Messages

276

DC Gamer Club / Re: Hoard

« on: April 05, 2011, 12:49 PM »

Renegade: Want the game gifted so you can play it on steam or would you rather not on principle?

PS: i pay my steam stuff via paypal, that might work for you

277

General Software Discussion / Re: Ever Have a Download Site Blow You Away?

« on: April 03, 2011, 08:27 AM »

It's a general problem in any software site. Advertisers make ads specifically to confuse you and make you click. The same problem holds for Source Forge, Download.com, Softpedia, etc. etc.

-Renegade (April 02, 2011, 10:01 AM)

quite... on sourceforge it gets quite annoying after you click download. They have now had the decency to add "this is not linked to the download" but it was borderline fraudulent imo...

PS: I browsed around softoxi and didnt find it any worse than any others. the download link *is* tiny and halfway down the description, but i didnt encounter weird redirects on the download links that Carol reported, although there was the usual conversion tracking on the promotional widgets

278

Living Room / Re: The "Cloud" Goes Up in Smoke

« on: April 03, 2011, 08:22 AM »

Digital might be just bits but it is always to be considered transitory

Just as you would expect a hard drive to perhaps die after 3 to 5 years, just as you would expect formats to become invalid, you should not use any online service as your only place to have your data. Similarly you should not invest too much into tagging, promoting, organising things online unless this has short term value or can be added back into your local data.

The main problem here of course is that it is not about the files, it is about the professional business presence for photographers - their storefront. Probably this sold copies, had modes for private wedding galleries etc. which are all gone and will mean a short term loss of business.

In that case the cloud convenience of a SaaS solution means one is at risk of one creditor pulling the plug. Backup, exports and static archives are all useful ways to get some prevention. I would also say that a SaaS solution based on an open source product has an advantage here, because you could have backups and exports running on a copy fast.

But all the prevention in the world - contracts that specify source code release on bankrupcy, data and template copies etc. - cant help if the company doesnt do the right thing, if they just pack up and vanish.. but that is NOT just a cloud problem, it can happen with a normal hosting company

279

General Software Discussion / Re: Ever Have a Download Site Blow You Away?

« on: April 02, 2011, 09:11 AM »

I find it particularly irksome when I see large prominent download buttons that are linked to a totally different product and the actual download you are looking for is less than obvious.

-Carol Haynes (April 02, 2011, 08:58 AM)

Fileforum started doing that and it is very annoying and really uncalled for - they could easily promote other software very well without hijacking people's distraction

280

General Software Discussion / Re: Make all Dialog Boxes and Browser Popups come up where the Cursor is

« on: April 02, 2011, 08:58 AM »

I'm going to go down memory lane here... On windows 3.1 (!) we bought the shareware "squeaky mouse" - it did several things that are now taken for granted

- had a cute dancing mouse icon (ok, that is not nowadays taken for granted but if you wanted one there are many ways. PS:"the squeaky mouse dance" is still a family staple)
- move cursor to buttons and popups (not as friendly as moving the dialog to the cursor, I'll admit)
- fast scroll
- recycling bin (was "cheek pouch")
- jump by letter in selection lists and menus

I still have the executable here and must have the reg code somewhere, but I am afraid it doesnt fully work - on XP it only shows on the taskbar, makes noise, and works with any old apps one might run - for example it will move the cursor between the task bar and its option windows. Which is kind of an amazing sign of backwards compatibility... It does still squeak and now and then you catch a glimpse of a mouse running...

Requirement:
   Hardware:
       80386 or higher machine
       4MB or more RAM memory
       At least 300KB of free hard disk space
   Software:
       MS-Windows3.1 or higher
       or Windows for Workgroup 3.1 or higher

Anyone ever use that?

281

General Software Discussion / Re: Ever Have a Download Site Blow You Away?

« on: April 02, 2011, 08:14 AM »

It's nice to see a site making the effort  - bookmarked and will start checking it

In the german world, softwareload often does that - videos, screenshots step by step, stuff like that - of course not all download sites can afford the editorial staff that a portal like T Online can...

282

General Software Discussion / Re: Never again will I purchase that shampoo! (or will I?)

« on: March 31, 2011, 05:27 AM »

I have this fixed idea that one day I will get my hands on some fully updated installation CDs for Win2000, XP, and Vista, and then I will let these "optimizers" and "cleaners" do all they can - so when I then reboot, I will have a CD ready to perform the already necessary repair-installations, and voila!: I end up having a CLEAN install, without loosing anything important. ;-)

-Curt (March 30, 2011, 08:39 AM)

I understand the dream, I still have the acronis image somewhere for my clean-but-with-basic-apps windows XP system. It just was too hard to maintain as the OS and my "essential basics" changed (since it would need a clean reinstall) so I gave up.

Might actually not be out of reach now since XP barely changes, but I only have one machine on XP left. (edit: I lie, my dad had a netbook with XP on it so I now have 2)

283

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Not-so-mini review of CrashPlan backup software

« on: March 31, 2011, 05:02 AM »

I love the seeding and per-post DVD option, if I were in the US that would be a killer feature. As it is with my current backup services I self censor what I backup because it is just too slow to be worth it. So I dont use 20% of my 100Gb space and that is a shame, really..

Also it's great to see another option supporting linux - what's behind it, amazon S3?

284

Living Room / Re: How do you know if an lcd is dieing?

« on: March 31, 2011, 04:54 AM »

Interestingly enough yesterday R's LCD was looking a bit blurry on the fonts, then the next reboot it wouldnt come on. We just flicked back to the old spare for now, but the monitor in question is a fujitsu siemens so this thread popping up again is an odd coincidence. Will check if perhaps it is this problem  

edit: it is a fujitsu siemens screen

285

General Software Discussion / Re: Never again will I purchase that shampoo! (or will I?)

« on: March 30, 2011, 05:52 AM »

lol, but imagine, you could have, like, 2 keys!!!

Seriously, i havent found much useful in these optimisation programs, but then I havent looked much. I stopped buying them a while back

Once nice thing about ashampoo is that they have a list of their newsletters available on the website, so say you are at a family member's place and determine they need a simple tool for photo scan organisation you can go back and try a $1.99 offer for photo commander whose link/code stillworks (as I did last summer). That is nice and transparent of them.

286

Living Room / Re: Linux vs. Vista for an absolute beginner? (+related Vista/hardware query)

« on: March 30, 2011, 05:28 AM »

There are newbie friendly distributions (as in the community having the time and patience), and newbie friendly places like linuxquestions. Someone mentioned Mint but to me it is more a distro for people already familiar with windows. Some I would consider: PCLinuxOS, Salix, Trisquel, Pardus...

The big barriers are unfamiliarity (if you dont use the stuff often it feels unknown and intimidating) and the fear of breaking something.

On gnulinux it is harder to break things as a newbie, that is a huge thing to be able to tell a user. Heck, to give them total peace of mind you could get them started on a liveCD version with a local partition only for /home (and some backup). Then you can tell the user that there is no way they can break anything no matter what they try. Then when they are a little less scared of it, install it fully. There are some excellent liveCDs out there in most distributions, and many distributions have a way to create a custom liveCD from an install.

If you go the gnulinux route:
- play with the distribution yourself
- check the distribution's irc channel and forum - ask if it is ok to put some newbies on it, what their advice would be, and see if the tone of answers is adequate

for the future user:
- install some form of instant messenging and/or voice contact -
- install some form of remote desktop/vnc setup so you can help remotely,
- for both of the above, train it through with them a few times. In order for this to become an easy reflex, schedule a daily share even if it is for nothing except a quick chat. If they do it rarely then figuring out the screen sharing will add to the stress when a problem hits, so it has to be familiar and regular.
- get them set up on the distribution forum and a general forum like linuxquestions. Set up their profile information, a good signature, and a post in the "introductions" thread (if there is one) with them, so they have done the first steps
- set up an easy irc client and program both a private channel (this is for the "get them used to it" phase as I mention above for chat and screen sharing) and the main distribution channel (or newbie channel)
- set up something like delicious or diigo with a bunch of useful bookmarks

287

Living Room / Re: Let's face it: the ebook market is FUBAR, thanks to pure greed

« on: March 30, 2011, 04:19 AM »

One thing that can be done is supporting the publishers who try to do ebooks right.

One example that works out as "right" for  me is Baen http://www.webscription.net/
- a whole bunch of ebooks for free
- ebooks are paperback price from the beginning
- no DRM, you can redownload
- multiple formats

now clearly this covers mostly fictions of a small set of genres (although there are some allied publishers on there) and the store hasnt changed much since it was launched, way long ago. But I can live with ebooks like that especially when I realise that I cannot travel with enough books in normal format

288

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your music player of choice?

« on: March 23, 2011, 07:49 AM »

Banshee was very delicate with external programs touching media files

That is one of the things I don't want to have in a music manager (or player) - the imposition on the media file structure.

I have noticed many tools want to "import" your files into their own structure. Especially on linux

I have near 100Gb of music, i have spent time ever so slowly cleaning up dupes and badly tagged files, and I have it sync'd between network drives, local drives and USB drives, and I dont want my program to change it all and create DAYS of work for me. Yet so many do.

I encounter that I dont even try the soft.

289

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your music player of choice?

« on: March 22, 2011, 01:53 PM »

I find myself returning to Jriver Media Centre - a lot of stuff works really well especially all the multi node, network setup.

I know there are a lot of criticism about the support but I have never encountered it first hand, and they do give older versions for free which have just about everything that can be needed.

It is mostly a thing of habit, I guess, and the newer version has slowed down tag editing a bit too much

290

Living Room / Re: Fascinating story about the consequences of sharing your art in the Internet age

« on: March 21, 2011, 11:08 AM »

There's a big difference between commercial use in ads, shirts etc. and non commercial reuse for learning, sharing, sampling etc.

And the greater good is NOT criminalising the latter in order to prevent the former. Not matter how good a story you trot out.

I have had my images reused, my copy copied word for word to be used on a competitors brochure etc. but I will never consider that in order to protect me for this, people should be given the right to take children to court for "plagiarizing" Harry Potter on a home video, or make it ok to put limitations on my device that prevent totally legitimate use in order to protect from hypothetical non legitimate use.

After all we can also never forget that everything we create, write, code is hugely inspired from things we have seen, read etc. that has someone else's copyright. We are all sharers, remixers and plagiarists - learn-by-by-copying-and-doing is how we are wired.

For example the image in question is hugely reminiscent of art that others were doing before this guy did it - he inspired himself and copied the style, and it is very similar to many others - it doesnt make it right to pinch it, not when it would take the shirtmaker 10 minutes to do a good enough image to use... On the other hand most of the other "offenses" he mentions are people inspired by the t shirts to do a graffiti... and articles about the story.

Actually it is not clear at all how this all started, who was inspired by what where...

PS: many of my "reusable" images on flickr are CC of course i dont mean those when i say that my images were reused without permission

291

General Software Discussion / Re: Idea: A content management system that lives up to the name

« on: March 13, 2011, 08:39 AM »

good article - not just about yii but about the process just about everyone goes through - the pendulum is about to go round again isnt it?

begin:
 - start with a standard tool
 - outgrow the standard tool
 - look for better tool but not find any at a reasonable price, find language/environment/framework that does custom

now rinse/repeat ad eternam, with 2-5 years in each phase:
 - get fed up with the pain of maintaining and growing custom - decide to switch to the new generation of standard CMSes
 - get fed up with the pain of having to maintain and grow on a standard CMS, with upgrades on someone else's schedule - decide to switch to the new generation of frameworks that does all the bits you remember were painful when you did custom. Optional: change language while you do so

(oddly enough, I'd say 40% of the market is in each phase at any one time, with the remaining 20% assessing where to go)

end:
 - get fed up with the whole loop, "i dont want to have to do X ever again" - move to other department, to management or just hire a new young person who a)arent fed up with these questions yet b)know the cool CMS or framework Y and will take over that project

will it end?  one thing I know is that we do rediscover the wheel all over again each time, and forget what we learned last time around... partly because looks further back than 2 years in web technology if they even look back at all. The pendulum goes round and round with specific questions as well, around templates, scripting, splitting (or not) content administration from content presentation in 2 systems or one, mapping URLs to content, etc.

292

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« on: March 13, 2011, 08:22 AM »

To be fair, a Netbook is by design a rather limited machine, and the various distros targeted for the platform are doing their best to fit in the smaller package, and so some things do end up more or less missing.  

Actually, this post says Debian proper works pretty well, and then you'll have the benefit of the APT package management system and the vast Debian repositories:
http://duopetalflowe...tbook-uses-less.html

-Edvard (March 13, 2011, 07:33 AM)

If you know a distribution well, then just about any distribution that allows you to build up from a minimal install will work, and is a worthy approach since you already know the distro and the community. Gentoo, arch, Debian, Slackware (being a contrarian that is what I tend to use ) (I would not try this with any of redhat, suse or fedora as I have never had any luck getting any of these to give me what i would consider a minimal install)

The big challenge with that approach is figuring out
- the windowing/desktop environment
- a good mix of apps that fit well together and with the libraries of your chosen environment (qt, gtk, etc.)

that is a lot of research and figuring out (and I always end up giving up after I realise I have just messed up the mix by picking an app that has added half of KDE or Gnome or both!)

This is where I think that slitaz, pclinux0S and salix, for example, have "pre-made" a set of choices. Salix has access to everything in slackbuilds, and pclinuxos has a very large repository. Slitaz has "recipes" for a lot less, but it is easy to create one for a lot of software (even I managed) once you understand the process.

293

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« on: March 13, 2011, 05:30 AM »

Some less known distributions I have liked on netbooks and old laptops:

- Slitaz. Although it takes a little hack to install from a USB key if you have no CD. Very well done slick distro (wireless not so robust without work at getting drivers, eg: broadcom. note: this happens on all ubuntu, redhat and debian based distros too, on my hardware. none pick up the wifi)

- PClinuxOS has several light/minimal versions with openbox, lxde, xfce (even a basic kde or gnome but you'd have to pick-and-add tools)

- Salix is very beginner friendly and has a LXDE and an XFCE version - this is one distro that comes with a nice "how to start"

- Trisquel - amazingly resilient with working wifi out of the box on many machines where other more mainstream distros fail to work


PS: Meego is top on my list to try to use and like, because they I can get a N900 and have the same stuff on my computers and my phone and that is a very attractive thought

294

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« on: March 10, 2011, 03:21 AM »

I have both Nitro Pro and PDF Annotator - both are useful in different ways - happy to answer some questions if anyone is curious

295

Living Room / Re: England Is Grinding To A Halt.

« on: March 10, 2011, 03:15 AM »

I'm not sure the cost we are paying in the UK isnt closer to the real cost of fuel - human, environmental etc.

I'm also not so sure the price of fuel is even in the top 20 of scandalous things in the UK

296

General Software Discussion / Re: 20 New User Misconceptions about Linux

« on: March 09, 2011, 06:05 AM »

Like zridling, I haven't run into any showstopper issues with 64-bit distros for quite a while now. But I stay fairly mainstream with what I install. And I'm also slightly behind the most recent curve for hardware. So finding drivers or workarounds usually isn't a problem because of it.

-40hz (March 08, 2011, 09:27 AM)

It is very possible but we have to note the following
- as far as I know all distros default to 32 bit and you have to search to get the 64 bit. Not the case on windows anymore
- many drivers are 32bit only, even some of the free software ones need to be compiled 32 bits, but that is getting better
- in order to use all the standard tools many people would expect you need to get compatibility libraries etc. on. And in order to do that, since it is not done by default, you need to be rather technical. (which explains the point above, why distros dont offer it as standard)

http://erratasec.blo...-domination-201.html made me notice that point I was using 64bit on one machine and 32bit on the games machine without thinking about it... (and whining about the memory limit i was getting on the games machine...)

re: the state of X

Agree. Development efforts  are currently going through a bad patch. I'm optimistic however. They've been through this before. Eventually, they'll either get it all worked out, or fork (again) - and may the best approach win.  

And if not, X will go the way of all flesh, and something else will come along to replace it. "No tears in heaven" as Eric said.

-40hz (March 08, 2011, 09:27 AM)

Here's to hoping - but frankly fragmented as the community is I cant imagine it happening. Any one group that would try would get slammed by the rest (Ubuntu got slammed for even wanting to do their own wm! imagine if they wanted to rethink X!)

It does stop people from feeling comfortable starting with linux on the desktop - heck, i get put off and confused with the desktop situation, whenever I try - and I try often.

Chose a distro and a desktop environment - lots of choice - try a few live ones or let a friend pick. That's the EASY part. Then trying to determine what apps are there that do X Y or Z then trying to figure out whether they can easily run on what desktop environment and what the impact is. This app is gnome, this one is just GTK, that one QT, that one KDE, that one E17... what happens if I install an app made for one on the other, will it affect my performance or stability? What if the best photo manager is kde but the best screenshot taking tool is gnome? how to proceed?

You get that situation for every step and every tool and task when you start on the linux desktop. It gets to the point where you end up having choice overload...

(note that this confusion carries on to audio as well, which X is not to blame for but each program only works with a set of audio layers etc. and it is WORK to get stuff set up to all cohabitate happily... that's alot of stuff to have to waste human brain cycles and memory on just to be sure that the music player you download will actually work with the other audio stuff you already have set up...)

diversity is great, but it is also confusing, alas.

@iphigenie - Hi! Nice to see your moniker gracing the forum again. It's been a while.  

-40hz (March 08, 2011, 09:27 AM)

Thanks for the welcome back I have been eaten by work (big projects and lots of travel) and finding it hard to cope with basic life organisation and keeping up with things. Didnt stop me from installing and/or buying more software than I need, though, these addictions never go away. But I am behind on admin, keeping in touch with people (not good), calling people, and all sorts of hobbies have fallen by the wayside. Getting better.

297

Official Announcements / Re: What DonationCoder.com Would Do with a Two Million Dollar Donation

« on: March 09, 2011, 05:35 AM »

Purchase a multi-unit apartment building in town of donor's choice,

-mouser (March 08, 2011, 03:31 PM)

You're a bit optimistic about what a couple of million US$ will buy these days,  aren't you?  
I think you need a few more mythical donors  

-cranioscopical (March 08, 2011, 03:58 PM)

He did say town not city - it might be possible in some places. you could probably buy a cluster of individual houses too, nowadays

298

Official Announcements / Re: What DonationCoder.com Would Do with a Two Million Dollar Donation

« on: March 08, 2011, 03:47 PM »

I like the idea  

PS: Considered doing that a few times - not donate 2 million dollars but offer board and lodging (have a huge house) to someone who wants to work on a free software project. Never went beyond vague idea though, the "how you would get about it" is scary (to me)

PPS: what I would do with 2 million would probably be a bit more educational - try to find "natural programmers" in the crowds of people discarded up front by the system, and train them up into the trade

299

General Software Discussion / Re: 20 New User Misconceptions about Linux

« on: March 07, 2011, 10:47 AM »

I'm a card carrying Free Software advocate but it doesnt mean we can't what is wrong in the GNU/Linux setup for the desktop

- 64 bit isn't quite there yet and that is a weakness compared to windows
- X is a mess. seriously. window managers and display managers and desktop environments in mix and match, drivers and configurations. Can be a nightmare once anything goes a litle wrong...

300

Living Room / Re: Should ebook users have any rights?

« on: March 03, 2011, 05:21 AM »

It would be annoying to artificially reproduce the "one at a time" for an ebook. There is no way to implement it in a way that does not cripple the medium in a way that makes it LESS FREE than the physical book.

"one at a time" is an illusion for books - and is just as arbitrary a limitation as "maximum 25 times". Both are limitations that physical books DO NOT HAVE, so why should ebooks have them imposed?

A paper book can be on a table and flipped through by many people within 10 minutes, it can be shared as a reference by several people in a house, office, study group. Even a paperback novel can be read in parallel by several people, if they don't read at the same time of the day (one in the evening, one in the afternoon or on the train to/from work etc). All of which is perfectly normally accepted use of a book in the world, but somehow should be illegal abuse in the electronic world.

No way an implementation would have that "swap in an instant, possibly 10 times an hour" flexibility, so many of these perfectly normal use behaviours with physical books will suddenly be made impossible and illegal for an electronic book - that is not protecting editors, that is power grabbing.

Of course publishers always dreamed that they could somehow prevent people from lending, reselling, sharing, loaning etc. books - and in the past they have tried to prevent these and failed. They tried to make libraries pay more for books, they tried to prevent used bookstores - and failed. Now we take these for granted.

And yet, here comes a new medium and they see an opportunity to try again