Messages

326

General Software Discussion / Neowin reviews Windows 8 - Leave your pre-conceived notions at the door

« on: October 24, 2012, 08:48 AM »

Before you read another word of this review, I need you to do something very important. Take all of your preconceived notions about what Windows is today and what you are familiar with, and put them aside. It’s time to reinvent the desktop OS and Microsoft is leading the charge.

At the end of this review, you will see three scores. One score is for using Windows 8 with a keyboard and mouse, one is for using Windows 8 as a touch-based platform and the final is a combined score. The reasoning for this is that each input method offers two distinct experiences and to combine them into a single score would not accurately reflect the true value of the product; the summary score is made up of the two independent scores.

Source

Like Neowin says, take Windows 8 for what it is. Do not try and compare it to the past versions of Windows. While some will oppose this change, those that I know who run Windows 8 are actually enjoying it once getting past the new "Metro Screen".

On a side note, I have been running Windows 8 for over a month and love every aspect of it. Once I get a touch screen laptop (next month or two), I can see a lot of this new functionality being VERY useful.

327

General Software Discussion / Re: Where can I download BitLocker to Go?

« on: October 23, 2012, 10:12 AM »

Bitlocker 2 go is not a tool you can download. Bitlocker2go is built into any version of Windows since 7 in the pro edition or higher. To use it, you simply launch the bitlocker console and encrypt the USB flash drive. The remote computer must be running Windows 7 or newer to utilize the drive.

328

General Software Discussion / Re: Does the browser Opera suck?

« on: October 13, 2012, 08:40 AM »

Does the browser Opera suck?

Yes.

-Tuxman (October 13, 2012, 02:36 AM)

Very enthralling answer. Your deep insight has inspired me. Please, share more?

329

General Software Discussion / Re: Does the browser Opera suck?

« on: October 12, 2012, 01:43 PM »

Agreed, there are still vulnerabilities, but many browsers are seeing these same hits. Heck, Mozilla just had to pull Firefox 16 from the web due to a security vulnerability. My whole point is that IE is nowhere near the monster it once was and is actually quite reliable and safe.

-Josh (October 12, 2012, 01:17 PM)

Sure, 16.0 had a bug, which was fixed how many hours after release? MS is quite a bit slower wrt release cycles, though thankfully they have out-of-band releases for really critical stuff (and to give them credit, they have to go through a lot more rigorous QA/QC to avoid fscktards moaning). But at any rate, the FF bug was:

The vulnerability could allow a malicious site to potentially determine which websites users have visited and have access to the URL or URL parameters.  At this time we have no indication that this vulnerability is currently being exploited in the wild.

The IE bug was remote code execution, which is a metric sh!ttonne more serious.

Anyway, the main reason I don't use IE isn't security, but simply that it sucks. With IE6, at least the browser loaded lightning fast - they lost that advantage with IE7, and haven't regained it. The developer tools suck, the HTML compliance sucks compared to chrome and FF (even though it's a lot better in IE9+ than it used to be), and the addons sucks.

I really don't see any reason to use IE if you've got half a mind, but of course people doing webdev have to support it, *sigh*.

-f0dder (October 12, 2012, 01:34 PM)

I agree with all of your comments. I use chrome, for what that's worth, but I think the days of IE being as insecure as it once was are long gone. The browser does have other drawbacks, like speed as you pointed out, but it should be OK for those who are forced to/choose to use it. Security patches are handled in, what I feel anyways, is an optimal manner for IE. Microsoft has a far larger userbase and testing base to account for with ALL of their products, so they must ensure they identify potential impact for their patches. Again, as you've pointed out, they do have out of band patches but those are the exception and not the norm.

330

General Software Discussion / Re: Does the browser Opera suck?

« on: October 12, 2012, 01:17 PM »

Is Internet Explorer really that dangerous nowadays? I think this mentality is something leftover from the IE6 Pre-SP2 days....and yes, Opera does suck as you will see more and more as you continue to use it. But, in the end, use whatever works for you.

-Josh (October 10, 2012, 05:31 PM)

It's not nearly as bad as it was in the olden days, and most exploits these days are from Flash or Java browser plugins - apart from XSS stuff, the *real* nasty browser bugs (those that don't trigger plugins but can lead to remote code execution or the likes) are few and far between.

But there was an exploit lately (iirc mid/late september) that targeted IE{7,8,9} on {XP,Vista,Win7} that was pretty bad.

-f0dder (October 12, 2012, 01:10 PM)

Agreed, there are still vulnerabilities, but many browsers are seeing these same hits. Heck, Mozilla just had to pull Firefox 16 from the web due to a security vulnerability. My whole point is that IE is nowhere near the monster it once was and is actually quite reliable and safe.

331

Living Room / How to tell if the Universe is a computer simulation

« on: October 11, 2012, 06:34 AM »

Saw this, thought of our admin mouser who was an aspiring AI researcher.

It's a famous question among academic philosophers and drunken college students alike: how can we be sure we're not living in a gigantic computer simulation? Fortunately, researchers from the University of Bonn in Germany think they've cracked it.

Their reasoning is pretty straightforward, according to Technology Review: if the cosmos is just a numerical simulation, calculated on some insanely powerful supercomputer tucked away in another world, there should be clues around us that can reveal the truth. Glitches in the system, if you like, that give the game away.

Moving from that reasoning to the science required to find those clues isn't quite so easy. To kick things off, the team of researchers from Bonn have speculated that the problem with all simulations is that they're discretized: to model a physical phenomenon, the real world has to be represented by separate points in time and 3D space. Sure you can make the distance between those points reeeeeeally small—but you still have to have this kind of grid.

Source

332

General Software Discussion / Re: Does the browser Opera suck?

« on: October 10, 2012, 06:59 PM »

Opera, protecting users from themselves, even when they know what they are doing...

333

General Software Discussion / Re: Does the browser Opera suck?

« on: October 10, 2012, 05:31 PM »

Is Internet Explorer really that dangerous nowadays? I think this mentality is something leftover from the IE6 Pre-SP2 days....and yes, Opera does suck as you will see more and more as you continue to use it. But, in the end, use whatever works for you.

That said, redirection is not necessarily a problem IE, but could be the way the site is coded. Just saying...

334

General Software Discussion / Re: Pause/Break Key has never been able to invoke the FARR!?

« on: October 06, 2012, 07:01 AM »

If I had a pause/break key, I would try and verify this. Perhaps the default hotkey should change as this is not the first laptop (dell or otherwise) that does not have the pause/break key. Just sayin

335

Living Room / Chrome Subtabs Extension - Does this exist?

« on: October 05, 2012, 01:39 PM »

I had been doing some looking for an extension that performs a certain set of functions for organizational purposes within chrome.

If you are like me, you have a bunch of tabs open, even multiple for the same site. What I am looking for is a "subtabs" extension that will take any tab and allow them to be grouped under a single parent tab. Upon navigation to the parent, the children tabs are expanded and placed under the parent, in a second row of tabs.

In a similar fashion, I would like the extension to be able to perform "smart grouping" that automatically puts children tabs under a parent of the same root domain (google.com, microsoft.com, donationcoder.com, etc.).

Does anyone know of such a concoction?

336

General Software Discussion / Re: Even Paul Allen is a little confused by Windows 8, but it gets better

« on: October 05, 2012, 06:51 AM »

We should have a contest for some prize here on DC on how long it will take Microsoft to "fix" the UI in Win8 to revert back to [desktop] normal.
I give them one SP and seven months tops.

-zridling (October 05, 2012, 06:19 AM)

Okay, I don't think they ever will. I think people will bitch, scream, rant, rave, whine, cry, and then just figure it out. Yes those of us in the die hard old guard desktop crowd will have the hardest time with it. But (unfortunately...) the masses don't suffer our need for full access to everything. They just want to get/see/check X and go on...and that sort of (at-a-glance) consumption computing is quite easy with the new UI.

-Stoic Joker (October 05, 2012, 06:33 AM)

Having used Windows 8 for over a month now, I can say that it is quite easy to get back to the desktop. The start screen appears at login, and I click desktop. In the event that this bothered me, I could easily create a shortcut to "show desktop" in the startup folder and bam, problem solved.

I fail to see what the controversy is here. We've seen the same thing with every OS since XP. XP was criticzed for a "fisher price look". Vista was criticized for UAC. 7 was criticized as what "vista should have been". 8 is now criticized with another major UI change similar to XP. It seems par for the course. You are never going to make everyone happy.

I, for one, am loving Windows 8.

337

Living Room / Re: Remote Android Control Solution?

« on: September 30, 2012, 08:57 AM »

Yeah, I can remote control all of my desktop and laptop computers very easily with my droid, but I cannot perform the reverse very easily.

338

Find And Run Robot / Re: Search Result Context Menu Item and Underlining

« on: September 29, 2012, 11:09 PM »

Looks like mouser has two separate sets of code for the on_rightclick and on_keypress functions. Might need to consolidate those into a single function to resolve this inconsistency.

339

Living Room / Remote Android Control Solution?

« on: September 29, 2012, 07:59 PM »

I am looking for a tool that I am sure exists, but I have yet to find. I want to be able to remotely control an android-based device (tablet, phone, etc). I want to be able to "view" the screen or to take full control. I would like to be able to control key aspects such as enabling or disabling things like data networks or GPS, turning on and off the front/rear camera, and doing other tasks from a central console.

Does anyone know if such a solution exists?

340

Living Room / Re: SpammerScammer

« on: September 26, 2012, 05:14 PM »

Tinman, actually this is exactly a DDoS. What is happening is one user is telling multiple users to indirectly flood a service or person in an attempt to deny them the ability to process potential targets.

Either way, a DENIAL OF SERVICE, is occurring of a DISTRIBUTED nature. The "scammer" in this case would be denied the ability to perform their "service". DDoS is not simply limited to IP flooding, Security 101.

341

Find And Run Robot / Re: Include Windows 7 Start Button Search Results in FARR?

« on: September 26, 2012, 07:40 AM »

Nah, I already have those in the new "cpanel" alias. What I am looking for is "God Mode" items vice control panel applets initiated from control.exe

342

Find And Run Robot / Re: Include Windows 7 Start Button Search Results in FARR?

« on: September 26, 2012, 07:04 AM »

All,

I have been trying to work on a solution to populate these results and have them appear in FARR search results (without using shortcuts).

If anyone is willing, I need a list of the GUIDs in order to begin this process. I am going to try and figure out a way to programmatically populate this list from the "God Mode" folder.

Anyone willing to help out? I will work with mouser to develop this as a plugin as it would be EXTREMELY useful.

Josh

343

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.107.04 beta - Sep 23, 2012

« on: September 25, 2012, 04:01 PM »

How strange!

I don't think removing core aliases is the cause of this problem, but i'm not sure what is..

I'm guessing you might have one of your own aliases configured to use %?

Can you do a little more experimenting to figure out what's going on?

The special use of % is actually governed by a new alias "AliasGroups\Installed\EnvVars\EnvVars.alias", so if you delete/disable that you will see behavior when it is around.

Love to hear some more clues about what might be causing this.

-mouser (September 23, 2012, 10:16 AM)

Mouser,

Well I actually removed my previous version completely and reinstalled the new beta (ZIP version), so none of my aliases were interfering ^_^ Here are the steps to reproduce:

1) Download portable zip version, extract
2) Delete contents of \AliasGroups\Installed\Core_Aliases
3) Start FARR
4) Press % [SPACE]
5) Enjoy the crash =)

-d4ni (September 25, 2012, 02:58 PM)

Confirmed, I can duplicate in the portable edition. Removing the core aliases folder produces the crash on win8 x64 pro.

344

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 10 ... Light!

« on: September 24, 2012, 09:00 AM »

I still say this program is grossly overpriced. Yes, it has a lot of functionality, but hell, I can get a copy of Windows and Office for cheaper than the cost of one license of DOpus.

345

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Service Control 0.0.0.3 - My FARR2 Plugin Contest Submission #3

« on: September 23, 2012, 07:41 PM »

Taichi, had you considered wildcards such as sctrl vmware* or sctrl windows media* to start, stop or restart all services with those names? If multiple exist in different states, possibly prompting for what to do (start or stop)?

346

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.107.04 beta - Sep 23, 2012

« on: September 23, 2012, 03:24 PM »

As always folks, if the admin tools don't work for you, let me know!

Thanks for the help, Jesse!

347

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Onetastic - Multi-purpose add-in for Microsoft OneNote

« on: September 23, 2012, 06:15 AM »

I will definitely check this out! I think the onecalendar could be a very nice add-on.

Thanks for posting and welcome to the site!

348

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Program which runs a program then shuts down the computer

« on: September 22, 2012, 04:03 PM »

Check this out, built into windows. You might need to install the group policy console.

http://www.trishtech...own_in_windows_7.php

349

Living Room / Ubuntu will now have Amazon ads pre-installed

« on: September 22, 2012, 08:45 AM »

Amazon shopping results have been integrated into the Unity Dash of Ubuntu 12.10.

The feature comes a day after news that Ubuntu were adding Amazon and Ubuntu One Music web-apps as default items on Unity launcher.

Canonical says that the feature ‘extends what was already introduced in the Music and Video Lenses’ by offering ’a “more suggestions” results category …to searches performed from the home dash.’

The boon for them is that they get a small % cut from every purchase made through the Dash (or the web-app mentioned yesterday), as Oliver Ries explained on the Ubuntu Development mailing list yesterday:

“…if a user clicks the item and purchases it, it will generate affiliate revenue that we can invest back into the project (in a similar way to how we generate revenue from the Firefox search
bar).

We have found affiliate revenue to be a good method of helping us to continue to invest in maturing and growing Ubuntu.”

Source

350

Find And Run Robot / Re: New CPanel alias discussion and suggestions

« on: September 22, 2012, 06:37 AM »

All,

Here is a list of msc files I am going to add for MSC files. This will fall under the admin alias:

azman.msc	Authentication Manager
certmgr.msc	Certificate Manager
comexp.msc	Component Services (COM+) Administration
compmgmt.msc	Computer Management
devmgmt.msc	Device Manager
diskmgmt.msc	Disk Management
eventvwr.msc	Event Viewer
fsmgmt.msc	Shared Folders Management
gpedit.msc	Group Policy Editor
lusrmgr.msc	Local Users and Groups
NAPCLCFG.msc	Network Access Protocol Client Configuration
perfmon.msc	Performance Monitor
printmanagement.msc	Print Management
rsop.msc	Resultant Set Of Policy
SecPol.msc	Security Policy Editor (A subset of Group Policy)
Services.msc	Services manager
TaskSchd.msc	Task Scheduler
tpm.msc	Trusted Platform Module
WF.msc	Windows Firewall with Advanced Security
WMImgmt.msc	Windows Management Instrumentation Control

Once this is complete, I will create an adcpl alias for active directory tools. This will include things like DHCP, DNS, RRAS, Active Directory Users and Computers, Sites and Services, Domains and Trusts, etc.

Please let me know what you think of the current or planned aliases! Thanks!
Josh