Messages

351

Perl / Re: Is Perl still being used?

« on: October 27, 2009, 05:04 PM »

I'm using it right now. Parsing the entire wikipedia, and creating a coocurrence matrix of words and articles. CPAN is great, and while I like ruby and python better, for this perl is just faster and there's more built-in already.

352

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: October 27, 2009, 05:22 AM »

btw onenote 2010 beta is out. I'm not sure how I got access, but it must not be very difficult. I think I filled a form as an academic.

353

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: October 26, 2009, 12:08 PM »

Guys,

The more I use wave for notes, the more I realize one thing:
Collaboration is the future, and it's here already.
Writing notes with more people is superior.
Notes to oneself are ok, but one should design for the more general
case, then n=1 is an special case.

Now, office 2010 offers collaboration in real time. Wave does that too.
My prediction is that from 2010 on, everyone will be used to documents
that can be changed in real time by more than one person.

Right now, a notetaker that offers real-time collaboration, and works
fine offline too is the way to go. I think Microsoft oneNote will get there first -they have it working already in their beta-, or someone doing a desktop client for wave.

If the latter, it could be open source and useful in more platforms.

Anyone using wave for notes here?

354

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows vs. Mac: I'm starting to change.

« on: October 22, 2009, 12:16 PM »

Atwood on PCs vs Macs. Oldie but goodie

355

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows vs. Mac: I'm starting to change.

« on: October 21, 2009, 10:02 AM »

One thing we seem to be missing is that apple competes in the high end, which most of us here don't care much about.

For example, not many here are in for a top-of-the-line 27-inch monitor. But if you were, you could get a free imac

356

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Suggestions for development of cross-platform Linux Outliner Note software

« on: October 20, 2009, 11:00 AM »

addenum:
Another advantage of building notetaking on top of wave is that you have an API for extensions already built-in. And even an user base of extension developers. For example:

#
 TOC Generator - [email protected] - Table of Contents auto-generated and updated based on the h1,h2,h3,h4 in a wave.

List of extensions here.

357

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors

« on: October 20, 2009, 10:16 AM »

Some here know that I was a diehard vim user.
I have since moved to Jedit. It's heads and shoulders above any other editor I know. Surprisingly easy to configure, lots of plugins that work well together and update easily... even portable (if you put javaw on the same folder). And truly multiplatform.
I haven't had to touch a single config file since moving to jedit. With vim, I was tweaking my vimrc every day.

358

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Suggestions for development of cross-platform Linux Outliner Note software

« on: October 19, 2009, 05:41 AM »

@CarrotNote
this is a bold idea. It may well throw you off-track for a while, but give it some thought...

One Killer feature of oneNote 2010 is real-time collaboration.
What does it do? It lets two or more people open the same notebook at the same time, and they can all write and see what others are writing.
That would take a heck of a lot of work to replicate in the open world.

This must ring a bell... it's exactly what google wave does.
In fact google wave works very well as a notetaker, and explains why google axed Notebook.

In fact, right kow a vanilla google wave matches features of top notetakers for Linux, such as tuxcards.
There are two downsides to wave as a notetaker:

• You must be online at all times
• it's slow to change from one set of notes to another (server request)

My proposal: write a wave desktop client.
This would be very useful not only as a notetaker.
Make waves (notes) accessible offline, and sync with other users of the wave when online.

If twitter is an example, such desktop client would spread like fire.
Technically, it may be even easier to implement than your own notetaker component: just wrap a browser!

I an invite you to wave if you want to check it...

thoughts?

359

Living Room / Re: Google demonstrates new communication platform "WAVE": mail, chat , wiki, ..

« on: October 17, 2009, 08:22 AM »

Wave seems to be a fantastic notetaker
If only because of that, I can see myself using it quite a lot.

360

Living Room / Re: Can someone remind me why are we using email ?

« on: October 17, 2009, 05:25 AM »

I'm testing wave as an alternative to onenote.
Group notetaking must be fun!
I invited app and Deozaan. If you give me your nick, I'll add you too. Mine is quesada

361

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Suggestions for development of cross-platform Linux Outliner Note software

« on: October 15, 2009, 07:11 AM »

@Carrotnote: any updates on where things stand? Are you still interested in writing such a notetaker? Thanks!

362

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Suggestions for development of cross-platform Linux Outliner Note software

« on: October 12, 2009, 10:25 AM »

on onenote plugins: there are many interesting ones: search and replace, doing math operations on tables, concatenating pages together and adding a TOC, posting to a blog, etc. Of course, not to the level of FF addons (given the difference in user bases) but useful nonetheless.

Carrotnote: so you started coding already? Did you make a commitment to lang/libraries? If so, which ones you picked?

Thanks

363

General Software Discussion / Re: On free speech in forums

« on: October 10, 2009, 02:38 PM »

Plus, how do you know someone is giving you his real identity? Yet another major problem of the internets

364

General Software Discussion / On free speech in forums

« on: October 10, 2009, 04:59 AM »

Here, we have complained before about forums owners removing threads that criticize their products.
Well, here's a long post by Steve Pavlina trying to justify this behavior.

What I thought after reading this is: In such a situation, it's easy to grow your authority online! If you have an army of moderators that remove bad comments and pump up good ones, then new forum members will only see how much other members love their leader!

This is also the case when newspapers give you only one side of the news. I guess it's common practice. Was I too naive to expect that maybe on the internet things would be different?

What we desperately need is a reputation mechanism that sticks. We have solved spam (mostly). We could very well have a public currency that gets burn out when you say stupid things and gets inflated when you say useful things. In fact, Scott Adams is aiming in that direction too.

What do you think?

365

General Software Discussion / Re: Volery Makes Installing Software Incredibly Simple

« on: October 06, 2009, 05:35 PM »

Great find! About time!
one problem es that one cannot customize where the apps will be installed, right?
Also, customizations won't travel with you. I prefer portable apps + sync program.

366

General Software Discussion / Re: alternative to filehamster?

« on: October 06, 2009, 05:22 PM »

Just on a side note, I also wanted to mention that of all the alternative mentioned above, none of them offer the immediate and automatic revision control that makes FileHamster so unique.

-Mogware Support (October 06, 2009, 04:49 PM)

AutoVer does, thanks for mentioning it.

367

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

« on: October 05, 2009, 05:50 PM »

Oh, so I'm not alone... if PDF-Xchange made planes, I would not fly on them.

368

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows vs. Mac: I'm starting to change.

« on: October 05, 2009, 05:38 PM »

I agree that mostly any FOSS end-user tool is inferior. Programming tools and languages (add databases) are much better, though. 64-bit ports come earlier, and work.

369

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

« on: October 05, 2009, 06:27 AM »

Rendering quality on pdf-Xchange has improved recently.
Scrolling is better than on Acrobat.
It's my primary pdf tool now.

Still, there are some nasty bugs and the entire thing feels clumpsy. I've had problems with the installer not updating it. Using portable version again now.

370

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows vs. Mac: I'm starting to change.

« on: October 04, 2009, 05:48 AM »

My biggest hurdle when leaving Windows was leaving behind AutoHotkey. That's the only program I missed for a while. Everything else has been a joy.

Zaine, you know about autokey, right? What do you think? python syntax beats ahk's any day...

371

Living Room / Re: How much Soda/Energy-Drinks you drink / week?

« on: October 01, 2009, 04:31 PM »

zero. For years.

372

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you touch-type or hunt-and-peck?

« on: September 21, 2009, 12:30 PM »

Anyone considering learning to touch-type should think about investing on the colemak layout. If you are going to start from scratch, learn a system that will save you 2/3 of the traveling. Your hands will appreciate that.

373

General Software Discussion / mouse settings are gone after reboot (!)

« on: September 16, 2009, 01:53 PM »

I think I've had this problem before...
mouse settings are gone after reboot (!).
I have two mice connected at the same time, but I don't think that's the problem... very exotic: a filco neo mousepad, which does the two finger scroll that mac do, and a zalman FPSgun, a vertical optical mouse. Both have their own drivers installed.

Any idea why this happens?

374

General Software Discussion / Re: how do you download a 'for a previous version of FF' firefox addon?

« on: September 15, 2009, 03:49 PM »

never mind, happened to have FF 3.0.7 somewhere Sorry about the silliness.

375

General Software Discussion / Re: how do you download a 'for a previous version of FF' firefox addon?

« on: September 15, 2009, 03:45 PM »

btw, the addon I want is this