Messages

326

Living Room / Re: Obama Can Shut Down Internet For 4 Months Under New Emergency Powers

« on: June 28, 2010, 08:20 PM »

When you can deploy over a quarter of a million US service people overseas and keep them there for going on a decade, and spend three trillion dollars in the process - then we are at war.
...
Same goes for not calling something what it is.

-40hz (June 28, 2010, 04:47 PM)

The thing is, your logic gives government unlimited power. On the one hand, they've transgressed, upsetting the lives of millions of Americans (not to mention the foreigners), and spent hundreds of billions of dollars of our money.

Now, you're saying that because they've done that, we should knuckle under and accept other curtailments of our freedom as well? That just doesn't make sense.

327

Living Room / Re: Obama Can Shut Down Internet For 4 Months Under New Emergency Powers

« on: June 28, 2010, 11:58 AM »

Our government has always been skeptical about freedom and civil liberties, especially in time of war.

-mrainey (June 27, 2010, 05:22 PM)

Your post implies that this is a time of war. Let me remind you that we are *not* at war. The USA has not declared a war since WWII. Doing so requires a great deal of political resolve, and the bar is set that high for a good reason. We can't cede to the government all the powers that might be required for successfully waging a war when the government hasn't themselves expended to political capital to declare the war.

328

General Software Discussion / Re: If you think OpenOffice is a competitor to MS Office 2010, think again

« on: June 17, 2010, 09:08 PM »

The best approach for that would be to sell a turnkey hardware/software combo

-40hz (June 17, 2010, 08:53 PM)

I really don't think so. Dedicated hardware for servers is on the way out, except for very specialized applications like super DB servers. These days, everything is about virtualization.

329

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: DAEMON Tools Pro Standard at GAOTD (June 17, 2010)

« on: June 17, 2010, 05:08 PM »

The comments for the software note conflicts with anti-virus software. They seem to imply that the software cannot run in the presence of some AV packages. However, my logic tells me that it's probably only a problem during installation.

Does anybody actually know?

330

Living Room / Re: The Password Encryption Education Thread

« on: June 17, 2010, 05:06 PM »

Encryption like that is cumulative, so you can use both, or use 1 of them 2x. Technically, you could have a 2-bit encryption scheme and just run it again and again to get the same kind of security.

-Renegade (June 17, 2010, 09:55 AM)

This is true for some cyphers, but not all. And I don't understand them well enough to know which is which.

331

General Software Discussion / Re: If you think OpenOffice is a competitor to MS Office 2010, think again

« on: June 16, 2010, 03:20 PM »

Is there a downside to choosing it over MS Office?

-cyberdiva (June 16, 2010, 03:05 PM)

Off the top of my head:

• If you're a MS Office user, the interface is different. It's consistent, so not difficult for a tech-savvy user, but it may be a problem for the less-experienced that only know MS.
• No Outlook, no OneNote, no Publisher, no Access (yet -- they're working on that one).
• No grammar checking in the word processor.
• People will look at you a little funny. But that's par for the course for me: somehow it seems I always pick the oddball. I used to use OS/2 
• Compatibility with DOC/DOCX and XLS/XLSX files is excellent, but not perfect. In an environment where compatibility is essential you might have problems.
• Not compatible with VBA macros (although it has its own scripting language), nor does it present a scripting model for use by your own software.

But there are any number of advantages as well.

• Price
• Stability
• Performance
• Portability
• Immunity to malware (due to obscurity)
• Tabbed document switching

332

General Software Discussion / Re: If you think OpenOffice is a competitor to MS Office 2010, think again

« on: June 16, 2010, 02:51 PM »

I agree with Dormouse. I have 2010 now, and I'm pretty happy with it. In particular, Outlook seems more stable, although it's still dog-slow, and the ribbon (of which I'm generally a fan) does more harm than good.

I really, really hate OpenOffice. Its performance is slow, it seems inaccurate (as DaddyDave noted), and it really just doesn't feel comfortable to me.

On the other hand, the SoftMaker product is a strong contender, other than that businesses seem ignorant of it. It's an order of magnitude cheaper, and provides nearly comparable functionality (except for not having a mail/PIM app, nor a database -- yet). It's fairly comfortable to use, and performance is fantastic. And it's nearly perfectly compatible with MS documents. I've got this on my main desktop, on my PocketPC, on my Ubuntu netbook, and portable on a flashdrive.

333

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sagelight Image Editor - pay what you want promo (Apil 2010)

« on: June 09, 2010, 01:24 PM »

I gave the promo a try, paying just the few dollars I happened to have sitting in my PayPal account. Having finally tried it and really enjoyed it, I'm wishing I had paid more.

Does anyone know if there's a way to donate additional money?

334

General Software Discussion / Re: Uninstaller Roundup - Revo - Total - ZSoft & the less magnificent seven

« on: May 26, 2010, 12:12 PM »

I've got an objection to the snapshot approach.

A year or two back I was using Ashampoo's uninstaller, which uses snapshots, and got burned having some other stuff in my system hosed by an uninstall. I don't hold this against Ashampoo specifically, but I believe that it's endemic to the snapshot process -- and indeed, partly my own fault.

I hate waiting. When I start an installer running, I keep doing whatever else I'm doing. If that work includes other system changes (maybe changing a registry setting or something), then they get flagged in the snapshot diff. Later on, an uninstall undoes all the changes, including that other change from the other app, that had nothing to do with this installation. Doing this got some of my software into an inconsistent state, so I had to uninstall and re-install the broken software.

This was obvious in retrospect. But if you're going to use snapshot-based uninstallers, be sure not to be doing anything while an installation is running. In fact, you're better off if you really do stop all programs beforehand, since they might make system changes in an automated fashion.

335

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Burning Studio 10

« on: May 21, 2010, 12:00 PM »

Ashampoo seems to be putting all of their powers into the Burning Studio; the list of features is  * L .. O .. N .. G *!

-Curt (May 19, 2010, 10:55 PM)

It looks like they're following the same evolution as Nero. And that's bad.

336

General Software Discussion / Re: Welcome, come back in a year

« on: May 07, 2010, 11:23 AM »

we are a friendly bunch here

-mouser (May 04, 2010, 05:32 PM)

Bah! Some of us are curmudgeons that just grumble.

337

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your preferred File Manager

« on: May 04, 2010, 12:34 PM »

For some time I've been a user of DOpus -- on my home computer, anyway; the license is too much for me to justify a second for work. IMHO, this program is the most polished, with a feature set that seems very well thought-out and integrated.

However, over the past few months I've found that it slows to a crawl when opening and sorting the contents of one particular directory (and not that large of one, with just a couple of hundred items). This has become enough of a frustration to me that I've mostly switched to XYplorer.

XYplorer is far quicker than DOpus, at least in the case of my headache directory. While I've never felt that its feature set was integrated as well as DOpus's, it certainly gets the job done. A few upgrades over the past couple of versions has made it my preference. In particular, it's now able to queue file operations, and the horrible artifacting in the toolbar is fixed. And it's one heck of a lot cheaper than DOpus. I'm still waiting on one more important feature: flattened directory view, which is promised soon.

The only reservation I have in recommending XYplorer now is the attitude of the developer. He's very resistant to criticism, even when it's intended to be constructive, because he has his own vision of what his program should be, and won't be swayed from it. I've seen exchanges on his forum become what I would consider abusive of his users when they criticize the program. But if your vision is sufficiently close to his, you can get a long way with it.

338

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: all Ashampoo: $10 !!

« on: May 03, 2010, 10:47 AM »

bumping to remind that Burning Studio 9 very much is worth $10 

-Curt (May 01, 2010, 05:34 AM)

When it works, I think it's splendid. However, more often than not, it gives me a BSOD upon completing the disc.

339

Developer's Corner / Re: C# Books (Recomendations)

« on: April 30, 2010, 12:49 PM »

I started to recommend that one because it's just *so* good... but with the changes introduced in C# 3 and .NET 3 and 3.5, ...

-wraith808 (April 30, 2010, 12:41 PM)

I thought about that too. However, everything it says about the older stuff (which is still most of the language!) is still true. Also, while my pleasant experience was with the original release of the book, what I've linked to is a 2nd edition that claims to be updated for .Net 3. While I don't know firsthand what the quality of those updates for, the overall excellent quality of the 1st edition makes me optimistic.

340

Developer's Corner / Re: C# Books (Recomendations)

« on: April 30, 2010, 11:27 AM »

I'm not sure which books are good at an introductory level, but once you've got the basics, there are three I'd recommend to help you really understand C#:

• Effective C# - this contains a lot of really useful information like when to use a class versus a struct, when and how to properly implement IComparable, etc.
• Practical .NET2 and C#2 - Much more in-depth information that will give you a better understanding of how C# works internally, and how it interacts with the .Net platform. This is how I got to really understand closures, for example.
• More Effective C# - builds on the beginning of the first book, including devoting a big chunk of space to using LINQ.

341

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 26, 2010, 01:28 PM »

I'm still not certain there would be enough interest in actively updating it by members though.

-JavaJones (April 26, 2010, 12:43 PM)

If we had a wiki for software reviews/suggestions/questions, I'd be willing to commit to keeping my thoughts in it.

342

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 23, 2010, 03:49 PM »

Let me make a comment as gently as possible, with the acknowledgment that I'm probably as guilty as anyone.

I haven't been using DC as much as I used to. I think at one point I would check for new posts every hour. Lately, I might check once at lunch, if that.

I think part of the reason may be that reading these posts has become less productive. The signal-to-noise content is much higher, in that so many discussions veer wildly off-topic into witty banter. The result at best is that I have to read more posts to get the same amount of information; at worst, the real content is never posted because we're wasting our time joking. I like joking in conversation probably more than most, but for a forum that's supposed have a technological focus, that focus is becoming blurred.

Perhaps worse, I fear potential new members are put off. I wonder if the banter makes the community seem closed. When the participants seem to know each other, engaging in conversation that reveals their familiarity, I wonder if it serves to make newbies feel like they're on the outside.

343

Site/Forum Features / Re: Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

« on: April 23, 2010, 09:17 AM »

My story is as dormouse expressed above. A couple of Google searches pointed me here. I discovered the newsletters, which brought me back here regularly. Believe it or not, I didn't even realize this was a forum as such -- frequently the reviews stood alone, without any discussion following up.

So in addition to dormouse's observations about the decline in the frequency of reviews, I'd add the decline in the frequency of newsletters. Since it was those that kept me coming back until I got involved in forum discussions, I think they are invaluable in landing new users.

344

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini Review of SugarSync and DropBox

« on: April 22, 2010, 11:38 AM »

I've been using DropBox for a few months for two primary use cases:

• Keeping a constantly-updated copy of my Roboform data everywhere I use it
• A briefcase to transport important files between home and work

DropBox isn't sophisticated, but it handles these two tasks perfectly. Indeed, I suppose that the fact that it's so unsophisticated -- install it and it "just works" is part of the attraction. Another plus is that I'm always surprised at just how quick it is to transfer the data. I guess that's what having storage in the cloud does (I think Amazon S3 is what they use for storage).

This was a great review/comparison. A couple of things I'd like to clarify:

• SugarSync may only support 2 desktops, but DropBox explicitly supports as many as you'd like.
• DropBox does versioning. If make a change to one of those work files in the "briefcase", I can fall back to yesterday's version, for example. I don't know if SugarSync offers this.

345

General Software Discussion / Re: Powerpoint sucks - what to use instead?

« on: April 21, 2010, 11:51 AM »

This doesn't help you, Oshyan -- sorry -- but for the benefit of other readers:

Please don't create those awful corporate presentation that have the entire content of the presentation in outline bullets, shoveled into page after page of presentation. And please don't do a presentation that consists of paging through that slide deck reading the bullets. You're wasting your time and mine; better to invest it in writing real prose and sending me the email. Here's a great example of how corporate presentation-ism can ruin one of the world's greatest presentations: http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

Use your slide deck to highlight what you're talking about, and let your audience focus on you and what you're saying.

See http://www.presentationzen.com/

346

Living Room / Re: "The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows about you"

« on: April 16, 2010, 12:30 PM »

Two stories listed on HackerNews this morning:

2. Obama administration wants warrantless access rights to most US email (cnet.com)
3. Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued (philly.com)

The top one says that the President thinks that the government should get access to our emails without any probable cause or due process of any kind. The bottom is an update about a school district that issued laptop computers with remote-control webcams and has been spying on the students.

So the battle isn't looking good. We're fighting a defensive battle, certainly not making any positive ground in our civil rights.

347

Living Room / Re: "The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows about you"

« on: April 16, 2010, 10:48 AM »

With jokes like this, you're gonna get smacked, so you'd better .... (nah, I won't do it)

348

Living Room / Re: "The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows about you"

« on: April 14, 2010, 12:35 PM »

Trying to get back on the exact topic of Google having knowledge about you...

I recently started using a new search engine, DuckDuckGo, which has (amongst other features) a very appealing privacy policy: they don't keep any personal information about anybody at all.

I just started a new topic recommending this, you might want to go look here.

349

General Software Discussion / DuckDuckGo - new search engine

« on: April 14, 2010, 12:30 PM »

I recently happened upon a new search engine, DuckDuckGo.


It's not Google, but it does have some unique characteristics to recommend it. From their About page:

• Zero-click info
• Privacy kept
• Search sites with !bang
• Disambiguation pages
• Info topic summaries
• Less clutter
• Less spam & ads
• Shortcuts & other goodies
• Category pages
• Customization settings

I'm finding the zero-click information very useful for "what the heck is this" kinds of searches. And the disambiguation and category pages are nice as well. And their privacy policy is that they don't keep any of your personal history, period, which may appeal to those of you that sounded off in the "The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows about you" topic.

Here's a sample of their zero-click info thing. It looks like they try to find a hit in Wikipedia (and other sources?) and include a short clip from there directly into the results


Here's a sample disambiguation. If there are many clearly distinct meanings of a term (in my example, "python", it asks which sense you're interested in)


This is a start-up company, and the developer is very responsive to input.

Disclaimer: I have no association with DuckDuckGo, other than having corresponded with the developer over some suggestions.

350

Living Room / Re: Databases in modern companies

« on: March 19, 2010, 11:52 AM »

Virtually everything uses a database of some form or other.

Sometimes it's an app-specific library that was developed just for a given purpose. Sometimes it's a relational DB like Oracle (or SQL Server, or MySQL, etc.). And now the "NoSQL" databases like Cassandra and CouchDB are popping up.

But broadly speaking, if you need to store your data at all -- and who doesn't -- then you'll be using a database of some ilk.