Messages

126

General Software Discussion / New PDF editor: FlexiPDF from SoftMaker

« on: November 09, 2016, 04:07 PM »

Looks like there's a new entry in the PDF editor market: FlexiPDf from SoftMaker, who are responsible for the SoftMaker Office Suite and some font collections.

  - http://www.softmaker.com/en/flexipdf

I haven't tried the software so can't give any kind of review.

Introductory price is $60 (or €60) for the Standard version, $80 (or €80) for the Professional version.  Webpage says those are introductory prices.  I have no idea how long they might be valid for or what the pricing might be after the 'introduction'.

127

DC Gamer Club / A bunch of games on Gog 'Connect' right now

« on: November 07, 2016, 12:42 PM »

There are a bunch of games listed on Gog connect (https://www.gog.com/connect) right now, so you might be able to get some Steam games added to your Gog library if that's of interest to you.

128

Found Deals and Discounts / Humble Bundle Lifehacker Software Bundle

« on: November 02, 2016, 02:34 PM »

Humble Bundle has a non-games bundle of utility programs deal running for the next couple weeks:

The Humble Bundle Lifehacker Software Bundle: https://www.humblebu...cker-software-bundle


For a payment of at least $1, you'll get keys for:

    - Breevy
    - Fences + Deskscape
    - Directory Opus 12 "Light"
   
Pay more than the average (currently $7.45) and you'll also get keys for:

  - Display Fusion
  - LastPass Premium (1 year subscription) *new users only*
  - CyberGhost VPN (1 year subscription) *new users only*


Pay $15 or more to also get:

  - Acronis True Image 2017 (one year subscription)
  - Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2017 (one year subscription)
 

I know that many of these programs have been discussed on Donationcoder in the past, but I don't personally use any of them currently so I have no opinion on how good these offers might be.  Also, I haven't delved into the details of licensing on the offers.

"Fences" looks like it might be interesting to play around with for a buck.

 

129

General Software Discussion / Re: mystery icon

« on: October 15, 2016, 12:20 PM »

So they have a program running continually to check for updates and they put an icon for it on your task bar that does nothing other than take up space?  How irritating.

130

General Software Discussion / Re: Beyond Compare 20th anniversary

« on: October 03, 2016, 03:38 PM »

you can get a free t-shirt if you've had a license key for more than 10 years

-Jibz (October 03, 2016, 10:31 AM)

Thanks for posting - my personal license was bought in Sept 2006.  So I either just made or just missed the cut.

131

Living Room / Re: HP "timebomb" prevents HP inkjet printers from using non-HP ink cartridges.

« on: September 26, 2016, 03:52 PM »

I stopped buying (as in "Will never buy again") HP inkjet printers...

-IainB (September 26, 2016, 04:38 AM)

I have also stopped buying HP equipment quite a while back.

I've been pretty satisfied with Brother printers since then.  I don't know about refilling, but using 3rd party ink cartridges  hasn't been a problem for me.

132

General Software Discussion / Re: email clients redux - Eudora and The Bat! (on sale at Bits)

« on: September 15, 2016, 12:37 PM »

can use internal html viewer (faster but sometime not so accurate) or use the more compatible Windows Internet Explorer control (similar to Outlook)

-DK2IT (September 15, 2016, 07:35 AM)

Wouldn't the internal html viewer also be less likely to be a malware vector simply because the IE control is a rich target for malware?

133

Living Room / Re: The Walled Garden Closes In

« on: September 09, 2016, 04:25 PM »

they're dropping the venerable 3.5mm stereo jack in favor of forcing people to go with the newer-fangled Bluetooth device$.

-Stoic Joker (September 08, 2016, 06:48 PM)

or a set of headphones that plug into the Apple-proprietary Lightning connector.

134

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Tropico 4 free (Steam key) for next day or two on Humble Bundle

« on: September 09, 2016, 04:21 PM »

it appears you have to connect your steam account to your humble account

-Jibz (September 09, 2016, 12:42 AM)

I thought this was the case for any steam purchases from Humble for a while now?

135

Found Deals and Discounts / Tropico 4 free (Steam key) for next day or two on Humble Bundle

« on: September 08, 2016, 03:03 PM »

Get a free Steam key for Tropico 4 at Humble Bundle for the next day+:

  - https://www.humblebu.../tropico-4-free-game

I've never played any of the Tropico games - I have no idea how good it is.

136

Living Room / Re: robots are killing

« on: September 02, 2016, 12:29 PM »

That's why testing code is so important

-anandcoral (September 02, 2016, 07:31 AM)

But if you're building robots you should still let someone else perform the testing - what's in the comic *is* a test run.

137

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« on: August 01, 2016, 12:42 PM »

finding out that this is basically a subscription by another name

-wraith808 (July 31, 2016, 12:27 PM)

Can you clarify that? The purchase page says that the version you buy is good forever.  You don't get free updates after a year, but you don't need to pay again to keep the version you bought working (as I understand it).

138

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« on: July 29, 2016, 02:57 PM »

I began to wonder whether in fact the filter was designed to ensure that only aliens with weird eyesight that saw things in a different wavelength to humans got through

-IainB (July 29, 2016, 12:53 PM)

Yeah - that's one of the worst CAPTCHAs I've come across:

139

General Software Discussion / Re: TeamViewer hacked?

« on: June 02, 2016, 01:35 AM »

A more recent blog posting indicates that a trojan attached to a compromised Adobe Flash update package installs the TeamViewer client that is used to access end user machines:

  - https://www.teamview...kdoor-teamviewer-49/

If I understand this correctly, this means that you don't have to have installed TeamViewer yourself. Or something. To be honest I'm not exactly sure what's going on, other than it doesn't seem to be anything good.

140

DC Gamer Club / Re: GOG Connect - DRM-free access to your Steam library

« on: June 01, 2016, 07:12 PM »

That's pretty cool!

141

General Software Discussion / Re: TeamViewer hacked?

« on: June 01, 2016, 07:07 PM »

TeamViewer denies they've been hacked.

-mouser (June 01, 2016, 06:53 PM)

That's true: https://www.teamview...-teamviewer-hackers/

However there are a lot of people on reddit reporting being attacked, and the reports seem to be spiking today - a week after the TV denial (which strikes me as curious, but I don't know the history behind this story yet).  Maybe it's a case of Teamviewer users being easier than usual targets for some reason or that they are targets that have higher than usual 'yields' for the hackers.  So as you said, it would be wise to be cautious.

142

General Software Discussion / TeamViewer hacked?

« on: June 01, 2016, 06:51 PM »

I don't use TeamViewer, but I know that it has been discussed several times here as a solution for remote access to PCs.  It's being reported that TeamViewer's systems have been hacked and that the attackers used the access they gained to also access end-user machines.

The reports include PayPal accounts being emptied and items ordered from Amazon and eBay.

  - http://www.theregist..._mass_breach_report/
  - https://www.reddit.com/r/teamviewer

143

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Realworld Icon Editor upcomming at BDJ

« on: May 25, 2016, 04:43 PM »

yes, it's still a fine program. But be aware that Vlastimil last touched the program 3 years ago, and last updated the features 6 years ago. But of course, if an author makes it right the first time...

-Curt (May 25, 2016, 11:31 AM)

There has been some more recent activity on Realworld Icon Editor, though I think it's not communicated very well.

On the product page is a "Latest (unstable): RWIconEditor.zip (15.7 MB)" link which today points to a pre-release build from the beginning of April 2016.  There's a brief blog entry with some videos:

  - http://www.rw-designer.com/entry/1521

144

Living Room / Re: Goodbye to my father

« on: May 24, 2016, 10:28 AM »

I'm sorry for your loss.

145

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Insync free for next half day or so (2016-05-18)

« on: May 19, 2016, 10:13 AM »

the browser just hangs on login - in Firefox and IE - with the message "Connecting to Insync..."

-IainB (May 19, 2016, 08:41 AM)

That happened on one of my machines.  You'll need to use the 'alternate login':

  - https://forums.insyn...-is-not-working/3083

Note that once the software has been installed and activated, there doesn't seem to be a way to switch Google accounts for the consumer/plus edition.  To be able to take advantage of multiple accounts you need to upgrade to one of the editions that has an annual fee.

146

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Insync free for next half day or so (2016-05-18)

« on: May 18, 2016, 06:47 PM »

I don't know if this will be a workaround you can use, but I had a work related Google account that did not have GMail configured on it.  Insync would not allow that account to be used to activate an Insync account/license.

However, I was able to add GMail to that account, activate Insync on it, then remove GMail from that account.  This workaround was based on some posts in the reddit thread.  The reddit thread indicates that Insync will continue to work after GMail has been removed.  I haven't had an opportunity to test that; I'm not concerned if it ends up breaking Insync since I don't have a great need for the Insyc functionality on that account - it's just a nice-to-have.

Anyway, if you're able to add GMail to that account temporarily you might be good to go.

147

Found Deals and Discounts / Insync free for next half day or so (2016-05-18)

« on: May 18, 2016, 03:52 PM »

Insync is a client for accessing Google drive from your desktop.  They have Windows, Mac, and Linux clients.  You need to link your Google account to their account.

    https://www.insynchq.com/free

See this reddit thread for some discussion about this offer:

    https://www.reddit.c...ree_for_the_next_72/

Note/disclaimer: I have signed up for the free license, but haven't yet had an opportunity to try the product.

148

Developer's Corner / Re: Boost as a symbol for the npm'ness of C++

« on: May 08, 2016, 01:22 PM »

The C++ community is rather conservative compared to most other programming communities (perhaps the only large groups of programmers that are more conservative are C programmers and kernel developers).  Many still have to support using older compiler toolchains, so Boost may provide the only option for them.

I think the answer to why <regex> and <filesystem> from the standard library aren't used more often is simply because the new functionality in the recent C++ standards is new.  Even regular expressions, which was added in C++11 wasn't well implemented in GCC until 4.9 (https://gcc.gnu.org/...014-04/msg00195.html).  That's about 2 years ago, but as I said the C++ community is rather conservative.  I think that there are still occasional questions on stackoverflow about differences in regex support between MSVC and gcc.
 
I think you'll see <regex> being used from the standard more and more over time, and <filesystem> probably won't be widely used until C++17 is official.  But I think that <filesystem> will be taken up more quickly than <regex>. 

149

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: May 04, 2016, 12:39 AM »

Do you know who the woman is in these videos?

-Arizona Hot (May 03, 2016, 01:17 PM)

It's the Overly Attached Girlfriend:

     https://en.wikipedia...rg/wiki/Laina_Morris

150

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: April 26, 2016, 01:10 PM »

Humans 'may accidentally send aliens a computer virus'

In September, the UK research network for SETI (the search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) voted in favour of trying to reach out to alien life forms. But they are still undecided what exactly to send and are worried that they could inadvertently send viruses into space which could infect the technology of other civilisations.

 

-Edvard (April 25, 2016, 09:27 PM)

surely, that story originates from the 1'st of April?    

-Curt (April 26, 2016, 08:53 AM)

I recall extraterrestrials actually doing this to *us*:

In 1993, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Project receives a transmission detailing an alien DNA structure, along with instructions on how to splice it with human DNA. The result is Sil, a sensual but deadly creature who can change from a beautiful woman to an armour-plated killing machine in the blink of an eye.

-http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114508/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl