Topics

51

Found Deals and Discounts / Duke Nukem 3D free at gog.com until Dec 14 2012

« on: December 12, 2012, 10:56 PM »

Duke Nukem 3D free at gog.com until Dec 14 2012 14:59 GMT:

  - http://www.gog.com/g...em_3d_atomic_edition


To kick off a "2012 DRM-FREE HOLIDAY SALE" with

474 GAMES ON SALE  ·  NEW DEALS EACH DAY  ·  ONLY UNTIL JAN 3

52

General Software Discussion / MagicRAR Drive Press - worth anything?

« on: December 09, 2012, 10:22 PM »

I've just heard about a utility that claims to increase the efficiency of Windows's native NTFS compression.  I'm mildly interested in this because I have a fair bit of stuff that can be usefully compressed (such as C header files and libraries - they're write once, compressible, and take up a lot of space if you have many compilers/SDKs/toolkits).

  - http://www.magicrar.com/drive-press.html

I'm curious about this software because of some of the claims made on an older site by the vendor:

All software has bugs...even Windows!

MagicRAR Drive Press uses safe, proven NTFS compression to increase your disk capacity.

But it outperforms Windows significantly! How is this possible, since both use NTFS compression?

It's a bug in the Windows drive conversion routine, which misses files that are completely safe to compress. First introduced in the problematic Windows Vista version, this bug renders a significant portion of your hard disks incompressible - even on the newer Windows 7 and Windows 8 versions! Take a look at the evidence we have collected below and see for yourself how MagicRAR Drive Press exceeds Windows's own compression, while using time-tested, proven, and completely safe, reversible NTFS compression as its underlying storage medium. And because Drive Press is multi-core and SSD capable, it will also convert your drives in a fraction of the time it would take Windows to do so. More storage and faster processing - now that's a win-win proposition!

-http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EL3b2dEehRkJ:howtocompressfiles.org/drive-press.html+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

This kind of feels like either snake-oil or maybe a registry setting that can be set without any special software. But I'd like to know more.

Does anyone have any experience with this software?  

Any  better information on how it works or what the mentioned bug in the Windows drive compression routine is?

53

Found Deals and Discounts / eBook deals

« on: November 23, 2012, 07:26 PM »

eBook deals

• Informit Black Friday sale - 50% off all ebooks. http://www.informit....on.aspx?promo=139061
  
      Discount offer expires Sunday November 25, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
     
      Note that the discount is off of the list price, not the price they usually sell the ebooks for (which usually have some small discount off 'list').  Still, there are many nice books available, most of which are not DRMed.
  
  
• Apress Cyber Monday Sale
  
      On Monday November 26, 2012 all ebooks will be $15 at http://www.apress.com
     
      Apress PDFs are not DRMed (they used to use simple password protection, but seem to have done away with even that).
  
  

   

54

Found Deals and Discounts / JetBrains Easter 2012 sale

« on: April 02, 2012, 01:51 PM »

From April 2 until April 16, the Easter Bunny is giving away great discounts on many of our IDEs as well as our issue tracker, YouTrack.

Get 30% OFF on your personal license for these cool products:

PhpStorm — lightweight and smart PHP IDE
RubyMine — Ruby and Rails IDE
IntelliJ IDEA — the smartest code-centric Java IDE
PyCharm — Python & Django IDE
AppCode — objective C IDE

-http://blog.jetbrains.com/webide/2012/04/easter-egg-stravaganza/

http://blog.jetbrain...ter-egg-stravaganza/

55

Living Room / Cell phone for trip to China

« on: March 18, 2012, 02:50 PM »

I'm planning a trip to China in a few months, and my understanding is that my Verizon cell phone won't work in China (or if it does, it'll cost $1.50 per minute or more).

The little bit of research I've done indicates that I should be able to rent or buy a used GSM phone pretty inexpensively. But I find it unclear *exactly* what I'd need to buy (and I'd rather have the phones in-hand before I leave instead of waiting until I arrive, though any necessary SIM cards can probably wait until we arrive).

I'm also told that I can repurpose a T-Mobile phone by putting in a SIM card that I buy in China.  Will any of the pre-paid phones I can get here in the US (T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile USA, whatever) do that?  Are any of them GSM phones?

I really find all this cell-phone stuff confusing (I understand it's much simpler and cheaper outside the USA) - all I'd like is to be able to get two cell phones that I can use in China that won't break the bank.  I don't need the phones to have any internet connectivity or anything else fancy. I just want to be able to make & take phone calls.  In case it matters, we'll be visiting Beijing, Xi'an, and Shanghai.

Any suggestions or pointers?

56

General Software Discussion / Change the icon for a program

« on: March 08, 2012, 11:14 PM »

I'm using STDU Viewer to deal with PDF files because I can't stand the instability and malware-prone tendency of Adobe's reader software.  And for the most part, I'm really really happy with it (I've installed Sumatra for browser integration, since SDTU doesn't do that - I'd use Sumatra for non-browser viewing, except it doesn't do tabs).

One thing I really don't like about STDU is the icon - it's a blue color scheme magnifying glass over a book.  It doesn't scream 'document viewer' to me, and I actually have a hard time zeroing in on it on the taskbar.

I can easily change the icon on a shortcut for STDU, but that doesn't work when the program is launched by the .pdf document association, so I think I need to actually edit the STDU Viewer's .exe file resources.  Anyone have a suggestion for a dead-simple (and hopefully free) utility or technique for doing this?
 
I'm running Win7 x64 if that matters.

57

Found Deals and Discounts / PowerArchiver BF weekend promo

« on: November 25, 2011, 08:53 PM »

PowerArchiver 2011 Toolbox Edition is on sale 'for a limited time' (the email makes it sound like it's good through the weekend):

  - 1 license: €14.95  (about $20.00)
  - 3 licenses: €19.95 (about $26.50)

http://www.powerarch...-international-sale/

If you only need English language support, the non-International version is slightly less expensive:

  - 1 license: $17.48
  - 3 licenses: $23.95

http://www.powerarch...011-toolbox-english/


PA itself has a lifetime license (which is a per-user/multi-machine license if only one user uses the software), the Toolbox Edition also includes a 1 year license to BitDefender Internet Security.

PA has a very active and responsive tech support forum; some of the things you might find of benefit over free archivers:

  - an Outlook plug-in.  When you attach files to an outgoing email, they can be automatically zipped up into an archive if the attachments exceed a configured size threshold.
  - a backup system
  - FTP/SFTP support
  - CD/DVD burner and ISO image virtual drive support

58

Found Deals and Discounts / Acronis Home 2012 and Malwarebytes PRO for $25

« on: October 26, 2011, 11:57 PM »

I got a kind of unusual offer notice... a "pre-order" for Acronis True Image Home 2012 combined with Malwarebytes PRO for $25 total.  You have to pre-order before 31 Oct 2011 and the license keys will be sent on 31 Oct:

    http://www.acronis.com/promo/halloween/

I have no experience with True Image Home 2012.  Like most backup software some people seem to like Acronis a lot, but others seem to hate it. 2012 looks like a very new release.

Malwarebytes seems to be nearly universally well-regarded.  $25 is the regular price for Malwarebytes.

59

General Software Discussion / Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« on: September 09, 2011, 02:27 PM »

While reading some forum postings at the Sublime Text Editor site, I came across a pointer to an experiment that the developer at hardcoded.net  is running in something he calls "Fairware": http://open.hardcoded.net/.

How does Fairware work? All hours developers invest in projects are public, as well as their hourly rate expectations. All contributions from fair users are also instantly made public (anonymously). When contributions are made, they are allocated to unpaid development hours (see the F.A.Q. for details). Everyone can thus easily know how many hours have yet to be compensated. Also, users are made aware that the software is Fairware with a dialog that pops up for users who haven't contributed yet, reminding them of expectations from developers. With enough fair users, such a system allows open source developers working on software for a wide audience to do so full time. I don't know about you, but I find that awesome.

-http://open.hardcoded.net/about/

Of course, since the software is open source, you could build a version without the nag.  But it seems most (or at least enough) people aren't interested in bypassing the nag that way.

It looks like hardcoded.net has been doing this for about a year, and it appears to be more or less successful.  The applications look interesting enough that I may give a couple a go.  Also, there's a bunch of information and statistics about the Fairware concept itself (including stats on hours spent working on the software and the donations/payments received in return).

Interesting stuff.

60

Found Deals and Discounts / Vipre Antivirus to offer lifetime licenses

« on: June 10, 2011, 04:24 AM »

From an email/newsletter I got today:

we are launching the PC lifetime license through June 30. We are doing a pilot/test to see if this is something you would be interested in purchasing. If the PC lifetime licenses does well, we will continue to offer them on our website. There will be an upgrade path for our current customers in the coming weeks, which we will make available via future editions of SSN and personal emails. If you are up for renewal of your current subscriptions you will see the option in our cart for the PC lifetime licenses.

http://vipreantivirus.com/

It looks like the pricing for one PC is $90 for Antivirus (AV + Antispyware) and $110 for Premium (AV + Antispyware + Firewall).
This compares to $30/$40 for a one year subscription.

The pricing for 'household' (3+ PCs) is $130 for Antivirus and $160 for Premium.
This compares to $50/$70 for a one year subscription.

So somewhere in the range of 150% - 200% additional cost going from 1 year to lifetime.

The pricing for renewals apparently isn't ready yet (there's no option for lifetime on my renewal page).

Use discount code "MICROSOFT" for a 20% discount (there are several code on the web if that one doesn't work).  Discount codes also seem to work for renewals.

61

General Software Discussion / Looking for whiteboard photo cleanup software

« on: May 20, 2011, 06:39 PM »

I'm looking for software that will take my pictures of whiteboards and perform as close to a one-click clean up that makes the photos usable as images.

The software that searches usually point to is "Whiteboard Photo", which seem to have been acquired by an outfit that makes 'smart whiteboards', so the software has gotten expensive and seems to be neglected in the support department. I think they'd rather you buy an expensive whiteboard system rather than use some cheap software to cleanup any old picture.

I've also come across PhotoNote by South Wedge Software (http://www.southwedgesw.com/photonote/), which seems to be pretty much what I want.  But still, it costs $50, and I'd rather pay less or nothing if I could.  

One option I thought I'd try is to use something like Sagelight (or Gimp or Photoshop Elements), which I'm certain can be made to do what I'd like, but I'm not certain that *I* could get it to happen.  We have licenses for each of the above, but I can't get good results.  This is because I know absolutely nothing about image enhancement.  I can barely work the red eye removal tools in these things, so my attempts at getting whiteboard photos to look decent amount to randomly moving sliders and pressing buttons (I'm not joking about this!).  A four year old could work more intelligently.  If anyone can give me directions that will get decent results that involve no more than 2 or 3 steps and doesn't use meaningless (to me) jargon such as "gaussian blur" or "histogram", I'd be very, very happy.

If that isn't possible, I'll be happy to pay the $50 to South Wedge.  Well, maybe not happy, but satisfied enough.

As an example, here's a whiteboard photo:



And here's what PhotoNote's trial did with essentially one click (I did have to drag around some cropping guides):



That result is fine and was easy to get.  But if something I already have can do similar without too much trouble, I'd rather go that route.

62

Living Room / Help with Win7 Multi-Monitor problem

« on: February 28, 2011, 04:42 PM »

I installed Win7 w/SP1 (a clean install - not an upgrade) on a system that had been running WinXP for many years in a multi-mon configuration.  things are working more or less fine with Win7 except for one irritating issue - whenever I reboot, whether it's a restart or after a full power-down, the secondary display doesn't get detected - I have to go into ATI's Catalyst tool and manually "detect displays" after which the secondary monitor works fine.  I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions about how I might fix this?

A few more details:

  - I have to use the Catalyst display detect button - the one in the Win7 Display control panel doesn't work (!?)
  - the video board is a low-end ATI Radeon HD 3650 PCIe - I don't recall the manufacturer
  - I updated the ATI drivers to the set available for download from AMD yesterday (Catalyst version 11.2)
  - the video card has 2 outputs, both are DVI connectors.  One has a DVI-HD15 adapter and is connected to a Dell E196FP monitor (Analog HD15 VGA), the other is connected with a DVI-D cable to a Sony SDM-HX93 Monitor.  The Dell monitor detects as and is used as primary, the Sony monitor is the one with the detection problems.
  - swapping the monitor connectors on the video card doesn't help
  - both monitors display the BIOS startup screen and the Win7 boot up animation. This suggests to me that hardware isn't an issue - there must be some driver tweak I can set.  The Sony goes dark when the Win7 logon screen is displayed.

63

Found Deals and Discounts / JetBrains RubyMine - more than 50% off (expires 15 Feb 2011)

« on: January 31, 2011, 12:57 PM »

If you're using Ruby (whether on Rails or not), you might want to look at JetBrain's RubyMine IDE:

  - http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/index.html

I'm by no means Ruby expert, and I know next to nothing about Rails.  However, I found RubyMine helpful in understanding and debugging some rake (a Ruby-based 'make' tool) scripts.

They're running a discount until 15 Feb 2011 ($29 - regularly $69, which works out to a 58% discount):

  - http://blogs.jetbrai...-price-for-everyone/
  - http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/buy/

64

General Software Discussion / Anyone have experience with Acronis Online Backup?

« on: December 14, 2010, 04:14 PM »

I've just found out about an offering by Acronis that looks quite interesting:

    http://www.acronis.c...ducts/online-backup/

for $50 per year you get 250GB of online backup storage for up to 5 computers in your household.  If this turns out to work reliably, I think it might be the 'off-site' backup offering I've been waiting for.

I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with it that they're willing to share. 

It should be noted that I'm not interested in image backup - I just want irreplaceable documents, picture, music etc. to be backed up.

65

Found Deals and Discounts / Office 2007 Home & Student Edition (Dec 2009 deal)

« on: December 08, 2009, 12:49 PM »

Microsoft is offering Office Home & Student 2007 for $100 until 26 Dec 2009.  Home & Student include 3 PC licenses.  This is $50 off Microsoft's regular price - I don't know how this might compare with other retailers.

The link I have is for USA - I'm not sure if other locales have similar deals or how closely MS enforces the locale when you try to purchase:

  - http://buy.trymicros...t.aspx?culture=en-US

66

Found Deals and Discounts / Some Nov 2009 discounts on the UltraEdit line from IDM

« on: November 17, 2009, 01:01 PM »

IDM has a newsletter posted that gives various discounts on various UltraXxx products or upgrades through the end of November 2009:

  - http://www.ultraedit...ers/nov09/index.html

67

Living Room / Reporting myself to a moderator

« on: October 20, 2009, 11:58 PM »

There have been a few times when I've posted a message that later I decided was less than helpful (invariably just seconds after I've bit the submit button).  As far as I can tell there's no way for me to do that, and even when I tried to report myself to a moderator for deletion, I get this response:

You can't report your own post to the moderator, that doesn't make sense!

Maybe the powers-that-be can enable the 'delete this message' button for posts that belong to a user - surely SMF (or whatever forum software this is) has that capability?

Or someone can point me to the button that I'm blind to and I can use it to delete this message...

68

Found Deals and Discounts / $50 off purchase of Sapien products (PrimalScript, etc.)

« on: June 18, 2009, 11:44 AM »

Our CEO is turning 50 this month.  Take the coupon code OVRHILLFGR to ScriptingOutpost.com and get $50 off of anything in the store! Expires 6/30/09

Sapien's flagship product is PrimalScript - a very nice, but expensive, editor/IDE geared toward Windows scripting (VBscript, WMI, PowerShell etc  - not so much web scripting such as PHP or in-browser JavaScript).  PrimalScript is $300 (I think) so even with $50 off it remains pretty pricey.  But if it's something you've been considering, $50 may seal the deal for you.

What may be more interesting to some DCer's is the newly released PrimalXML editor oriented toward XML documents (if you couldn't guess).  With the $50 coupon the price for that software is $19.  I purchased a license because my current job is dealing with some XML gunk for communications between a couple platforms.  However, I'm not sure PrimalXML is quite baked enough to unreservedly recommend (things like the help file is currently missing, a file open always starts in the "My Documents\SAPIEN\XML" directory instead of the last directory something was opened from).

The nice parts of PrimalXML are the fact that it shows the XML in both a text form and a structured form, and the XML can be navigated/searched using simple XPath queries.  I honestly don't know how this compares with other XML-oriented editors, but it's definitely a step up from the XML support I've seen in the other text editors I have (which to be fair are text editors, not XML editors), and it seems worth the $20 for my purposes even with it's current teething pains.

They also have a few other new tools (a diff/merge tool, an SQL-oriented tool, and a version control tool), but I don't know any details about those.

Anyway if the discount is interesting to you, visit http://www.scriptingoutpost.com (Sapien's store) and/or http://www.sapien.com

69

Found Deals and Discounts / UltraEdit 20% off until 15 June 2009

« on: June 08, 2009, 09:04 AM »

Use coupon code "IDM20" to get 20% off your purchase at IDM, the makers of UltraEdit.

This discount applies to any purchase, not just UltraEdit (UE Studio, UltraCompare, etc.).  It also applies to purchases of upgrades.

Discount  code expires 15 June 2009.

http://www.ultraedit.com

70

Found Deals and Discounts / Upgrade discount for SoftMaker Office 2008 - $15/€13

« on: February 14, 2009, 02:11 PM »

I got an email this morning providing a discount for previous owners of SoftMaker Office (and presumably AShampoo Office - but I'm not certain about that).

The order page indicates that it's for previous owners - I'm not sure if the installer checks for a previous version or not.

You can now upgrade to the full SoftMaker Office 2008 for Windows package for the low price of just EUR 12.99 (worldwide) or US$ 14.99 (United States and Canada only).
...
Please use the appropriate one of the following links:

WORLDWIDE CUSTOMERS:
http://www.softmaker...ode=a05&curr=eur

CUSTOMERS IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA:
http://www.softmaker...ode=a05&curr=usd

71

Found Deals and Discounts / WinPatrol PLUS - 50% off for a few more hours

« on: January 25, 2009, 05:15 PM »

I happened by the WinPatrol homepage and noticed that there's a 50% off sale running for the PLUS version:

http://www.winpatrol.com/

The free version is pretty good on its own - the PLUS version adds access to an online knowlegebase and some real-time detection of file system and registry changes.  But mainly it helps support ongoing development of the program.

The discount ends at midnight EST today (25 Jan 2009) - so there's about 8 more hours as I write this...

72

Found Deals and Discounts / Take Command Console LE from JPSoft

« on: June 02, 2008, 01:22 PM »

For people who are command line junkies, you might want to look at a new offering from JPSoft (makers of Take Command, formerly known as 4NT or 4DOS).

Take Command is a replacement for cmd.exe with enhanced commands.  The LE version is a free version that excludes the GUI component (DOS box only) and excludes some of the more advanced commands (in particular the ability to access files over FTP or HTTP).  However, it's more or less what 4NT was prior to version 9 and has some very nice command line and batch file capabilities.

If you find yourself doing a lot at the Windows command line, it's worth checking out TCC LE:  http://www.jpsoft.com/tccledes.htm

73

Found Deals and Discounts / Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 released for free

« on: April 08, 2008, 01:20 PM »

Ashampoo have released the full version of their Burning studio 6 (version 6.61) for free:

http://www.download....2646_4-10776287.html

or

http://www.ashampoo....gstudio6_free_sm.exe

Apparently version 6 lacks the ability to burn DVD Video, bootable CDs, and multi-session CDs  which is in Version 7.  Strange thing is, they are still selling version 6 for $20; maybe they haven't gotten the website fully updated.

74

General Software Discussion / Visual Studio 2008 has gone RTM - free Express downloads, too

« on: November 19, 2007, 12:10 PM »

Visual Studio 2008 has gone to RTM.  The downloads for the free Express versions are available:

http://www.microsoft.com/express

Unfortunately, I could not find a list of what's new & improved.

75

Living Room / Real magic wands

« on: October 31, 2007, 01:24 PM »

From a posting made by Raymond Chen on his blog (http://blogs.msdn.co...7/10/31/5788081.aspx), there's a group making magic wands that use accelerometers to detect certain motions or taps and can display messages in the air based on those motions:

http://www.rawbw.com/~acorn/wand/

The wand is a magical device for casting spells. Spells are cast by either waving the wand around or tapping the wand on a hard surface.

...

When a spell is successfully cast on the wand, the wand replies with a message. Messages are viewed by waving the wand quickly back and forth in front of you. Glowing gems display the message in red letters in midair.

Pretty neat!

edited: please attach screenshots to interesting posts like this: