Messages

201

General Software Discussion / Windows Keyboard Layout/Language Setting Question

« on: March 29, 2006, 11:12 PM »

I'm running a fairly heavily customized Windows system based on an unattended setup disc created with the popular Windows pre-installation customization tool nLite. I removed a ton of languages I would never use, but it seems I accidentally removed the component of Windows that allows me to switch between different language keyboard layouts as well. I sometimes type in German, for emails, IM's etc... and now I don't have the UMLAUTS anymore . Is there any third party tool that allows for foreign language keyboard layouts and foreign language character input? Or is there way to fix the Windows component after it was ripped out with something like nLite? Reinstalling Windows just because of this is out of the question at this point.. :|

TIA

202

General Software Discussion / Re: free anything to pdf printer

« on: March 29, 2006, 06:55 PM »

Check out http://www.snapfiles...em/fwpdftools_r.html
Very nice list of PDF tools

I'm looking for a free PDF printer that will allow me to print specific pages from a document. For example, if I just want to print page 3 of a 6-page document, I would like to be able to do that. PrimoPDF and CutePDF seem to be most popular. PDF995 seems extremely impressive as well. Now, will someone help me choose between these three?

203

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« on: March 29, 2006, 06:23 PM »

You gotta be kidding... a Google AdSense posterbot? Wow. lol!

204

Living Room / Re: Unprotected Wireless Lans?

« on: March 29, 2006, 06:22 PM »

Of course not all devices support WPA. Especially older ones. I was just saying that I find it strange Netstumbler lists ALL protected WLAN's as WEP-protected, when I know exactly that most of them are WPA protected, that's all.
Linksys does provide firmware updates here and then.. they just udpated the firmware for part of their product range last week or so. Linksysinfo.org is a great site for info on all things Linksys. I currently am running custom 3rd party firmware on my Linksys WRT54GS.

205

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Startup Delayer

« on: March 29, 2006, 09:33 AM »

Guess that answers the question . Thanks

206

Living Room / Re: Unprotected Wireless Lans?

« on: March 29, 2006, 09:07 AM »

The answer is seven for me. It's great. Whenever my router's is down for whatever reason, I have 7 alternatives to choose from

-moerl (March 28, 2006, 05:33 PM)

I must say that goes way beyond what could of. 7 Unprotected wlans in the same place is too much.
 And how many protected ones?
 If I was my mother, I'd be saying "oh.. so much radio activity.. that's bad for you, it causes cancer, bla bla bla" and you'd be hearing about 30 minutes of nagging, telling you to move out
 

-jgpaiva (March 29, 2006, 07:45 AM)

It's actually 8 unprotected ones, 14 protected ones, with one among the unprotected ones using the default out-of-the-box SSID. So that makes 14 people with wireless AP's around me that have some clue of what they're doing, 8 noobs, (how likely is it that you know what you're doing and are sharing your bandwidth with everybody around you because you want to??), and one ultimate king of the noobs, who just took the router out of the box and plugged in the two cables and didn't worry about it ever since, having left even his SSID at default. For some odd reason Netstumbler does not tell me which encryption is used... WPA or WEP... all protected wireless AP's show up as being protected with WEP, even though most of them probably use WPA, including myself. If I knew that, I could include another stratus of a noob vs. the ones with some flavor of a clue rating... while I've never done such a thing before, I have read that it is extremely easy to break through WEP encryption. If you look around at AstaLaVista.com, you will probably find a tool to do just that for you in less than 5 minutes. So basically you can count the WEP protected AP's together with the unprotected AP's. It's the same thing in regards to outside accessibility with some knowledge.

207

General Software Discussion / Re: Alertbear - the *different* RSS reader - free!

« on: March 29, 2006, 06:08 AM »

Wow.. that's awesome. Mouser and I were discussing EXACTLY what Goethe covers in his quote on IRC the other day... the difference between having an idea and making that idea a reality. We reached the same conclusion Goethe did

I have one last final today and after that an essay to worry about, but I'll get to it.

208

Living Room / Re: Unprotected Wireless Lans?

« on: March 28, 2006, 05:33 PM »

The answer is seven for me. It's great. Whenever my router's is down for whatever reason, I have 7 alternatives to choose from

209

General Software Discussion / Re: GreatNews RSS Reader

« on: March 28, 2006, 05:30 PM »

Does GreatNews have FeedDemon's autowatches and channel newspaper views? Those two are FD's strongest features IMHO.. and I wouldn't be without them. I stlil have to check out AlertBear. I can't stop dreaming of the ultimate RSS reader... a merging of FeedDemon and AlertBear... oh boy.

210

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« on: March 28, 2006, 04:46 PM »

Well if ACDSee can do what APE 4.0 can do, I think a switch to ACDSee would be justified, simply because ACDSee, though it may not have as sexy an interface as APE's, is packed with far more useful features than is APE. The APE organizer is more or less bare. It does come with a good feature-set, but it's not all TOO special. I've never much used its editor but I assume it's fairly powerful. ACDSee probably has many more useful features than APE offers. I'll have to see. I wonder just how well ACDSee can "replicate" the excellent organizer in APE

211

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« on: March 28, 2006, 03:49 PM »

Sounds good, but that's exactly what I meant. Personally I detest folder-based organizational structures. That's why I love GMail's labels. Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 makes it very easy to organize your entire collection of photos completely independently of folders. It imports the images into its own database file, (not sure if it copies the actual images or if it just creates references.. I'm guessing the latter would make more sense and would be more efficient), and then lets you organize ALL of them from one place. That's what I love about it. Now, what do you have to say about ACDSee's handling of this "problem"? Can what I just described be done in ACDSee?

212

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Registry Cleaner?

« on: March 28, 2006, 03:45 PM »

Ah I see what you mean. This is only a problem if the registry values are shared, but I guess that happens quite often, making it a problem indeed. Point taken.

213

Developer's Corner / Re: editor learning curves

« on: March 28, 2006, 03:40 PM »

jgpaiva i don't want to embaress your cody pet but something is strange under his belly - i think he might need his diaper changed.. 

-mouser (March 28, 2006, 03:30 PM)

Hahahahaha! You sure redeemed your lack of funny lines in the IRC excerpt with that one

214

Developer's Corner / Re: editor learning curves

« on: March 28, 2006, 02:59 PM »

Here is how hadez' forced join to the forum came about, and also a little discussion on the Visual Studio curve

[hadez posts link to above image]

(MoeRL) how can a learning curve go DOWN?
(hadez) MoeRL, if you know everything and dont learn anything new............

(@mouser) hadez post that in programmer section
(hadez) it's 0
(hadez) mouser dunno if i have an account
(hadez)
(@mouser) damn you
(@mouser) sign up
(hadez) lol
(jgpaiva) hadez: maybe it's a good time to create one?
(hadez) so many accounts, so many forums, so few spare time
(hadez)
...
• hadez signed up
(hadez) i dood it
...
(@MouserBot) [DC Forum] editor learning curves - https://www.donation...71.msg20201#msg20201 - by gjehle
(15:09:15) (hadez) hehe
(15:09:16) (hadez) there we go

[And that is the story of how hadez was "forced" to sign up at DonationCoder.com forums! What follows is the drawn-out discussion about one of the graphs.]

............ (MoeRL) Right.. but 0 isn't negative. If you're not learning anything new, you're not ADDING anything.. but neither are you SUBTRACTIN G anything
(jgpaiva) MoeRL imagine this:
(jgpaiva) you learn something, then you understand it was not right
(jgpaiva) you've regressed
(MoeRL) So you learn something, and then you learn about that something that it is invalid and you dump it again from your database of knowledge
(MoeRL) hmm
(MoeRL) It would be good if you knew what's right and what's wrong before learning it.. and think of it this way: learning things that aren't right is not regression. It's very much ADDITION in that you add wisdom in knowing what is wrong
(jgpaiva) well.. you don't dump it, you just put it in the last end of your knowledge pile, to be the next thing to be deleted
(MoeRL) You don't want to delete it though.. because with its deletion you delete the knowledge that it is wrong and thereby set yourself up to make the same mistake.
(MoeRL) It would be wiser to archive it and have it ready to be called up if you are about to re-learn the same wrong thing, to redo the mistake.
(jgpaiva) but it's not that much of important knowledge, you just know you don't wanna do that
(jgpaiva) so, part of it, you just forget
(MoeRL) Ergo, you add knowledge.
(jgpaiva) yes, you can add knowledge, but part of it is forgotten, you only keep the beggining
(jgpaiva) imagine it's a giant unuseful algorith
(jgpaiva) you don't actually remember it all
(jgpaiva) you remember it's name
(jgpaiva) or you have a general idea of it
(jgpaiva) so, you actually forget part of it
(MoeRL) Well, the actual knowledge of how to do what is wrong is worthless, because it's wrong, so obviously you're going to forget that part, but not the part about the fact that it IS wrong.
(jgpaiva) yes, you keep a small reference to it being wrong
(jgpaiva) but not the whole data, though
(MoeRL) Right.
(MoeRL) Exactly.
(jgpaiva) so, the natural thing to think about that graphic, is that it can come down, but not until 0
(MoeRL) So you can't tell me that you learn SO MUCH bullshit that it can constitute for such a drastic reversal of the learning curve for Visual Studio
(MoeRL) It may come down, but it sure as hell would not be a bell curve!
(jgpaiva) actually, i never used VS, i was only giving a generic example
(MoeRL) If the climax of the curve is 10 and we start at 0, the curve would go from 0 to ten to maybe 7 or 8.. but hardly back down to zero or even to something close to zero
(MoeRL) Besides and disregarding ALL that has been said above, a learning curve cannot logically decline.
(jgpaiva) lol
(MoeRL) lol
(jgpaiva) i can't agree with you on that
(jgpaiva) i keep forgetting things i already learned
(jgpaiva) so, a learning curve about some determinate thing, might decrease
(MoeRL) You learn how to use it and that's that. It's trial and error. If you press the wrong button in the interface you'll know immediately that's not what you wanted to do, so you will not learn the useless part, the wrong part, you will learn the positive part, namely that that button doesn't do what you want it to do, but that it does something else instead, and you're going to remember that function it ACTUALLY performs, not the fact that it does NOT perform what you meant it would.
(MoeRL) Yeah but that I would call actual knowledge or mastery. Not learning curve.
(jgpaiva) yes, at short term, that's what happens
(MoeRL) The learning curve is what you have in the beginning, it's what it takes to get to a level of proficiency in something. After that you modify your knowledge, improve and enhance it, change it even, and while you are indeed still learning, I would not consider that part of the initial learning CURVE anymore.
(jgpaiva) oh, i see what you mean
(jgpaiva) a learning curve nly makes sense while you learn
(MoeRL) But you learn forever, all the way until you die.
(MoeRL) And I can't accept the notion that the ENTIRE PROCESS is supposed to be a learning curve.
(jgpaiva) still, you might be learning something, and forget the beggining of it
(MoeRL) Hardly. The beginning is the basics. A builds on B which preceded it, which builds on C which preceded B, etc... you can't know A, in other words, if you don't know C
(MoeRL) At least I'd say in programming it's like that, and in math.
(MoeRL) Not necessarily in politics
(jgpaiva) lol
(jgpaiva) yes, then it depends on what matter you're thinking about
(MoeRL) Or in sex. I for one was a master at the latter the day that I lost my virginity!
(MoeRL) LOL
(jgpaiva) if it's a inter-dependable matter, a learning curve can't go down
(MoeRL) Because I had watched so much porn I knew all there was to know, almost. I continue to expand that knowledge to this day, of course, both with an extensive consumption of porn as well as with the actual performance of the act.
(jgpaiva) then, you lost some of the mastering?
(jgpaiva) ahah
(jgpaiva) practice.. practice is important
• jgpaiva asks kindly to MouserBot to be contemplated with an op
(MoeRL) Though I sadly must admit that the last instance of performance is distancing itself a bit too far--so much so it could be considered historical at this point in time. The porn consumption, on the other hand, the accessibility of which is so infinitely much higher, does not show any breaks in the consumption curve
(jgpaiva) lol MoeRL
(jgpaiva) "the accessibility of which is so infinitely much higher" <- LOL
(MoeRL) Of course I'm joking. Well, partly. I knew a lot when it first happened, but I was nowhere near a fucking master lol. Anybody who thinks he is is a damn fool.
(jgpaiva) hadez: good to know you signed up
(jgpaiva) "Anybody who thinks he is is a damn fool" <- agreed
(jgpaiva)
(MoeRL) hadez, your timing is great too. You're witnessing some great IRC content here.
(hadez) lol

[And that is the discussion about the Visual Studio graph!]

Got anything to add? Please do!

215

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« on: March 28, 2006, 01:35 PM »

I didn't know whether ACDSee is primarily for organization or "merely" viewing/browsing/editing images. Guess I'll have to give it a shot.

216

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Startup Delayer

« on: March 28, 2006, 11:56 AM »

So what's the consensus on this one.. is this REALLY useful? And why?

217

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« on: March 28, 2006, 11:53 AM »

APE 4.0 has an excellent organization tool. I personally don't much care for the rest of what it offers, but I have not used it much yet. I have never found a better way to organize photos than with APE 4.0. ACDSee Pro simply seems overkill, and it comes with many features I would never use. I don't need RAW support of any kind, (I have a Canon A620), AFAIK, and I don't need a mere viewer. I do use FastStone as my standard viewer and I love it, but it's not image ORGANIZER. Picasa sucks for organizing the way I see it, and the one thing I have not tried yet is Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 or whatever it's called. It's gotten great reviews from some places.

I don't know how well ACDSee handles specifically the MANAGEMENT/ORGANIZATION part of photo libraries. I know it's good with certain advanced features, but how good is it with organization?

218

Living Room / Re: BitTorrent - why bother?

« on: March 28, 2006, 11:48 AM »

Thanks for that - I have uninstalled Azureus and tried utorrent. That seems to zip along quite nicely and it is SO much less cluttered & minimalistic. Great.

-Carol Haynes (March 27, 2006, 03:59 AM)

It doesn't use Java like Azureus, so it's smaller. But it also mostly just copies the new ideas that show up in Azureus. BT newbies might prefer utorrent, I prefer to have all those options and plugins in/for Azureus.

-brotherS (March 27, 2006, 04:48 AM)

Agreed. When I first tried uTorrent, I was not impressed. That was some months ago I believe. But I tried it yesterday, and I must say it has turned into an extremely lovable little application. It's got a great set of features, is very consistent, extremely user-friendly and works! It's very easy to set up as well. It's got the most important features from Azureus but is nowhere NEAR as full-featured as the latter. If you're serious about BT, Azureus is more or less the only way to go. I'm a big Azureus fan myself because it's so advanced and powerful, and you can tell the makers put TONS of thinking and effort into the application's making. I have simply come to completely TRUST Azureus in handling my downloads. It seems extremely intelligent in its handling of BT files.. just look at the Azureus Wiki.. you'll find tons of highly technical talk regarding the workings of BT, which for me adds confidence in the makers of Azureus. It just lets you feel like "they know what they're doing, and they know it well". Azureus is a lot heavier than uTorrent as an application, but it's as much more advanced as it is heavier as well

I'll stick to uTorrent now and see how well it handles multiple torrents and at what speeds. I may return to Azureus in the end. I like them both, I must say.

219

General Software Discussion / Re: Why subscription-models for software suck

« on: March 28, 2006, 11:41 AM »

Great points from both of you. I don't see how devs don't get that.. it would be so much more effective to keep userbase fluctuation, (especially downwards..), low by simply keeping upgrade prices fair . Instead they jack up the price and scare away their loyal customers. Profit-hungry dumbasses

220

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Registry Cleaner?

« on: March 28, 2006, 10:54 AM »

The problem with uninstallers (like Ashampoo Uninstaller and Total Uninstall) is that they can't return other apps to the preinstall state (or post install state if you install programs after the app you are trying to remove). Lots of apps modify registry settings that affect more than its own function (eg. assigning actions for filetypes) which have uncontrollable knock-on effects.

Here is an example - three programs that affect the same registry values (eg. mulitple media players):

Install A
Install B
Install C

at this point point C is flavour of the month but if you use TU or AU to unistall B at this point you will lose all associations with app C as they will be reverted to app A settings.

For media players this is usually easily fixed but for some software this can have serious breaking potential.

The only way to use TU or AU effectively and reliably is to  systematicall uninstall all software that was installed after B in reverse order before uninstalling B and then reinstall all the software again.

-Carol Haynes (March 28, 2006, 10:36 AM)

I see your point, but have to defend Total Uninstall in this regard. It's not quite THAT stupid, I think at least. It will only delete registry keys explicitly CREATED with the setup you are monitoring. For values where associations and such settings are changed to values TU will only CHANGE them back to what they were before setup was run, it will not simply DELETE them. TU even RESTORES registry values that may have been removed by setup.

221

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Registry Cleaner?

« on: March 28, 2006, 10:51 AM »

Absolutely EXCELLENT post, Darwin! Where's the thumbs-up feature on this forum? The both thumbs-up feature?
Haven't seen that valuable and information-packed and convincing a post in a while . I used EasyCleaner yesterday and must say I like it a lot. Not even that much for its registry cleaning part, but for all the other handy tools it comes with. I also have a license for Registry First Aid, but have not installed or used it in over a year. I've tried just about every reg cleaner out there, save for the most obscure ones, and I also have to say that I've never actually seen any noticeable improvements to the system due to registry cleaning. It seems to me, however, that that's not even so much the point of registry cleaning... it's more the securing of a peace of mind for the user that his system's registry is clean and free of potentially problem-causing registry entries. The question is.. is the risk introduced by the use of registry cleaners higher, equal or lower to the effective benefit they yield? The benefit is probably not worth the risk taken, would you agree?

I've been a long-time user of Your Uninstaller! as well and was delighted to find it updated to the 2006 version. Updates are very rare and far in between, but they always contain great improvements to the application. 2006 also brought with it excellent additions to the program. I personally like the combination of Total Uninstall, (was updated yesterday to 3.60) and Your Uninstaller! 2006 Pro. The only problem with TU is with the very way it works.. you have to make sure nothing else is running during installation, for if anything but the setup of the application you are installing is running and is writing anything to disk or the registry, TU will catch that and if you ever decide to remove the monitored application, you will remove with it all those entries created by the programs that were running during the setup. For this reason, TU has extensive EXCLUDE features for scanning profiles, comparing profiles and uninstallation profiles.. but the question is always.. what to exclude? It's tricky, but it works very well. It's also very interesting to see, with TU, where applications leave their traces and what they change on a system.

This combo is also part of the reason why I sort of want to use a registry cleaner. I don't know how far I can trust Your Uninstaller! 2006 to do just the right changes with its cleaning routines.. and I'm pretty sure that more often than not, I make more unneeded changes to the registry than I should with TU. So after doing all that cleaning, I like to run a registry cleaner to make sure the registry is in order. I guess I can use EasyCleaner for that now

222

General Software Discussion / Re: Why subscription-models for software suck

« on: March 28, 2006, 10:14 AM »

the other thing that bothers me is the sometimes very high upgrade prices.  it seems to me that upgrading should really be a very minimal fee, maybe 25% or at most 50%.

-mouser (March 28, 2006, 09:55 AM)

I've noticed that too! It's terrible. And I agree wholly with your percentages.

223

General Software Discussion / Re: Alertbear - the *different* RSS reader - free!

« on: March 28, 2006, 10:13 AM »

Alertbear doesn't work like that, there's no PAUSE button. But you can bring up the stack (see screenshot in the first post above) at any time (by assigning a keyboard hotkey or by clicking the tray icon) to scroll 'back and forth in time'.

The tray icon also offers a "show history" entry, which will bring you to a more standard (old-fashioned) interface where you can sort and filter the feeds. Anyone vaguely into RSS feeds should really install and try it for 3 days, then you'll get a *real* idea about it!

-brotherS (March 28, 2006, 10:10 AM)

I know AlertBear doesn't have that feature. I was referring to an idea jgpaiva came up in DC's IRC channel . You're right. While I do believe I have a good idea of how AlertBear works, I should certainly try it out first before judging it, which, admittedly, I have not done yet.

224

General Software Discussion / Re: Alertbear - the *different* RSS reader - free!

« on: March 28, 2006, 07:11 AM »

Is FeedDemon really that good?  I've played with it quite a bit, but I wasn't sure at the end of all that whether it was any better than GreatNews (at many times the price!).  Again, I thought it ran quite heavy, which I really don't need in a feed reader...

-m_s (March 28, 2006, 03:58 AM)

I never noticed any heaviness on my end. It starts up fast, is responsive, shuts down fast... and I think it really is that good. It just has great features speaking for themselves.. Automatic Watches, Group Newspaper (by far the coolest feature), internal browser with automatic feed-detection, many different display styles for group newspaper, etc. It really makes reading RSS Feeds FAR more efficient. What may have taken you 30min before will take you less than 10min with FeedDemon

There was a good discussion between brotherS and me yesterday in the IRC channel, where I explained to him the benefits of FeedDemon and he was all for AlertBear. I concluded that THE ULTIMATE NEWSREADER would be the combination and merging of AlertBear and FeedDemon. AlertBear could provide the River of News aspect by sitting in the tray and letting news flow by as the user sits on the computer, and FeedDemon would be the on-demand full-blown and excellent Feedreader, which would be used to read up on any news that were missed while you were not at the computer. That brings me to what I identified as AlertBear's main problem: if the idea behind it is to have a constantly updated river of news, what happens when you spend a whole day out? You miss all the news of the day! And even if you're thinking of being able to PAUSE the news stream in AlertBear and then press PLAY when you return, just imagine how many bubbles you would end up with with AlertBear if it had to display all the news of one day at once... on the other hand, AlertBear may really cut down the time you spend on RSS daily in general with the River of News concept. Think about it.. with an RSS Reader like FeedDemon or Greatnews, you will basically be out all day, on the job or whatever, only to then return to your machine, open up the Feedreader and be flooded with news. Then you have to go through each feed and read it all. Although this is exactly where FeedDemon EXCELS because of its Group Newspaper feature, cutting down the time it takes to read feeds this way tremendously, it still will take much longer than if you had seen the same amount of news flowing by a la AlertBear. That's why I said.. the ultimate newsreader = FD+AB , AB for while you're at the computer, FD for anything that was missed.

225

General Software Discussion / Re: Why subscription-models for software suck

« on: March 28, 2006, 03:24 AM »

I don't know if we understood each other. Under lifetime licensing I understand the selling of any version and then providing updates forever, for free. For example, if you buy something at version 3.xx, updates to any subsequent version will be free. Is that what you meant, or something else?