Messages

76

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: July 15, 2014, 08:48 AM »

I've used the Event viewer and BlueScreenView, along with "Who Crashed" and several diagnostic utilities. Unfortunately they usually cannot point out the actual driver causing the problem that led to the crash - only the Windows system driver that ultimately shut down the system. E.g., this phrase, or a similar version of it, is used in most of the diagnostics I have tried: "This problem is most likely caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time."

I have identified 22 separate drivers that have initiated BSODs, plus several others supposedly caused by the kernel, ntoskrnl.exe, though all checks and tests state that another 3rd party driver is actually causing the kernel to shut down. I tried sussing this out by myself long enough and I'm officially throwing in the towel and letting Puget Systems figure it out!

Thank you.

Jim

77

Living Room / Re: maths anyone?

« on: July 14, 2014, 09:34 PM »

thanks! same here

-kalos (July 10, 2014, 07:16 PM)

Sorry but this got me laughing and I can't seem to stop!! Hurting my ribs!

You crack me up, kilos. 

Jim

78

Living Room / Re: Malwarebytes self-start problem

« on: July 14, 2014, 09:29 PM »

How do you know the BSODs are caused by Malwarebytes or the other security programs?

I've been suffering BSODs for about a year now - allegedly caused by a "third party driver". I've updated all drivers I can find to update, tested my memory and HDDs multiple times... Still getting the BSODs. It is almost impossible to find the driver or drivers at fault! Along the way throughout all my searching for a solution I have found that Windows 7x64 seems to be experiencing this issue more than other OS versions.

Jim

79

General Software Discussion / Ad Muncher 5 will be free

« on: June 26, 2014, 12:10 AM »

After five or six years of promising the vaunted Ad Muncher Version 5 - which would cover almost all of the current deficiencies in Ad Muncher, Murray Hurps has decided to offer Ad Muncher free of charge to all who want it. Also he blogged that V5 will include both Android and iOS mobile versions. His blog post making this announcement is here.

For two days prior to this announcement Hurps blogged about the imminent release of V.5 along with hints about an upcoming "Big Announcement", which is - I imagine - making AM free.

Personally I'm not certain how I feel about this. I can't help but to think that this will mean future development will be very limited, if it exists at all. Hurps claims he will afford this change as follows:

This will be financially difficult for me.  Salaries for three people, along with our usual expenses, will be covered entirely by myself by selling almost everything I have, and taking on some external work.

That's scary enough, but his next comment is even scarier:

At some point in the future, I may need to offer complimentary software products to Ad Muncher users (for example, a recommended spyware blocker or antivirus).

      

So it remains to be seen how this all will shake out.

Jim

80

Living Room / Re: Patents given away? Elon Musk blazing a different sort of trail.

« on: June 15, 2014, 12:27 AM »

Yeah, but it's got to get there. As is often the case, people will realize it late and then there'll be a mad rush to develop and build more renewable plants.

(OK - The real poop? We won't have much more renewable energy until the oil and gas industry positions themselves to make the most possible money from it. Sad, but you know that will happen.)

Jim

81

Living Room / Re: Patents given away? Elon Musk blazing a different sort of trail.

« on: June 14, 2014, 10:49 PM »

Presently only about 16% of the world's electric power is from renewable sources, with almost all of the balance coming from Fossil fuels (67%) and nuclear plants (13%). Use of renewable sources is growing but it ain't here yet. Granted that electric cars themselves run cleaner those that run on gasoline/petrol. It's just the power we use to recharge them that still isn't that clean yet.

Getting there... slooowly.   

Jim

-J-Mac (June 14, 2014, 04:31 AM)

Not necessarily true.  I know of some people who charge their vehicles from renewable sources.  It's just more inconvenient.

It's really a matter of it becoming a priority at this point.

-wraith808 (June 14, 2014, 11:16 AM)

I understand that, but just the same only 16% of the world's electric power comes from renewable sources. Period. So if all owners of electric vehicles wanted to charge their cars from renewable sources then there will very soon be a point where there isn't enough such power to cover all the electric vehicles.

Believe me - I would prefer that all vehicles to be electrically powered! (And I desperately want that Tesla!!)  All I am saying is that we would not decrease our carbon footprint by as much as is thought by many, because for now - and the near future - fossil-powered power plants are needed in order to create enough electrical power to charge the vehicles. We do save the crap discharged into the atmosphere by gasoline engines, which is a big benefit. But we don’t stop using fossil fuels until there is a whole lot more renewable sourced power plants online. Which will be quite a while. There really needs to be another quantum leap in the technology for renewable-source power. E.g., we can't devote enough space to provide the windmills as desired by many. Plus windmills are only efficient in certain regions and the cost of distribution across the continent is prohibitive.

OK.. Enough from me for now.   

Jim

82

Living Room / Re: Patents given away? Elon Musk blazing a different sort of trail.

« on: June 14, 2014, 04:31 AM »

Presently only about 16% of the world's electric power is from renewable sources, with almost all of the balance coming from Fossil fuels (67%) and nuclear plants (13%). Use of renewable sources is growing but it ain't here yet. Granted that electric cars themselves run cleaner those that run on gasoline/petrol. It's just the power we use to recharge them that still isn't that clean yet.

Getting there... slooowly.   

Jim

83

Living Room / Re: Patents given away? Elon Musk blazing a different sort of trail.

« on: June 14, 2014, 12:43 AM »

Electricity is a far better energy source than fossil fuel for a lot of reasons, but at the top of my list is that you can generate electricity fairly easily on your own whereas you cannot produce fossil fuel period. This makes electric cars much more independent.

-Renegade (June 13, 2014, 09:53 PM)

In the future, hopefully. But today it takes lots of fossil fuel to generate the electricity. (So many people seem to miss this point.)

Jim

84

Living Room / Re: Google Search Results Removal

« on: June 04, 2014, 12:34 AM »

Per this SlashGear article Vivint was delisted for four months and the delisting was just recently lifted. Google claims that the delisting was purely due to several spammy links (Google rep called them "unnatural" links) and that they, Google, had properly notified Vivint as to why they were delisted. He also said that as soon as Vivint corrected the problems and notified Google the delisting was lifted.

Seems it took Vivint four stinking months to finally get rid of their spammy and unnatural links!

Jim

85

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« on: May 30, 2014, 03:51 PM »

I don’t know if he's making it up (as he sometimes does) or if this is real info.

-J-Mac (May 30, 2014, 03:12 PM)

As he sometimes does?

-wraith808 (May 30, 2014, 03:27 PM)

I was referring to that "Imagined letter" from the TC developer. He has done that in the past too.

Jim

86

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« on: May 30, 2014, 03:12 PM »

Steve Gibson wrote earlier about some tweets between Steven Barnhart and his "contact" at TrueCrypt, someone named "David". As follows:

And then the TrueCrypt developers were heard from . . .
Steven Barnhart (@stevebarnhart) wrote to an eMail address he had used before and received several replies from “David.” The following snippets were taken from a twitter conversation which then took place between Steven Barnhart (@stevebarnhart) and Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green):

    TrueCrypt Developer “David”: “We were happy with the audit, it didn't spark anything. We worked hard on this for 10 years, nothing lasts forever.”
    Steven Barnhart (Paraphrasing): Developer “personally” feels that fork is harmful: “The source is still available as a reference though.”
    Steven Barnhart: “I asked and it was clear from the reply that "he" believes forking's harmful because only they are really familiar w/code.”
    Steven Barnhart: “Also said no government contact except one time inquiring about a ‘support contract.’ ”
    TrueCrypt Developer “David” said: “Bitlocker is ‘good enough’ and Windows was original ‘goal of the project.’ ”
    Quoting TrueCrypt Developer David: “There is no longer interest.”

I don’t know if he's making it up (as he sometimes does) or if this is real info.

Page is at:  https://www.grc.com/misc/truecrypt/truecrypt.htm

Jim

87

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« on: May 30, 2014, 12:14 PM »

I have the setup files for TC 7.0a and 7.0a1 if anyone is interested.

Jim

88

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« on: May 30, 2014, 02:50 AM »

One problem with that theory: TC 7.2 only allows for decryption; it will not encrypt.

Jim

89

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« on: May 29, 2014, 05:35 AM »

 
Nice post!  I didn't know much about the issues with the developers, which is why I posted only the links. I had heard that they had opened a "back door" for the NSA but didn't know the details.

Whatever the case, I guess a lot of folks will now be scrambling for a new encryption program.

Jim

90

Living Room / TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« on: May 29, 2014, 03:49 AM »

Their webpage at SourceForge now contains this "cryptic" message:

WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues

This page exists only to help migrate existing data encrypted by TrueCrypt.

The development of TrueCrypt was ended in 5/2014 after Microsoft terminated support of Windows XP. Windows 8/7/Vista and later offer integrated support for encrypted disks and virtual disk images. Such integrated support is also available on other platforms (click here for more information). You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images supported on your platform.

http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/

And this article at BoingBoing explains why:

http://boingboing.net/2014/05/29/mysterious-announcement-from-t.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Jim

91

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY 2014 Release: Process Piglet

« on: May 20, 2014, 12:15 PM »

A higher limit to what?

-mouser (May 20, 2014, 01:05 AM)

Never mind. Not a problem for me anymore.

Thank you.

Jim

92

General Software Discussion / Re: Nice blog post on the parasitic software hosting sites bundling junkware

« on: May 20, 2014, 12:14 PM »

Whatever happened to OpenCandy? Their rep was posting here a lot for a while, really pushing their wrapper and, like 40hz said, redefining the terms "adware" and "spyware". Then it all stopped suddenly. Did they crash and burn? Change their name? Get bought out by Google?
Thanks!
Jim

-J-Mac (April 09, 2014, 11:43 PM)

It's still owned and operated by Sweetlabs Inc. over in San Diego CA. And they appear to be still very much in business, claiming $21.5 million in venture funding and 750 million app installs according to their website. Not small potatoes by any measure, it would appear.

-40hz (May 20, 2014, 05:54 AM)

Wow! That's pretty telling! Hard to believe that the revenue potential is quite that promising from commissions or fees or whatever from the junkware developers whose products they push. We must be their main product. (And that is a very general "We" I use).

Jim

93

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY 2014 Release: Process Piglet

« on: May 20, 2014, 12:35 AM »

Manually set a higher limit? If nothing at all, then I don’t think it will be working correctly with most tabbed browsers.

Just my opinion... Don’t have a cow, man!

Jim

94

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY 2014 Release: Process Piglet

« on: May 19, 2014, 09:47 PM »

Doesn’t help, mouser.

Firefox, being a browser, takes at least that much time to fully load up all tabs that are open at the time it is started. As you open more tabs, or start a Flash video in a tab, etc., the memory will naturally increase. Mem usage will continue to fluctuate as you open and close tabs. If there isn't a way to have the memory average be dynamic - or allow it to be set manually, then Piglet is going to be of little or no use with regard to the memory used by browsers.

Jim

95

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY 2014 Release: Process Piglet

« on: May 17, 2014, 11:16 PM »

Mouser,

Any way to alter the initial read of the memory? As soon as I open Firefox Piglet starts squawking. I believe that the initial "average" of Firefox memory is too low. Otherwise why would it immediately start flagging Firefox when Firefox's memoiry usage is not increasing very much at all?

No way to manually override the memory setting?

Thank you.

Jim

96

General Software Discussion / Re: Sell your MS Office 2010?

« on: May 15, 2014, 04:38 AM »

You can also try LibreOffice, which is free.

-Deozaan (May 14, 2014, 03:21 PM)

I use both: Softmaker Office is much more compatible with MS Office. Libre Office's compatibility is so-so to poor in my experience. Softmaker's main weakness in comparision to Libre (again in my experience) is it's search - search steals focus, and doesnt allow you to edit, you've got to close it (search) to do anything - and then open it again to continue.

Softmaker forums are active, I'd highly recommend it if MS compatibility is important (disclaimer: I've absolutely no experience with PowerPoint/Presentations).

-tomos (May 14, 2014, 03:30 PM)

I'm running both also. Already had MS Office 2010 Professional, and I had used SoftMaker Office 2010 Pro on a desktop and earlier versions on my old Pocket PC devices. SoftMaker allows upgrades no matter how long ago you used their product so I purchased their SoftMaker Office Pro 2012. Left MS Office 2010 installed until I felt fully capable on the SM product. Still have both installed; no conflicts. SM Office is missing some features I use on Excel and Word but basically has everything you need.

Jim

97

Living Room / Re: Looking for a good non-Logitech keyboard

« on: May 04, 2014, 10:41 PM »

What is an Inverted-T cursor key?

-Deozaan (May 04, 2014, 12:17 PM)

Directional arrows: Up, down, right, left.  "inverted T" seems an unusual way to put it. (To me, anyway!) Is that a common tech term?

Jim

98

Living Room / Re: Looking for a good non-Logitech keyboard

« on: May 04, 2014, 01:01 AM »

I think I got mine for about $60 on sale, plus I had a gift card which brought the price down to something really nice, like $30. But still. I need a new keyboard now, and they're $100 now.

-Deozaan (May 02, 2014, 01:31 PM)

Do what I do. I track the prices at Amazon for certain items that I may buy repeatedly - like my K800! - and buy one when it is on sale, or at least priced significantly lower than usual. I just purchased a spare in March for $70. It is still in the box but at least it is there for when I need it. I also have a few new mice hanging around for when my current one bites the dust.

Jim

99

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: NANY 2014 Release - epCheck

« on: April 29, 2014, 12:25 AM »

Ahh, I already re-downloaded them. Guess what? Didn't kill me!

Thanks!

Jim

100

Living Room / Re: ImgBurn - full of OpenCandy and other crap

« on: April 28, 2014, 09:58 PM »

I will say that the OpenCandy offers did seem to always have an opt-out.  I still don't like it because the offers always seem to be for junk that no informed user would want.  OC offers an opt-out, but are relying on people to not understand what's happening. Also I wouldn't be at all surprised if even when OC offers an opt-out that some of the stuff installed via OC ('by permission') will install further junk that doesn't get an opt-out option.

-mwb1100 (April 28, 2014, 02:14 PM)

Unfortunately those "opt-out" check boxes don’t always mean anything. I used Networx for some years until earlier this year. While installing the latest update I was confronted with the "option" to also install the AVG Toolbar along with some other AVG garbage - Rewards program and stuff. I declined all but after installation I discovered that all of the AVG crap had installed anyway. After much bitching and moaning to anyone I thought would care - Softperfect, AVG - the most I got was that either I mistakenly accepted the installation, or they might have made an "oops". I posted on the Networx forum after searching it and wondering why no one else had ever complained about this... right up until they deleted my thread and I realized that no complaints survived their moderation apparently.

So beware the opt-outs, as they're not always real.

Jim