Messages

51

General Software Discussion / Re: Images don't show up properly in Photoshop

« on: November 14, 2009, 05:10 AM »

this really does smell like a graphics card issue. your card may be getting too hot, or it may be near the end of its lifespan. it may be something else entirely of course, but that is what i suspect. i recommend making sure it's getting plenty of air and maybe even adjusting the clock settings a bit under normal which can many times make a graphics card behave much better (but also many times not do anything at all)

let us know what happens

52

Living Room / Re: Google vs. the rest: Is it fair?

« on: November 02, 2009, 09:43 AM »

So emails are "just such a virtual thing" and in no way comparable to actual letters to you?

-Tuxman (November 02, 2009, 07:34 AM)

For me, yes. About the only thing of importance I receive via email is an occasional Amazon receipt or shipping notice. No company business is done through it, although I know of several people using Google's premium business accounts to administer their email.

-zridling (November 02, 2009, 09:31 AM)

My current job (which I start tomorrow) was coordinated entirely through e-mail. I wouldn't have gotten the job any other way.

53

Living Room / Re: Google vs. the rest: Is it fair?

« on: November 02, 2009, 09:17 AM »

Plaintext emails are like postcards, you didn't bother to put it in an envelope so the postman is perfectly entitled to read it

-Eóin (November 02, 2009, 08:44 AM)

I get your point, but completely disagree. Average people can use envelopes without being instructed. Encryption, however, is not something most people can use. If I'm trying to get a job somewhere, and I send in my information encrypted, I would have about a 0% chance of getting that job.

Also, one can not control the method in which e-mails are sent to them. Many places have made it a habit to e-mail you with very privileged information after signing up, such as usernames, passwords, etc.

54

Living Room / Re: Best Free and Pay FTP Client

« on: November 01, 2009, 05:40 PM »

flashfxp is the best ftp client IMHO. It's paid-for, but you can use it past the trial period if you can put up with its nag.

55

Living Room / Re: Google vs. the rest: Is it fair?

« on: November 01, 2009, 05:38 PM »

The danger with google is that their lack of appropriate privacy could in the future be used for many more things than advertisements. Just because it's "only for advertisement purposes" right now doesn't mean that the data they mine on people can't be used in other ways in the future.

56

Living Room / Re: Google vs. the rest: Is it fair?

« on: November 01, 2009, 12:25 AM »

Well:

All it would take is a website which works well, is not complex and overcrowded, and an e-mail service that allows significant amount of storage without ads at the bottom of each e-mail and a clean interface to boot.

There is a bunch of them out there (comfortable free mailers and well-working searching engines), that's why I was asking. Which alternatives did you actually check?

-Tuxman (October 31, 2009, 01:29 PM)

Well, I'm not necessarily required to report to you, but I will gladly provide some examples of places I've checked.

Here is a list of providers, in the following format
Name Clutter Relevance Formatting Privacy Notes (scale of 1-5, 1 being bad, 5 being good) also note that not all fields will be populated
Google 5 5 5 2
Yahoo 1 4 3 ?
Dogpile 3 3 4 n/a
altavista 4 4 4 3 "There are, however, a few instances where we do collect personally identifiable information in order to fulfill your request. Click here for examples of these instances."
bing 3 5 3 4
mamma 5 3 4 ? -- doesn't really work very well (video search completely broken)

I'm sure there are more, other search engines are improving vastly lately, so I have high hopes a great replacement for google soon enough.

I'd prefer it if there were different search engines with specialized content, that grouped it well. Google attempts this with certain custom searches, but ultimately no content control makes it so that most results are still crap. It's also difficult for a search engine to be able to determine which links are good/bad, since people searching for something don't generally know what is best and what isn't.

Of course people seem to be forgetting that this is just what capitalism is all about. It's not really surprising behaviour

Of course, and this is why the ground is ripe for a good competitor, all in the nature of good, healthy capitalism.

57

Living Room / Re: Google vs. the rest: Is it fair?

« on: October 31, 2009, 01:21 PM »

It would take me about .5 seconds to decide to never touch google again, if there were comparable services available elsewhere.

-Kamel (October 31, 2009, 01:03 PM)

What exactly do you miss elsewhere?

-Tuxman (October 31, 2009, 01:16 PM)

Not to sound rude, but I think I explained that in my original post quite specifically.

58

Living Room / Re: Google vs. the rest: Is it fair?

« on: October 31, 2009, 01:03 PM »

I do not care for google's business practice at all. Unfortunately though, every single other competitor STILL has not figured out that the best way to advertise is discreetly. This is the single trade business "secret" that google has completely comprehended, and thus became very successful because of.

Compare the amount of clutter on any other search engine to google's... case closed.

They have very carefully and strategically placed themselves where they are, and have done a great job. However, IMO, the grounds are ripe for a competitor to offer a similar service and give google a real run for their money. All it would take is a website which works well, is not complex and overcrowded, and an e-mail service that allows significant amount of storage without ads at the bottom of each e-mail and a clean interface to boot.

It would take me about .5 seconds to decide to never touch google again, if there were comparable services available elsewhere.

59

General Software Discussion / Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows

« on: October 28, 2009, 11:33 PM »

I see, I was unaware of these settings. That was the problem, the amount of half open connections utorrent used. I still prefer deluge though, for many other reasons. One of them being the half open connection limit is very easily settable from the interface.

-Kamel (October 26, 2009, 02:52 PM)

µTorrent and other P2P programs make most routers cry. In the last year or so it's been getting better, but anyone who plans on using P2P programs extensively needs to do a lot of research on routers or they will be sorry. A lot of routers are programmed to keep track of 512-1,024 connections and this includes half-open connections. Unfortunately, some P2P programs come with default settings that expect to use 2,000 connections and sometimes 3,000 connections or more. This behavior, of course, makes those routers crash. Hard.

-Innuendo (October 27, 2009, 11:50 AM)

This is exactly why this needs to be a configuration option, and it needs to be easily accessable (atleast make it inside an advanced menu if afraid of scaring newbs).

I understand all of these things, believe me, I'm no newb when it comes to any of this. You do have to understand, however, that my router was running DD-WRT in repeater mode, and was repeating a wireless network from my car, strategically parked somewhere between me and an open access point. In situations such as this, it is understandable that you can't exactly torrent things. If you do need to use a torrent (some places force it now, such as world of warcraft updates [since, obviously, they could not afford the bandwidth it would cost to patch all of their clients ], and various "open sores" projects), the default settings murder your router and internet connection. That doesn't really make much sense to me.

But from my experience (and what I've read) it basically comes down to stability vs features. Tomato is the more stable product. DD-WRT has more built-in functionality.

I completely disagree, actually. DD-WRT could not be more stable when used in more or less default settings. It's only when you begin using its advanced or less well implemented features that problems arise. My DD-WRT router ran for months solid, with heavy usage (including torrents etc) never a hitch. As soon as I changed it to repeater mode, all that changed, very quickly. [huge note, i use DD-WRT micro on my current router]

60

General Software Discussion / Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows

« on: October 26, 2009, 02:52 PM »

I find that utorrent not only lacks some features I love, but it also has much less respect for the connection settings I set, in some conditions causing poor internet performance, and even crashing routers despite extremely limiting connection settings (100 connections global max).

-Kamel (October 25, 2009, 07:54 PM)

µTorrent also did that on my router but it's not just the number of connections that is the problem - it's also how fast they're made.

My router was resetting every few hours using µTorrent no matter what connection limit I used until I changed two Advanced values - since then, not one µTorrent related router reset.

bt.connect_speed = 8
net.max_halfopen = 4

All of which is mentioned in the TroubleShooting section here.

-4wd (October 25, 2009, 08:26 PM)

I see, I was unaware of these settings. That was the problem, the amount of half open connections utorrent used. I still prefer deluge though, for many other reasons. One of them being the half open connection limit is very easily settable from the interface.

61

General Software Discussion / Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows

« on: October 25, 2009, 07:54 PM »

I'm not one to follow the main stream sometimes, and this is definitely one of those times.

I find that utorrent not only lacks some features I love, but it also has much less respect for the connection settings I set, in some conditions causing poor internet performance, and even crashing routers despite extremely limiting connection settings (100 connections global max).

If that seems to be your experience with utorrent, I'd highly recommend using deluge. This program has a seperated interface and daemon, along with internet tracking so that you can log in directly to the program from a remote location and add torrents, or manage your client however you see fit. All over a lightweight http interface.

That is why deluge gets my recommendation when it comes to bit torrent clients (no matter the platform). There are atleast a gazillion clients out there, so I'm sure you wont have any trouble finding one that suits your needs.

62

Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: United States of America

« on: October 21, 2009, 09:24 PM »

Baby Cody has an open invitation to here in Florida. The only caveat is that he will have to make sure the flight out of here is on the cheap side, unless I land a sweet job, in which case, first class flight to anywhere he wants to go.

63

Find And Run Robot / Re: slenderFARR - a new skin for FARR

« on: October 18, 2009, 12:51 PM »

I don't have headers hidden, but I don't have any columns?
 (see attachment in previous post)

-CleverCat (October 18, 2009, 02:19 AM)

That's because you have large icons selected. If you select small icon report (bottom right of mouser's screenshot), you will get a list like in my screenshot.

64

Find And Run Robot / Re: slenderFARR - a new skin for FARR

« on: October 18, 2009, 12:15 AM »

the highlighted areas:

65

Find And Run Robot / Re: slenderFARR - a new skin for FARR

« on: October 17, 2009, 11:57 PM »

find 'results display style' under display options and change it to 'large icon...'

-rgdot (October 17, 2009, 11:43 PM)

ohhhhh, thanks.....

Mouser, may I suggest a feature request, to be able to hide the toolbars in small list icons, without changing the way it shows? Perhaps an autohide is in place? IDK, but I really love the list style, if it were just possible to make it a bit more minimal

66

Find And Run Robot / Re: slenderFARR - a new skin for FARR

« on: October 17, 2009, 11:22 PM »

I have read this thread entirely (I think), and while this does appear to be addressed here:

you dont have to technically remove the toolbar, just click and hold to the left of it and drag it to far right which will hide it.

-mouser

I want it to look like the example in the original post, which has no sorting bar there.

67

Living Room / Re: Anybody else playing with Wave?

« on: October 17, 2009, 03:00 PM »

I - personally - would never use anything which resides on Google's servers. Maybe when it is completely open source...

-Tuxman (October 16, 2009, 07:17 PM)

I tend to agree with this notion more every day. Though, I do use google for a lot of things, I am still quite wary of it. Their style of wanting to become the sole way anyone does anything is taking a search engine way too far.

68

Living Room / Re: Anybody else playing with Wave?

« on: October 15, 2009, 11:20 PM »

i definitely do not agree with that website app, complicated things are excellent, when the complication is necessary. Unnecessary complication, however, is just clutter and confusing.

69

Living Room / Re: Anybody else playing with Wave?

« on: October 15, 2009, 01:41 AM »

If I'm unable to be invited by rno2, just wanted to express my interest in an invitation. I did send him a pm though, so hopefully he has enough left for me one.

70

Living Room / Re: Man names son 2.0

« on: October 13, 2009, 10:30 AM »

and will he spend the rest of his life trying to make a floating point?

-Target (October 12, 2009, 06:26 PM)

i lol'd

71

General Software Discussion / Re: What is best program to create a DVD from any video file?

« on: October 12, 2009, 08:18 PM »

ConvertX to DVD. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. It is, hands down, the absolute best dvd authoring software by a very long shot.

That is, of course, in my opinion. I know it's been mentioned, but I just figured I'd reinforce the importance that isn't just A solution, it is THE solution (in my opinion).

72

General Software Discussion / Re: Any freeware alternatives to Faststone MaxView?

« on: October 12, 2009, 07:53 PM »

FastPictureViewer - seriously, it is soooo fast, double-click on an image and bam it's there, left+right clicks do different zooms etc.....

-Fedorov (May 06, 2009, 05:15 PM)

$30 but FREE 'today' only: http://www.giveawayo...m/fastpictureviewer/

It really is FAST 

-Curt (October 05, 2009, 05:56 AM)

just wanted to say, THANKS for this post! I got this image viewer, and while it's not the end it all ultimate final software for viewing images, it certainly has its place and being a photographer, you can certainly appreciate the emphasis they put on helping the user quickly view and sort large resolution images from a digital camera dump. I'm sure I'll get the different nuances of this program down soon and will never look back at my previous methods of sorting new images from my camera.

I _HIGHLY_ recommend this software to anyone looking for a fast image viewer.

Remember to go into the options as there are some very important ones that are not enabled by default (namely, hardware support and if applicable better downsampling/upsampling quality [only use with hardware support enabled])

73

Living Room / Re: Federal Trade Commission (USA): Bloggers Must Disclose Payments for Reviews

« on: October 05, 2009, 11:55 PM »

Excellent, very glad this is in effect!

Reviews have become nearly useless all together due to companies paying people off =\

74

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: alarm when net connection *restored*

« on: October 04, 2009, 08:14 PM »

Thanks, glad it suited your needs.

75

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: alarm when net connection *restored*

« on: October 04, 2009, 01:42 PM »

Alright, looks like I've got something worked up. It's nothing amazing just yet, but I will expand and refine as necessary.

It is my ultimate goal to make a utility which can detect a connection, play an alarm to indicate connected to the internet, maintain a connection, and when a connection is lost for a specified amount of time, play a connection lost alarm.

Please test this and let me know if it works. Please do provide as much feedback as possible.

Connection Alarm by Kamel (written in python, transferred to exe via py2exe)

Usage: connected_alarm.exe [host] [port]
Default host is www.google.com, default port is 80.
A host can be an IP address or a DNS.
*Note: usage of this program may require Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 redistributable be installed on the user's computer.

v0.1 Beta:
*Attempts to make a connection to a specified host and port (default www.google.com port 80), if a connection is successful, a 2600hz tone is played for 500ms.
*If no connection is made, it will keep retrying until a connection is made or the program is terminated.

Future:
*Ability to specify a sound file to play and/or specify which tone frequency/length is desired.
*Ability to check multiple hosts for connectivity
*Ability to run constantly, and be alerted when internet connectivity isn't present and is.
*Ability to run a system command upon connection and/or disconnection (for instance, a batch file)