Recent Posts

1101

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: USB Safely Remove for Free

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 19, 2009, 04:37 PM »

This is a nice little utility - the USB device handling built into Windows (XP anyway) can be very frustrating.  This tool makes it work just like you'd want it to work (at least it's the way I want it to work).  MS could learn a little something from these guys. It's one of those things that's so small in some ways that you'd never think to look for a tool to replace the built-in functionality.  But once you have this tool, it's irritating when you go to use it on a machine that doesn't have it (not the end of the world, but irritating).

  - it gives you the name of the devices, so you don't have to guess or search out which drive letter windows gave your USB drive
  - it tells you exactly what's going on if there's an open file (what file and what process has it open) preventing a 'clean' remove
  - it'll close the processes for you or let you force the device to be stopped in that case, if you want (I can't remember if the Windows tool lets you do that short of just yanking the device out)
  - it lets you configure the drive letter the device should get (this always really bugged me - without this, plugging the device into a different USB port would often cause Windows to assign a different drive letter)

Some things that I don't use, but I can imagine some people would find very useful:

  - handles card readers that show as multiple drives intelligently
  - lets you define actions to perform when a device is plugged in, stopped, etc.


It's a no-brainer for free.  I hope this nets them some sales in the next update cycle.

1102

General Software Discussion / Re: photo duplicate scanner

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 19, 2009, 01:00 PM »

$23 at Bits du Jour / Daily-Deals.

-Curt (August 19, 2009, 07:34 AM)

Just to point out that $23 is a typo - the deal is for $14.

1103

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Another Outpost Security Suite Giveaway - Deadline Aug 20th

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 14, 2009, 01:08 PM »

Just an FYI, the contest rules state:

  - Competitions are open to residents of the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Irish Republic.

Dno't know how careful they'll be about enforcing this.

1104

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 12, 2009, 09:32 PM »

BTW, I really liked the "Slow Driver must pull over" Federal Law in the USA

-4wd (July 10, 2009, 12:31 AM)

Hey - what law us that?  I might have to start writin' some tickets!

1105

LaunchBar Commander / Re: McAfee again. Don't ask.

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 09, 2009, 05:44 PM »

However, Symantec has a long history of buying great companies who published great products and then churning out some half-baked solution using a parody solution of the once great technology.

-Innuendo (August 09, 2009, 10:42 AM)

This seems like a problem for almost any acquisition made by a large software company.  It would be nice if an acquisition like this happened and the parent company just said to the original developers, "Here's a somewhat bigger budget - do more of what you've been doing".  But it seems like the bigger guys always think they can do it better.

1106

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: StopZilla (StupidZilla) at BitsDuJour.

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 06, 2009, 03:54 PM »

I wouldn't mind opinions/comparisons on SUPERAntiSpyware as well. 

Also, is a dedicated aAnti-spyware necessary if you have one of the anti-virus suites (Norton, Trend, or the ever-so-loved McAfee,  etc.).  I mean, isn't malware malware?  Why distinguish between virus, spyware, trojan, worm, whatever.  It's all crap I don't want getting on my machine.

1107

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: TopStyle 50% discount on BDJ, August 5

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 29, 2009, 03:17 PM »

It might be of interest to people to know that TopStyle has been recently acquired by Stefan van As from Newsgator/Nick Bradbury (http://nick.typepad....ann-topstyle-ac.html).  TopStyle 4 is his first release since the acquision (non-beta anyway).

1108

Living Room / Re: The Apollo onboard computer

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 21, 2009, 06:50 PM »

ps. for those of you who are tempted to try making one, be warned, this is a 3ft x 5ft entity:

-mouser (July 21, 2009, 02:11 PM)

Yeah, when I went to the site and saw that picture, my thinking went from "that's cool" to "that's f&^*!ing crazy! (but still cool)".

I have a hard enough time plugging stuff into my 120V mains using standard 2 or 3 prong plugs.  I'd go mad trying to get all those little wires hooked up right...

1109

General Software Discussion / Re: $20 if you make me a 6' Molex cable. $10 for recommending a better solution.

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 17, 2009, 11:18 PM »

I'm no electrician, but sending 50-80W over 6' of that type of cable sounds like something that might be potentially hazardous (I'm not saying that it is - just that I'd look into that aspect).  A fire's the last thing you'd want from your setup.

1110

General Software Discussion / Re: $20 if you make me a 6' Molex cable. $10 for recommending a better solution.

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 17, 2009, 11:10 PM »

You could get one of those adapters that connects a bare IDE drive to a USB outlet - they always come with an AC adapter that will power IDE drives which happen to have Molex connectors.  Something like:

http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16812156101

edit:

Oh - I see you already considered something like this and that it won't drive the watts/amps that you need.

1111

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 07, 2009, 11:06 AM »

People who seem to think that by turning on my blinker I am telling them to "Speed up"

-Josh (July 06, 2009, 04:31 PM)

There's a corrolary to this one (which hit me this morning on my way to work): 

When moving smoothly down the left hand lane, someone in the right hand lane will jump in front of you then proceed to slow down (invariably going slower than the vehicles in the right hand lane).

1112

General Software Discussion / Re: Map a Drive via SFTP

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 06, 2009, 12:24 PM »

The ExpanDrive people have definitely been working much more dilligently on the Mac version of the product.  They've indicated that they are planning to move the Mac features over to the Windows product, but that process has been very, very slow so far.

I'd say to try it out and buy it if it meets your needs *today* - don't buy on speculation of additional features in future versions.  If and when they do add the newer features (I think the main ones are FTP and Amazon S3 support) to the Windows product, I suspect they are likely to ask for an upgrade fee (they did on the Mac side; I see no reason why they wouldn't on the Windows side).

For me, the big plus of SFPTDrive/ExpanDrive over WebDrive is that ExpanDrive is licensed on a user basis, while WebDrive is tied to a machine.

1113

General Software Discussion / Re: fully free software utilities for biz use - discussion

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 05, 2009, 11:25 PM »

I forgot to add: OpenVPN (the OSS version)

Commercial Licensing: Businesses and enterprises who wish to incorporate a modified version of OpenVPN Software into an appliance for re-distribution and keep those modifications proprietary must license a commercial version of OpenVPN.

-4wd (July 05, 2009, 08:36 PM)

Also note that any restrictions having to do with commercial use apply *only* if you are modifying and/or redistributing the software.

If you're simply *using* the software, no commercial license or release of source code (theirs or yours) is necessary. 

This applies to all "Open Source" licensed software (at least open source licenses as defined by the Open Source Initiative - http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd).

1114

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Hard to C -- a blog about programming

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 02, 2009, 05:08 PM »

You have an interesting set of articles there.  Looking forward to future installments...

I'm surprised the Padding Trouble bug didn't drive you waround the bend!

1115

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Resource Tuner 50% off on Bits Du Jour Today, June 10

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 02, 2009, 01:55 PM »

For whatever reason, resource editing software apparently isn't viewed as a necessity by a whole lot of people.

-pexplorer (July 02, 2009, 12:27 PM)

And there's the key - undoubtedly resource editing is not important to a lot of people.  And to those people something like Resource Tuner isn't interesting.  However, if you're someone who does find a need to edit resources, the situation is entirely different.

The same is true for any task X and tools to help do X.

1116

Living Room / Re: CD archive and copying

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 02, 2009, 01:35 AM »

Umm, no offense but I think you should check out the latest version which does allow you to create images....

-4wd (July 01, 2009, 07:24 PM)

This must be a relatively new addition to the Lite product - the product page (http://www.daemon-to.../eng/products/dtLite) mentions that Lite can create images, but the comparison table (http://www.daemon-to...eng/products/compare) indicates that it can't.

1117

Living Room / Re: CD archive and copying

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 29, 2009, 02:27 PM »

Music CDs can be compiled into ISOs.

-Innuendo (June 29, 2009, 11:43 AM)

My understanding was that Audio tracks are not supported in .iso files.  This is one reason why CD burning software often have proprietary formats (like .nrg) to image discs which contain more than data (or more than a single session of data).

Then again, I'm no expert, so I may be entirely wrong about this.

1118

Found Deals and Discounts / $50 off purchase of Sapien products (PrimalScript, etc.)

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 18, 2009, 11:44 AM »

Our CEO is turning 50 this month.  Take the coupon code OVRHILLFGR to ScriptingOutpost.com and get $50 off of anything in the store! Expires 6/30/09

Sapien's flagship product is PrimalScript - a very nice, but expensive, editor/IDE geared toward Windows scripting (VBscript, WMI, PowerShell etc  - not so much web scripting such as PHP or in-browser JavaScript).  PrimalScript is $300 (I think) so even with $50 off it remains pretty pricey.  But if it's something you've been considering, $50 may seal the deal for you.

What may be more interesting to some DCer's is the newly released PrimalXML editor oriented toward XML documents (if you couldn't guess).  With the $50 coupon the price for that software is $19.  I purchased a license because my current job is dealing with some XML gunk for communications between a couple platforms.  However, I'm not sure PrimalXML is quite baked enough to unreservedly recommend (things like the help file is currently missing, a file open always starts in the "My Documents\SAPIEN\XML" directory instead of the last directory something was opened from).

The nice parts of PrimalXML are the fact that it shows the XML in both a text form and a structured form, and the XML can be navigated/searched using simple XPath queries.  I honestly don't know how this compares with other XML-oriented editors, but it's definitely a step up from the XML support I've seen in the other text editors I have (which to be fair are text editors, not XML editors), and it seems worth the $20 for my purposes even with it's current teething pains.

They also have a few other new tools (a diff/merge tool, an SQL-oriented tool, and a version control tool), but I don't know any details about those.

Anyway if the discount is interesting to you, visit http://www.scriptingoutpost.com (Sapien's store) and/or http://www.sapien.com

1119

Living Room / Re: Early Windows apps

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 17, 2009, 07:28 PM »

I would like to know if they will run under Win Vista. I think it would be a real blast from the past and interesting backwards compatibility if some Windows 1 programs would run in Windows 7. I have attached the 2 zip archives of the programs to this entry.

-Arizona Hot (June 17, 2009, 07:06 PM)

I think they'll have a decent chance of running on 32-bit Vista and Win7 (but I'm not sure). To get them to run on a 64-bit platform will require a VM (VMware, Virtual PC, Win7's Virtual XP, etc.).

1120

General Software Discussion / Re: INfix: easy, capable, but expensive WordPad-like PDF editor

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 12, 2009, 09:19 AM »

Of course I had to try out e-pdf. I cannot remember why I didn't keep it, but I didn't. What I wanted to tell, now, is, that together with e-pdf came this little info box, basic rules, which might explain certain pdf editing problems, in general:

-Curt (June 11, 2009, 12:23 PM)

I tried out e-PDF when it was on sale and noticed this exact problem, realizing that it was an artifact of the PDF format. But this problem would make doing anything other than very minor edits quite painful. The few PDFs I tried it on had a text box around every few letters (even words were usually comprised of multiple text boxes).  I don't have a burning need to edit pdfs, so I just dropped it. 

What I wonder now is if other (possible more expensive) PDF editors such as INfix handle things such that this issue isn't noticeable by the user? 

1121

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PowerArchiver 2009 at 50% discount on BdJ (2009-06-10) : worth it ?

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 10, 2009, 09:48 AM »

I use PowerArchiver for all my archive file handling - I've never used it's DVD writing capability (though I have used it to open .iso files), so I can't comment on that.  I like it very much, but I'm not sure I'm a true power user for archive files, all I know is that I didn't like WinZIP, WinRAR or any of the free archiving utilities as much as PowerArchiver back when I bought it (quite a while ago).  I think the free utilities have come quite far in the meantime, but I've had no reason to look at them again.

Here are the things that I liked about PowerArchiver (and that keep me using it):

  - the Outlook plug in will automatically compress large or multiple attachments with no fuss
  - the support is fantastic
  - I use the proprietary .pae encrypted archives to have archives that have even the filenames encrypted (this didn't exist in other archivers, except maybe WinRAR when I bought PowerArchiver)
  - the basic, everyday handling of archives just work easily for me (drag-n-drop, shell integration, etc)

I think if you're not 100% happy with whatever you're using right now for archives, then the BDJ offer is definitely worth looking at.

1122

Found Deals and Discounts / UltraEdit 20% off until 15 June 2009

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 08, 2009, 09:04 AM »

Use coupon code "IDM20" to get 20% off your purchase at IDM, the makers of UltraEdit.

This discount applies to any purchase, not just UltraEdit (UE Studio, UltraCompare, etc.).  It also applies to purchases of upgrades.

Discount  code expires 15 June 2009.

http://www.ultraedit.com

1123

Living Room / Re: Weird Window When Computer Boots Up

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 07, 2009, 02:46 PM »

Get the CD you have and take it and the machine back to the tech and have him set it up for you using that CD.  The key on the certificate attached to the machine should work when that CD is used, and the tech should be able to locate any drivers that are not on the CD

You already paid this tech good money and he gave you back problems - he should do this for you with no additional charge.

1124

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 05, 2009, 11:47 AM »

My GF has done that since she was a kid. Back then, it was traditional around where I live to yell Woo-Hoo!! when a fellow barn-mate won a ribbon at a horse show. That's how she got started. (And yes, I still cringe every time she does it.)

Question: Does it still count as annoying if she didn't start doing it as an adult?

-40hz (June 05, 2009, 11:31 AM)

I think cowboys and cowgirls get a pass.

1125

Living Room / Re: Weird Window When Computer Boots Up

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 04, 2009, 05:34 PM »

I'd try using something like Autoruns to disable startup programs - see if the problem goes away.  If it does, you can re-enable startup items in small groups to see when the window reappears to narrow down what's causing it.