Topics

51

Screenshot Captor / Capture Delay!?

« on: December 13, 2013, 01:01 AM »

Unless this was fixed in V 4.8 or higher,

There seems to be a delay when I can click the SC icon vs when it "wants to" capture the screen. In a key movie scene, that's important because a 3 second delay kills a .5 second scene! This leads me to "guess" the scene about 17 times to get the "screen capture right". Any advice?

52

General Software Discussion / Yahoo mail outage!?

« on: December 11, 2013, 08:09 AM »

Anyone else hit by the Yahoo Mail outage?

I know, my machine is a bit ornery, but a simple check of the web says it's "not me" - something evil pulverized Yahoo Mail's servers for over a day. It's hit and miss - people are reporting one account up, one down. (Which I agree with). Someone posted a tentative ETA of 1pm today to have it fixed... but a two day outage, and there's surprisingly little screaming via the main news for this! (At least a ...uh... yahoo search didn't pull many relevant hits!)

53

General Software Discussion / "HIV Tracking Technology"

« on: November 22, 2013, 05:13 PM »

Okay, this one hits nerves on so many levels, but I really feel what makes DC great is that sometimes we tackle the Big Issues, esp when they overlap with software. So here goes!

"HIV Tracking Technology". Quotes added because people sorta did it on the down-low, but now someone managed to make this News. Capital N.

Some relevant links:
http://science.slash...t-whos-infecting-who
http://www.lanl.gov/...ad-and-evolution.php
http://motherboard.v...t-whos-infecting-who

Slashdot's Summary:
 HIV Tracking Technology Could Pinpoint Who's Infecting Who
Posted by timothy on Thursday November 21, 2013 @10:06AM
from the yet-you-say-you-were-in-burma-at-the-time dept.
Daniel_Stuckey writes "No man is an island, but evolutionarily, each person functions like one for the HIV virus. That's according to Thomas Leitner, a researcher working on a project aimed at creating technology for tracking HIV through a population. The technology, which is being studied at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, may allow people to identify who infected them with the virus, a development that could have major implications in criminal proceedings. "If you're familiar with Darwin's finches, you have a population of birds on one island and they keep moving and evolving as they spread to other islands so that each population is a little different," Leitner said. "With HIV, it's the same. Every person infected with HIV has a slightly different form of the virus. It's the ultimate chameleon because it evolves this way."

---

Back to me.

I've sat on this a couple of days.

I'm currently Neg.

But I am now in a city where it's like the leading non-discussed slow-death crisis. Parse that as you will.

So ... as both a (former?) professional Pattern Matcher in a sense, and a humanities fella interested in software, my first reaction is ... "Now? In 2013? Someone decides this is News?"

My second reaction is "Well okay, you added some science. Good enough. But why are we deathly terrified of four ounces of baby milk on a plane when X million people can end your life (slowly!) in thirty minutes?!"

My third reaction is, "We're tracking everything else. How did this stay a Non-Trackable Topic for so long?"

So ... Summary ... It's a total mess. But there's the News Story. It's now "Safe to Discuss News". So have at it. Because even my "feeble" action of reporting it to DC ... spreads the discussion. Butterfly effects, and all that.

54

Post New Requests Here / Anti-Wikipedia-Beg methods?

« on: November 14, 2013, 10:54 AM »

Wiki's begging is getting worse.

Now they're whining in NEON ORANGE "Give us money!!"

But I've tried things like AdBlock and each time I try that type, it crushes more necessary elements. And it's not an "image".

Anyone with ideas? Does it take a Snack?

It's intermittent. I'll chime in later with a screen shot.

55

General Software Discussion / So-called upgrades that ruin good programs

« on: October 21, 2013, 01:02 PM »

So-called upgrades that ruin good programs are incredibly infuriating.

-longrun (May 26, 2009, 09:37 PM)

This topic is general enough to use its own thread!

AdBlock and AdBlock Edge come to mind. I happen to have two copies of AdBlock Edge on two different browsers, and to my dismay one sat there and refused to block a graphic?!

Then I tried it in the other browser and it did! So I looked and sure enough, it was a different (and older) version!

56

Post New Requests Here / Service Killer for Shutdown?

« on: October 09, 2013, 01:45 AM »

This one is inspired by the fact that AppleMobileDeviceSvc and maybe a few others block my machine from shutting down.

So it would be neat if when a shutdown command is triggered, this program kicks in first, and power-bombs said services, and then the shutdown would be "as normal". In a perfect world, you fiddle with the settings but then no dialogs, it "just works" - aka you set the services once in a Settings, not a popup every time "do you want to kill X".

Because it's the same X ones every time.

A bonus feature would be that Adobe Update Reminders only seem to come in *after* I reboot ... but that burned four minutes already! So Adobe would "threaten" ten more minutes of lost time!

57

Living Room / The Earworms Music Thread!

« on: September 30, 2013, 07:30 PM »

This one is for simple tunes that just jam themselves into your head and won't go away!

Inspiration:

This game show:
http://buzzerblog.com/games/moneyvault/

58

Living Room / Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Hole Math Thread!

« on: September 30, 2013, 07:06 PM »

This one is for math-y topics where there are a couple of levels:
Specifically:
A. ___ can be enjoyed "lazily" as fun entertainment.
B. There is a ferociously difficult math problem underneath to understand it "for real". There's some room for "social discussion."

Lots of inspirations are exploding in my head. So badly, that they each need posts! Here goes!

I work well in an outline style, so expect a few layers per post, such that it will reward revisiting this thread ... uh ... X times! (See what I mean? What is the optimal time to revisit this thread vs how fast do I post after X days?)

59

Living Room / The 'Outre' Photo Thread!

« on: September 30, 2013, 06:54 PM »

Thread for pics so unconventionally disturbing that you don't even know what to think!

Photo Editing is allowed. Bonus points to "cosmetic only editing" such as my opening one - where I just cleaned up a now-fragmented background for picture clarity. But the other major category is when 2-X things jump at you and then you smash them into a pic together for greater-than-parts disturbing concepts! (I am prone to those!)

So I will lead off with this one, courtesy of a Basement thread but it inspired this one.

Tip - Super dominant political overtones discouraged, such as chopped faces stuck onto whatever-settings. My theme in this thread is more abstract, as in "do those colors even do that as a picture?!" abstract disbelief.

60

Living Room / From the Life Is Complicated Dept: Tooth Cavities May Protect Against Cancer

« on: September 15, 2013, 07:16 AM »

Tooth Cavities May Protect Against Cancer

Slashdot's copy:
http://science.slash...otect-against-cancer


""John Gever reports at MedPage Today on a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Buffalo, which found that people with more cavities in their teeth are 32 percent less likely to suffer from head and neck cancers. "

Given that it takes *years* of neglect/arrogance to get cavities, to pit Cavities vs Cancer is a scary battle!!

61

Post New Requests Here / Chess Snack #1!

« on: September 05, 2013, 01:36 AM »

Okay, I seem to be pretty good at these little concepts that hover right between the "coding snack / coding lunch" line.

This one at stage 1 seems simple enough, and then the implications get a little hard. So it's a useful discussion, though Mouser can move it to Developer Corner if he wants.

The idea is just a chess "legal move generator". At snack level it purposely doesn't care about the moves. It just takes a new game and cranks out a list of moves (important to be savable and printable!) So then you can make one of the moves, and hit "go"' again, and it then runs the new legal moves from there. Not all that hard is it?

I forsee a bit of time could disappear into GUI. But there's resources out there, and I can't imagine any run of the mill board set being all that hard to use.

The purpose of it is theoretically (above the snack level) to run all the moves *one ply depth increasing* at a time through some chess engine. It "simulates" my/someone's style of play as a patzer. So for example presuming I am "chess awake" I can stop most (but not all!) 2 mover combos. But then I fall off a cliff! So at 1 ply, my move looks fine, 3 ply looks fine, running on "intuition" etc. But then I am noticing about 5 ply a *lot* of the moves crash because of something that's "not in my head".

So I'd like some thoughts if the first part sounds snacky enough. I am content that later I'd probably have to commission the "1 engine step" as some kind of plugin to an existing engine. Edit: It works best as "1-Click" (Sorry Jeff Bezos!), aka just click on the piece and watch the move list appear, rather than keep having to click "go". Additional fun would be generating say a 5 ply move list deep all at once, then you click a piece for his reply to "prune" the whole tree. So okay, I am just having fun! But in the world of things, all this isn't "that hard". I just love feature creep! : )

62

Living Room / The effort in xkcd comics

« on: August 26, 2013, 10:09 AM »

Xkcd is a slippery thing. It "looks simple" ... because it is drawn to be simple.

But Randall M sometimes saves time on a few "quick" strips, so that it looks like he can spend *hours* on other ones!

Can we get a vote on how long this one took? Holy Wall of Text!!

"Questions"
http://xkcd.com/1256/

63

Developer's Corner / Can a user force an alternate routing to a website?

« on: August 04, 2013, 01:25 AM »

A friend of mine is starting up a reboot of his writing site called the Creator and the Catalyst.
The basic site is here:
http://www.creatorandthecatalyst.com/
The forum that I have trouble with starts here:
http://www.creatoran...st.com/dir/index.php


My question here is that I consistently get thirty second page loads and time-outs, and it's almost the only site on the net that does that for me. However rough evidence says that the raw site is up.

So I wonder if I posted a tracert so you all could look at the routing and if there's an amazingly bad link in the middle, is there a way to force my local machine to find an alternate route that might work?

P.S. It seems to be a bit erratic - like once the network finds the path, it serves the next several pages in a row or something.

64

Unfinished Requests / Daydreaming of a Coding Snack

« on: June 21, 2013, 01:42 AM »

I am posting this in "Unfinished" because I don't want to clutter the official thread!

Most snacks come from "Hi. I am a desperate user who wants something. Please help me. I'll pet my cat in your name if you do."

I just got the random sorta-social idea of wondering "who is bored and feels like making a somewhat strange coding snack?" Aka "Supply Push" rather than "Demand Pull". I haven't even thought about *what* I would want as a snack, but if there's a bored developer (developer developer developer!) around, I might go into "Daydream mode" and see what pops up! "Gee, what am I doing a zillion times a week that would be reeeeealy fun to have a snack for?"

65

General Software Discussion / The Non-Notepad(MS) Thread!

« on: June 21, 2013, 01:38 AM »

Sometimes I like "simple" - "low level" programs that sorta do a few things ultra-simple. (But then I want features! Though it's just features behind the simple interface.)

So this week I finally left Notepad as my favorite no-nonsense text pad. In too many cases it wasn't handling line breaks properly. So today I went to the "complicated" WordPad for text files!

So I'm just curious what other people use for the simpler side of text processing. RTF is okay in this thread too, but I am purposely leaving off the page MS-Word Doc/Docx/ and other higher end needs.

I haven't gone off to one of my pet "surveys" - I am pretty sure in my other years I drifted across at least 5 text editors that did different things. This was just a 5 minute switch to "always open with wordpad" after 100-too-many lines quit formatting properly after some cut and paste op.

Thoughts? Ben Stein Fans?

66

Living Room / Browser based mental training for efficiency

« on: June 06, 2013, 12:13 AM »

After slowly accumulating evidence that Pale Moon doesn't quite perform certain subtle things, right now for me mainline Firefox is clearly the better of the two for me.

So taking advantage of both the color coding of the icons and that they can each have a different home page, today I separated my favorite links into two categories - Serious and Fun. Traditionally all my life I get distracted by fun things, and it's finally starting to catch up to me in a bad way. So using a couple of cute little bits of psychology (and an hour cleaning up my comp desktop and home workstation!) I now have to make an actual decision to click the "Fun side" (Palemoon, Blue-ish), as a conscious choice when I have Serious things (Firefox, Reddish-Orangey) to be doing.

Just one more little tidbit in how to maximize the tools at hand!

Maybe this will help someone else. : )

67

General Software Discussion / "Click to Enable Javascript" Firefox Addon?

« on: June 04, 2013, 08:26 AM »

Hallo gang.

I am wondering if there is a simple add-on, toggle-able, that acts like a quick and dirty version of No-Script where all java-script etc is "disabled" until you maybe click somewhere (in the add-on toolbar?) which then allows the rest of the site to perform all future scripts.

The basic use case is that full powered No-Script is too hard for me to configure site by site. Specifically the news sites are increasing "sliders" - truly aggressive notification ads and also "legit" rollover-menus that are increasingly not picked up by AdBlock. They feel like being whacked in the head by a stick, metaphorically! So then with this add-on, the basic page loads, the slider(s) are blocked, then you click and go look at the actual site content. Or, read an article and not worry that a mouse-drift won't enable a huge drop down menu *on rollover*.

Any ideas?

Edit: Aren't rollover menus supposed to be at the top of the no-no list for site usability guidelines? But they seem to be increasing!

68

General Software Discussion / Stickies - Part of the Zhorn Software Donationware Series

« on: June 02, 2013, 08:20 PM »

Tom Revell's Stickies is a cute little entry into the Stickies-type software. I use it as the second half of the capture process from taking a square screen snip with Screenshot Captor.

http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/

He maintains a forum where he responds to bugs, features, and a new version every year or two. I haven't "version controlled" my copy in a couple of years, but for example he put in a multi-undo into one of the Beta versions after I remarked that it was too easy to work on a sticky over a long period of time, only to ruin it with a stray mouse click with the paintbrush.

http://tomrevell.conforums.com/

The Donate part is in the top left corner, though it's Paypal, which I have very mixed feelings for!

69

General Software Discussion / Unbelievable: USA Intellectual Property Theft Commission Recommends Malware!

« on: May 27, 2013, 06:46 PM »

The gang at MouserLand will have a field day with this one!

http://boingboing.ne...t-industry-to-c.html

"Additionally, software can be written that will allow only authorized users to open files containing valuable information. If an unauthorized person accesses the information, a range of actions might then occur. For example, the file could be rendered inaccessible and the unauthorized user’s computer could be locked down, with instructions on how to contact law enforcement to get the password needed to unlock the account. Such measures do not violate existing laws on the use of the Internet, yet they serve to blunt attacks and stabilize a cyber incident to provide both time and evidence for law enforcement to become involved. "
...
"While not currently permitted under U.S. law, there are increasing calls for creating a more permissive environment for active network defense that allows companies not only to stabilize a situation but to take further steps, including actively retrieving stolen information, altering it within the intruder’s networks, or even destroying the information within an unauthorized network. Additional measures go further, including photographing the hacker using his own system’s camera, implanting malware in the hacker’s network, or even physically disabling or destroying the hacker’s own computer or network. "

Yum, that tail they're eating is great! So lemme see if I have this straight:
If you "hack" a computer then you're a vicious terrorist, unless you're an Intellectual Property Rights Holder ... uh ... with a net worth more than six digits ... then you can deploy anything you want including malware that even when it works correctly will destroy your computer???!

70

General Software Discussion / Customizing a second (or more!) computer

« on: May 25, 2013, 01:19 PM »

I am just starting to use my laptop more. I am discovering just how many useful things I have done to my project machine over the years, so now that I am reaching for toys, I keep going "eek! that's not on here yet!"

One of these years I want to make a super batch of all the little toys I use. Today I just dug up MilesAhead's BBSS again...

: )

71

Site/Forum Features / DonationCoder special user names

« on: May 16, 2013, 02:12 AM »

I came across JoTo's post elsewhere and noticed he had a title of "Super Honorary Charter Member".

What does that mean and does anyone know the list of special titles?

72

General Software Discussion / "Contest" - The most difficult Opt Out screens on installs!?

« on: April 26, 2013, 09:22 AM »

This thread was inspired generally by the growing obfuscation of Opt Out measures in harder and harder to find places. Specifically, I went looking for a free CD player program.

Specifically it was inspired by the program "Media Player Classic". I am guessing the original is probably on Sourceforge somewhere. However, the version I got hold of from Cnet had FIVE opt-outs, *alternating* between pre-checked boxes "with this box checked you agree to install an add-on", and then alternating with "by clicking accept you agree to install ___" and forcing you to be clever enough to click "Decline!"

This is an abuse variant of a well known psychological concept where after learning to click the "green button" the correct way out of the install of the aware is alternating between two methods, whereas clicking "all the green buttons like you just learned" installs everything!

So I invite you to submit your candidates for the worst opt-out methods!

Rules: They should (hopefully!) work! Disallowed are cases where the opt-out is simply ignored.

There was one other one from some program elsewhere, but I don't recall what it is now. That one made you uncheck *multiple boxes* per screen placed all over the place!

So my opening entry is five!
From this program/version:
Media Player Classic - *CNet Version* - seems to have more than even usual Cnet nonsense. Someone dumped it into a wrapper.
http://download.cnet...2139_4-10518778.html

73

Living Room / Getting Things Done revisited

« on: April 21, 2013, 12:55 AM »

These themes have been covered before, though I couldn't find that recent thread (a few months ago?).

So now that the "craze" is passed, what do people think about Getting Things Done type systems? Over the past couple of weeks I got fed up again starting to make mistakes with the obligations in my life and returned to my version of it. The main two resources are a notebook with summarized notes in pencil especially including green return receipt cards for certified mail. The other is my tree notes app where I put a lot of specialized medical research, as well as some complex agency procedure info. Then the volatile layer is sticky notes and a couple of folders with ToDo sections.

I definitely feel better when I know I've been through it all! Now I need to make it a daily part of planning with twice weekly sweeps so that stuff doesn't feel totally out of control. This last part might be a subtle finesse - I think I'm finding weekly sweeps are too far apart because it doesn't process complex mid week info. For example I need to do the sweep again tomorrow because my credit card payment is due no later than Monday. But when I last did a sweep about last Tuesday it was "too far in advance" to really hit my radar and even Friday was "oh, I have some time, worry it about later". But with only one day to spare now I know how the still new to me pace of life here in NY means I risk tripping up Monday and  then I'm in trouble.

Something I don't recall from the little bit of research I did on the topic is that time of day oddly matters to me. Quick guess is I might be almost twice as efficient starting my day at 6AM rather than 9am because if I start at 9am then go to an "appointment" (moving the car out of the street cleaner day zone has to be done exactly 9:45), then by the time I regroup and start my todo list, it's already noon before I get up to speed. Instead I'll test the theory that if I can better use the pocket of time in the early morning, it will feel like the rest of the day got more time back into it. I'll try to post an update in a week or two if I remember ... uh... wait a minute! 

74

General Software Discussion / Worst Javascript/other intrusions?

« on: April 19, 2013, 11:56 AM »

I have Ghostery, and AdBlock Edge and  which is some kind of spinoff from AdBlock. So leaving those details aside, I am still seeing worse and worse Javascript sliding ads, sometimes totally obliterating the page!

I have resisted NoScript, because that seems to take a lot of work and I think I want pages to work the first time because there's too many to pre-emptively add.

So anyway, this is a thread to vent about the sites that use the worst "sliders". (Rollovers, etc etc.)

Thread Inspirer is this:
http://www.azfamily....hbors-203695851.html
At least for me it slid a huge box sideways over the entire page.

Other ones I think I recall are some of the newspaper sites.

75

Living Room / The Coffee/Caffeine Thread!

« on: April 19, 2013, 11:49 AM »

Light hearted thread about Coffee and Caffeine.

Inspired by this Slate article:
http://www.slate.com...r_for_centuries.html

Previously I'd seen an article on Balzac - kinda sad in a way - that he was immensely talented, but maybe finally pushed a little too far in the wrong direction and burned out. The biographer (whose name I cannot remmber) remarked that Balzac slowly slid into a habit of sending out his books a little unpolished, and finally that habit caught up with him because it damaged his sense of literary balance.