

-Deozaan (June 27, 2019, 02:34 PM)

+1 

2

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Binary Fortress summer sale - Clipboard Fusion, Display Fusion, FileSeek, etc.

« on: May 26, 2019, 07:12 AM »

DisplayFusion's sale is back as a Spring Sale.

We're offering all of our desktop apps at a sale price of up to 50% off, until May 28, 2019!
Desktop Applications

    DisplayFusion from $14.50
    ClipboardFusion only $7.50
    FileSeek from $7.50
    iTunesFusion only $7.50
    LogFusion from $7.50
    TrayStatus from $5.00
    VoiceBot from $7.50

I personally find TrayStatus indispensable.

3

General Software Discussion / Mozilla shoots itself in foot

« on: May 04, 2019, 07:43 AM »

Firefox survives in today's Chromium dominated browser world mainly because of the wealth of useful extensions available for it, many of which have no Chrome/Chromium equivalent.

So today, many Firefox users woke up to find that all of their extensions had been disabled and could neither be used nor re-installed.  This turns out to be the result of a certificate checking bug at Mozillla.

ghacks has a good description of the problem here.

As I write this, nearly 12 hours later, Mozilla still has only a temporary fix involving enabling Studies in the Privacy & Security Options.

4

General Software Discussion / Re: Et Tu, CCleaner!

« on: December 27, 2018, 04:21 PM »

4wd was being ironic.

-Curt (December 27, 2018, 04:05 PM)

No doubt, but ital2 was not.

That's who the info was directed at, although others may find it useful too.

5

General Software Discussion / Re: Et Tu, CCleaner!

« on: December 27, 2018, 11:44 AM »

4wd: "Wouldn't it be a lot less complicated, (and cheaper), to have the browser delete cookies when it's closed, (ie. they all become session cookies) ?"

Hence my question above; unfortunately, the traditional FF add-in having brilliantly done exactly that not working anymore beyond FF 56 (or whatever the exact version number was).

-ital2 (December 26, 2018, 08:12 AM)

Firefox provides an option  to delete all cookies when the browser is closed (Options/Privacy & Security/Cookies and Site Data/Keep Until...Firefox is closed).

A more flexible solution is to leave the setting at the default "...Until they expire" and use a cookie whitelist extension to determine which ones to keep or delete.  Two such extensions that work well for me are "Cookie AutoDelete" and "Forget Me Not," both of which are compatible with current Firefox versions.

6

Living Room / Bill Godbout

« on: November 19, 2018, 05:24 PM »

One victim of the Camp Fire disaster in California earlier this month was Bill Godbout, a name that may be familiar to microcomputer old-timers as co-developer of the S-100 bus and founder of CompuPro, maker of some of the best computers in the early 1980's.

The Register has a good obituary.

According to this story in the New York Times, he may have died because he stayed to try and save his three cats when his family fled the fire.

7

General Software Discussion / Re: Rename Open File in Windows

« on: October 30, 2018, 09:06 AM »

XYplorer's built-in file viewer displays pdf files properly and does not lock the file being viewed, so you can rename it while viewing it.

The viewer, which can be shown in a pane or a separate movable window, always displays whatever file is currently selected, so you can simply scroll down through a list of files and rename them on the fly, without ever having to open them in a separate program.

8

General Software Discussion / Windows 10: merge the bugs now, we'll fix them later

« on: October 21, 2018, 11:15 AM »

Folk who flog software for a living should read this Ars Technica article about what’s wrong with how Microsoft develops and distributes Windows 10.

After a year using Windows 10, I much prefer it to Windows 7 generally, but find it remains too unreliable to replace Windows 7 on my primary working system. The problem is that with Windows 10, I can never be confident that something that worked one day will continue to do so the same way next day, even if I haven’t changed anything myself. 

One shouldn't use beta software in a production environment, but Windows 10 seems to be stuck in a permanent beta.

9

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Mailwasher Pro 40% off this week

« on: September 18, 2018, 05:57 PM »

The 51% discount is back today (9/18/2018) again for 5 days.

10

General Software Discussion / Et Tu, CCleaner!

« on: August 06, 2018, 06:38 AM »

CCleaner 5.45 has been pulled from distribution after a firestorm of criticism last week when users reported that the new version was collecting usage data and sending it back to Piriform.

Martin Brinkmann has a detailed report on the new "features" on ghacks and bluntly advises against installing this version.

This is the second major security SNAFU since Piriform was acquired by Avast.

As a long time user of CCleaner, I now feel it's time to look for a replacement.

Suggestions?

11

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 update stuck on constant "need to restart" - end of my tether

« on: July 24, 2018, 09:31 PM »

Seagate 3TB drives were notoriously prone to failure (I had one, and it did, after about 3 years).

According to the latest BackBlaze survey, the more recent Seagate 4TB drives have lower failure rates than either HGST or WD.

12

Found Deals and Discounts / XYplorer World Cup 2018 sale - 50% off on lifetime Pro license.

« on: July 07, 2018, 04:17 PM »

XYplorer currently has a World Cup 2018 sale on a lifetime license at 50% off  - $39.95 instead of $79.95.

The sale is in effect for as long as England stays in contention or the World Cup is over.

England beat Sweden today to advance to the semifinals against Croatia on Wednesday, July 11, so the sale is good at least until then.  If England defeats Croatia, they will advance to the final on Sunday, July 15.

13

Living Room / Re: A simple one-parameter equation that can be used to reproduce any plot

« on: June 01, 2018, 07:13 AM »

This is just another formulation of the old nonsense about an infinite number of monkeys typing away forever and producing the complete works of Shakespeare.  It has nothing to do with Chaos Theory.

14

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Mailwasher Pro 40% off this week

« on: May 09, 2018, 06:51 AM »

Mailwasher Pro discount has been upped to 51% through May 2018.
 
Enter promo code mayday51 in the checkout cart and click apply to see the result.

I've used Mailwasher Pro for 14 years and while no spam filtering tool is close to perfect, I have yet to find any other system that provides me with the flexibility to deal with the problem satisfactorily. I have it set to check email on my server automatically, which allows me to check things and delete (or undelete) selectively before anything reaches my local email program. This is great if you use a pop3 account, but far less useful if you use gmail or a similar system, which makes me wonder about the long term market for this kind of software.

I'd guess that Nick Bolton (developer of Mailwasher) is thinking along the same lines, which may explain the great sale prices at this time.  I renewed last year and my current license hs over two years left on it, which poses a dilemma, should I buy a lifetime license now at less than half price or wait and see what happens?

Given that I rely on Mailwasher every day, I'll probably go for the lifetime license now, if only to support the dev, but YMMV.

15

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Mailwasher Pro 40% off this week

« on: April 27, 2018, 01:22 PM »

Thanks, link just goes to empty cart, here a better one:

they only offering 25% off at the site -- where did you get the 40% discount?

-tomos (April 25, 2018, 03:27 PM)

From the Mailwasher newsletter:

We're also running a discount of 40% on MailWasher Pro this week. So tell your friends and family!

Buy MailWasher with 40% off!
 
Stay safe
 
 Kind regards
Nick Bolton & the team at Firetrust.com

50% (as per Curt) sounds better, but requires clicking to activate the deal through a 3rd party site, which is the kind of unsafe web behavior I try to avoid. 

16

Found Deals and Discounts / Mailwasher Pro 40% off this week

« on: April 25, 2018, 03:05 PM »

Mailwasher Pro anti-spam software is on sale for 40% off this week.

https://secure.firetrust.com/cart

Unusually for Firetrust, this includes a lifetime license at $59.97, making it about $6 more than the 3-year license.

17

Living Room / Re: Any way to detect and block spoofed phone numbers?

« on: April 20, 2018, 09:13 AM »

The FCC issued a Consumer Alert about the current spoofing epidemic last month.

Don't expect them to do much about it though. Here's the official FCC guide to protecting yourself from spam calls. Not much help there, although they do provide links to most carriers' pages on the topic.

I simply let all numbers that are not in my phone book go through to voicemail, and if it's a legitimate caller, I'll call back.  Google Voice is great for this since it provides text transcriptions of most messages, so I don't even have to listen to them to know if I should respond.

18

Living Room / Re: US Internet providers - suggestions needed

« on: April 18, 2018, 04:57 PM »

Verizon FIOS (fiber) is supposedly available in most of Gaithersburg, MD., and is generally considered far more reliable (and faster) than Xfinity (Comcast) cable. She should contact Verizon to find out whether her home can get it.  RCN also supposedly has fiber service in parts of Gaithersburg.

19

Found Deals and Discounts / Expandrive 40% off November 27 2017

« on: November 27, 2017, 09:39 AM »

Expandrive is offering 40% off all licenses today only (Nov. 27, 2017)

https://secure.expan...re?coupon=HOLIDAYS17

20

Found Deals and Discounts / VMware Workstation 14 Pro 40% off today

« on: November 20, 2017, 02:48 PM »

VMware has a "Black Friday" sale today (Monday, Nov.20, 2017).

40% off new purchases of Workstation 14 Pro or Fusion 10 Pro.
30% off upgrades.

30% off new purchases of Workstation Player 14 or Fusion 10.
20% off upgrades.

Use Promo Code: VMWBF1120 at checkout.

Discount expires November 20th, 2017 at 23:59 PM (Pacific Time)

21

General Software Discussion / Re: New faster Firefox browser released

« on: November 17, 2017, 10:27 PM »

Pale Moon has just released Basilisk, described as:

A XUL-based web-browser demonstrating the Unified XUL Platform (UXP).
This browser is a close twin to pre-Servo Firefox in how it operates.

Clearly designed to provide the closest possible alternative for those Firefox users not willing to trade customization for speed, but also offering a path forward for XUL based extensions.

22

Living Room / Re: Smartphones - use this search string for an easy comparison between 2 models.

« on: November 13, 2017, 08:49 AM »

GSMArena.com lists detailed specifications on just about every mobile phone and allows you to compare up to 3 at a time.

Note that the depth of information provided may be somewhat intimidating to non technical viewers.

23

Living Room / Re: Large yet compact storage

« on: November 13, 2017, 08:37 AM »

Replacing the SSD on that particular laptop is actually pretty easy, if you are reasonably good at hardware maintenance.  If in doubt, a competent repair technician should be able to do it in less than an hour.

ifixit.com has detailed instructions for replacing components in the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 20175.

24

Living Room / Microsoft Surface Pro problems

« on: August 23, 2017, 07:38 AM »

Consumer Reports has pulled their "Recommended" designation from Microsoft's Surface Pro devices and now recommends against buying any Microsoft tablets and laptops, based on survey results that indicate that as many as 25% will experience problems within the first two years of use.

In this day and age, that is shockingly bad for any computer, let alone one sold as a premium device, as this opinion piece from Computerworld notes.

And if you think that Microsoft is the unwitting victim of circumstances beyond their control, it seems they have been cutting costs by substituting pairs of 512GB SSDs for a single 1TB drive in their top of the line Surface models.

25

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone know a file searcher than can search for X near Y?

« on: August 03, 2017, 10:08 PM »

I'm thinking of buying FL after all (newer versions didn't run with XP, so that problem isn't a problem for me anymore); unfortunately, the developer isn't that "responsive": I've been longing for FL to implement a "search within the search results" for years - that functionality missing had been the reason for me never buying that tool even when it ran with XP (there's always an XP-running free version available btw, but I think that's not pertinent for the readers of this forum).

Since it's evident that a non-indexing searcher is in heavy need for a "search within the results", when each search takes long minutes if the file body to be searched is big enough (the developer brings - imo quite weak - arguments for leaving this out, but if I accept to gratuitously wait minutes for search results if the tool is free, I do not do so if I have to pay more than 60$ incl. VAT) - and you cannot delete non-pertinent search results (as described above) in FL either.

Search-within-search isn't the same as vicinity search of course, but often, you could use either one or the other to get to your means. (This isn't true when the vicinity searched-for would be a very close one.)

-ital2 (August 01, 2017, 01:46 AM)

From the FileLocator Pro Help file (version 8.2):

Sometimes it is preferable to limit subsequent searches to the result list or a subset of the result list. FileLocator Pro supports searching file subsets through two menu options:

File - Search Result List
Searches all files listed in the result list.

File - Search Current Selection
Searches all files that are currently selected in the result list.

Search within search works by creating a new search and pre-filling the Look In field with all the files to be searched.


FL Pro also now allows the creation of indexes.