Messages

326

Living Room / Re: Adware is not freeware, right?

« on: December 23, 2011, 08:45 AM »

So why is is suddenly acceptable to call Android adware "free"? 99% of "free" apps on Android Market are adware, though you wouldn't know it from the market descriptions, screenshots or any blogs that recommend the software. Even Wikipedia apps show ads, though I doubt any of the proceeds go to the Wikimedia Foundation.

-tranglos (December 23, 2011, 07:03 AM)

By any chance, do these Android apps have paid versions without ads? I started seeing those on my iPod Touch after Apple rolled out in-app purchases. In-app purchases were intended to allow app vendors to use a subscription model of payment, but developers latched onto it to fill a gap in "try it before you buy it" software on the iOS platform, thus a crude approximation of shareware was born. (That's my interpretation, anyway.) Problem is, when you download one of these, you think it is freeware and then are disappointed later when you find out it is only a demo. And often the free versions have ads, to finally get to the point.

327

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sitepoint 24 Deals in 24 Days

« on: December 22, 2011, 11:04 PM »

Note if they do what they did last year the last day of offers will be any of the previous offers so if you miss something you want check out the last day!

-Carol Haynes (December 17, 2011, 11:03 AM)

Good call. It's on!

I just got an email:

Hi there,

Oh yeah, you knew it was coming. And it's here. ALL our December
Deals are OPEN again for today ONLY!

http://www.sitepoint...unch/sale-day23-2011

It's a bit of a pain to navigate, but check out Day 22, you can select ebooks from dropdowns.

328

Developer's Corner / Re: Can CSS apply custom user style to a certain range of Unicode characters?

« on: December 18, 2011, 05:26 PM »

My first thought is that it's way beyond CSS.

More of a javascript thing perhaps?

-nudone (December 18, 2011, 01:36 PM)

I think so probably, but then I saw selectors that could apply to text tagged for specific languages, and thought this might be possible, too. Yeah, probably a Greasemonkey script could do it. It may not matter much, I think some of the ligatures/conjuncts are used more for Sanskrit than Hindi which I am learning, so I don't want to get too confused with alternate forms.

329

Developer's Corner / Can CSS apply custom user style to a certain range of Unicode characters?

« on: December 16, 2011, 10:33 PM »

Is there a way in CSS to have a selector for all text with a Unicode range of say, 0900–097F? (Assume the HTML does use any language tags.)

Trying to see if this problem can be resolved using Stylish and a custom userstyle for Unicode characters in that range.

Yesterday I discovered the Siddhanta font for displaying Devanagari. Today I discovered that most of the Devanagari on the web is in Arial, Helvetica, or sans-serif font, even in things like Devanagari conjunct tables, where it makes no sense. Why would they not use at least Mangal? Since it is easy enough for web designers to specify a list of display fonts in order of preference, what are they thinking? Are they so grateful we have Unicode these days, they just don't care what font it is in?

Any idea why on earth would that be, and how do I shoehorn in alternative fonts generally? The closest thing I've come up with is the FontFinder extension for Firefox, but that will only let you change the font one character or word at a time or the whole web page, and you have to do it manually after the page loads.

-daddydave

330

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« on: December 05, 2011, 12:40 PM »

What does "Run/execute cell data" do?

-daddydave (December 05, 2011, 12:22 PM)

It will attempt to "run" the contents of a cell.  So, say you had folder path, it would launch that folder path.  Or, the path to an exe, image file, etc.  You can also put, say, email addresses in a cell and it will launch those, too.  Kind of like a poor man's address book.  Make sense?

-skwire (December 05, 2011, 12:28 PM)

Yes, thanks.

331

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« on: December 05, 2011, 12:22 PM »

What does "Run/execute cell data" do?

332

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« on: December 05, 2011, 04:40 AM »

Very handy! (I just happened to have a UTF-8 tab separated file lying around on my desk, so I thought I'd share.)

333

Found Deals and Discounts / Sitepoint 24 Deals in 24 Days

« on: December 04, 2011, 04:55 PM »

Today is Day 4

The Web Design Business Kit will help you turn your talent for web design into a profitable business. It's jam-packed with: proven profit strategies, 40 ready-to-use business documents, access to a private forum and whole lot more.

$119 (was $247)

That one doesn't interest me too much, but it may interest someone, and there are 20 days left to go yet.

334

Webcam Video Diary / WebcamVideoDiary - Instant Hit with the Kids

« on: November 22, 2011, 11:47 AM »

After seeing my kids' reaction to Skype and Audacity..I attached a webcam to the kids' computer, installed WVD, and it was an instant hit. Thanks! (Not that they need further incentive to be glued to the computer, but I'd much rather they play with WVD than Webkinz (the web site = Farmville for kids), and we can curate the best recordings into a family video scrapbook.)

335

General Software Discussion / Re: lightweight software for organizing notes offline? [Stickies, StickySorter]

« on: November 21, 2011, 10:39 AM »

Tom Revell has had skins for Stickies for at least the last five years. I'm presently using Notezilla but I have donated to Tom in the past and used Stickies for years.

-J-Mac (November 20, 2011, 11:39 PM)

Ah..I had a vague feeling I'd overlooked it before somehow, thanks, J-Mac. And thanks brotherS for pointing that out!

336

General Software Discussion / Re: lightweight software for organizing notes offline? [Stickies, StickySorter]

« on: November 18, 2011, 06:12 AM »

Stickies is so cool!  

You can add skins, and there are hundreds to pick from! Wow. For now I added the "H12B Stickies" skin from Cynthia Grantz:



Also, I saw that there's an old ClifNotes review of the 2008 Stickies.

-brotherS (November 18, 2011, 03:08 AM)

I find that sticky notes are keeping me disorganized, but Zhorn's Stickies was always my favorite. Didn't realize he had added skins (and who knows what other features since last time I checked it out)! Love the web site redesign, too.

337

General Software Discussion / Re: Love WorkFlowy, hate web apps.. What to do?

« on: November 17, 2011, 10:46 AM »

UPDATED sorry, I didn't see that Checkvist had already been mentioned in the thread.

Hello,

  I'm one of the creators of Checkvist, and this tool is worth considering regarding your needs.

-maxkir (November 17, 2011, 02:18 AM)

Welcome to DonationCoder, and thanks for making this important disclosure. However, it appears you may have missed the words "hate web apps" in the title of the post. Or do you have an offline version?

338

Living Room / Re: Products designed to fail, a documentary

« on: November 11, 2011, 08:02 AM »

Some of the

I have found some details and facts about what I referred to above regarding capacitors failing in computers:

• The Great Capacitor Scam
• Capacitor plague

These two do not quite tell the same story, but what becomes apparent or can be supposed is that:

• One or more Taiwanese companies which were large-scale producers of electrolytic capacitors deliberately engaged in a practice of producing those capacitors using an incorrect electrolyte formula, which, under normal operation, slowly caused the production of hydrogen gas, leading to bulging/deformation of the capacitor's case, and eventual cracking or sometimes explosion of the case, releasing the electrolyte either slowly over a period of time, or all at once, respectively.
• It may be that the reason for the manufacture of faulty electrolytic capacitors was industrial espionage "gone wrong": several Taiwanese electrolyte manufacturers began using a stolen formula that was incomplete, and lacked ingredients needed to produce a stable capacitor.
• This seemed to affect all (most?) PC manufacturers' motherboards except where the motherboards were made in Japan - in the latter case, the Japanese manufacturers always adhered to the use of the correct correct electrolyte formula.
• The Taiwanese motherboards would typically fail after about 3 years.
• It wasn't just computer motherboards that were affected, but other electrical equipment too.
• By inference, it could be that Japanese-made electrical equipment may be manufactured without this manufacturing defect.
• Somebody (i.e., the consumer) has ultimately effectively been ripped off.
• It is unclear whether, or to what extent this practice still prevails. Certainly the computer manufacturers are not likely to admit to it, and can avoid fault/liability by blaming their Taiwanese parts manufacturers.

-IainB (November 11, 2011, 12:27 AM)

I just want to chime in that the last Asus motherboard I bought had a blurb stating it used Japanese capacitors, for this reason. It sounds like Asus may have corrected the problem (by finding a different source), although I too have had good experience with ASRock, although it doesn't mean much because I've only bought a couple of their boards.

339

Living Room / Re: 1956 Autohotkey ancestor

« on: November 09, 2011, 08:06 AM »

I love this one from just a couple pages down:
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Deozaan (November 08, 2011, 06:01 PM)

How ironic is it that someone invents a device that sucks in 7500 files a day to figure out better ways to spray pesticides? LOL

340

Living Room / Re: 1956 Autohotkey ancestor

« on: November 08, 2011, 03:46 PM »

Currently browsing the 1950s Popular Sciences, ran across this:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Iy0DAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=RA1-PA278#v=onepage&q&f=true

You'll have to scroll down a little to see it, it's the bottom right corner of page 278, the page the link above *should* take you to.

-slowmaker (November 06, 2011, 02:36 AM)

Hilarious. Seems like a repurposed sewing machine pedal.

341

Living Room / Re: Alternative or "creative" data plans discussion

« on: November 07, 2011, 03:15 PM »

I have avoided data plans (and thus smartphones) for the same reason. So I have noted with interest that prepaid providers PlatinumTel and Net10 both have Android phones now,

PlatinumTel
http://www.platinumtel.com/plans/compare

Net10
http://www.net10.com

As far as I know, you have to use the phones they want you to use (for Net10 I know you can buy the same models on ebay for cheaper). Unlocking phone for use with a Net10 phone might be impossible, I haven't been able to find anything. I once put a Net10 SIM in another phone (which by the way was also a Net10 phone), and somehow this killed the SIM and they had to send me a replacement. So I skeptical there is an unlock that will allow you to use the SIM elsewhere.

But since you already have the phones, I would check with H2O wireless, Their site is hard to navigate and I won't give you the link because I always pull up the UK site and not the US site, which I recall was easy to do. I think they basically will sell you a SIM, so you can see if they have one that is compatible with your devices.

I don't have any personal experience with PlatinumTel or H20, or Android phones for that matter, so this info may be next to useless, but maybe it can be a start.

342

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: $50 (shipped) Powerlink 802.11n Wireless Router with 1.24-Mile Range

« on: October 23, 2011, 06:58 AM »

I haven't been able to find a user manual for this one online, so I am a little wary.

Anyway, I just bought a refurbished Linksys E1500 on ebay from $32.99 directly from Cisco. I think I'll be very pleased with it.

343

Living Room / [SOLVED] Re: Tests Related to Recent Increase in Bandwidth Loss Through Router

« on: October 22, 2011, 06:17 PM »

Well, I haven't put security on it yet, but I just put a new router on it, and it is testing at >25 Mbps download speed.

UPDATE
Now I have put WPA2-Personal on it and I am getting the same.

 

Thanks to everyone for your help.

344

Living Room / Re: Tests Related to Recent Increase in Bandwidth Loss Through Router

« on: October 22, 2011, 04:56 PM »

C:\Users\daddy>ping 192.168.1.1 -f -l 1024

Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 1024 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=1024 time=29ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=1024 time=18ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=1024 time=7ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=1024 time=13ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 7ms, Maximum = 29ms, Average = 16ms

345

Living Room / Re: Tests Related to Recent Increase in Bandwidth Loss Through Router

« on: October 22, 2011, 03:21 PM »

Don't really know if this means anything,  (Blackberry was kicked off during my original testing)

C:\Users\daddy>pathping 192.168.1.1

Tracing route to 192.168.1.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

  0  daddy-PC [192.168.1.8]
  1  192.168.1.1

Computing statistics for 25 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           daddy-PC [192.168.1.8]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1    4ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  192.168.1.1

Trace complete.

C:\Users\daddy>pathping 192.168.1.3

Tracing route to 192.168.1.3 over a maximum of 30 hops

  0  daddy-PC [192.168.1.8]
  1  192.168.1.3

Computing statistics for 25 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           daddy-PC [192.168.1.8]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1  116ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  192.168.1.3

Trace complete.

C:\Users\daddy>pathping 192.168.1.4

Tracing route to 192.168.1.4 over a maximum of 30 hops

  0  daddy-PC [192.168.1.8]
  1  192.168.1.4

Computing statistics for 25 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           daddy-PC [192.168.1.8]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1    5ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  192.168.1.4

Trace complete.

346

Living Room / Re: Tests Related to Recent Increase in Bandwidth Loss Through Router

« on: October 22, 2011, 03:08 PM »

You mean like this?

C:\Users\daddy>ping 192.168.1.1   <--- the router

Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 4ms, Maximum = 5ms, Average = 4ms

C:\Users\daddy>ping 192.168.1.3 <--- sister in law's blackberry

Pinging 192.168.1.3 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=365ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=192ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=412ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.3: bytes=32 time=127ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.3:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 127ms, Maximum = 412ms, Average = 274ms

C:\Users\daddy>ping 192.168.1.4  <-- the Roku, I think

Pinging 192.168.1.4 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.4:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 3ms, Maximum = 4ms, Average = 3ms

347

Found Deals and Discounts / $50 (shipped) Powerlink 802.11n Wireless Router with 1.24-Mile Range

« on: October 22, 2011, 02:34 PM »

mwave via DealNews

Powerlink seems to be a division of EMC.

"FREE Super Saver Shipping" is not available for HI, AK, PR, APO and locations outside of the continental U.S.

Shipping transit time approximately 7-10 business days, depending on your location

348

Living Room / Re: Tests Related to Recent Increase in Bandwidth Loss Through Router

« on: October 22, 2011, 02:26 PM »

That was the most painless factory reset I'd ever done. I was able to get to the setup wirelessly afterwards. And no effect on the problem at hand.

349

Living Room / Re: Tests Related to Recent Increase in Bandwidth Loss Through Router

« on: October 22, 2011, 02:14 PM »

I disabled the SPI firewall and unscientifically (because I haven't dismantled everything again)  it seems to have zero effect on tested download speed. One IP, one ethernet port on the cable modem. Factory reset, here I come.

350

Living Room / Re: Tests Related to Recent Increase in Bandwidth Loss Through Router

« on: October 22, 2011, 12:56 PM »

Short answer:
It's a Linksys Netgear WNR845T WNR854T (thanks Stoic) , and as far as I know, it doesn't have any QoS settings.
There hasn't been a firmware upgrade from Linksys (or anyone, as best as I can tell) since 2008.
I'll check and see if there is an MTU setting.
Trying a reset to factory default settings is probably the last stop before buying a new router, and I'll try to get on with "guest mode" while I am at it.
I seem to have ruled out interference as a major factor in a drop in download speed from 20 Mbps to 6 Mbps unless the interference is happening inside the router itself.