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1151

Developer's Corner / TempleOS - A Constructive Look.

« Last post by IainB on March 26, 2017, 05:21 PM »

Thoughtful article by one Richard Mitton in Codersnotes.com. Though it came up in my Hacker News RSS feed only today, it was originally posted June 8th, 2015.
It is about TempleOS, an OS developed by a troubled guy. It looks rather impressive.
A Constructive Look At TempleOS
(Extract copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

...There are many bad things to be said about TempleOS, many aspects of it that seem poorly constructed or wouldn't work in the "real world". I'm going to ignore them here. It's very easy to be negative, but you will never learn anything new by doing so.

Many might consider TempleOS a waste of time, compared to more fully-featured OSs such as Linux, because it will never have the same success. Plan 9, developed by Bell Labs, was a research OS designed to be a successor to Unix. Despite some big names and big ideas, it was never any kind of commercial success. Was Plan 9 therefore a waste of time? Many would argue not, as some of its ideas have since found their way into other products.

Perhaps we should instead look at TempleOS as a research operating system: what can be accomplished if you're not locked into established thinking, backwards compatibility, and market demands.

What can we learn if we are only willing to listen? ...

(Read more at the link.)

1152

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 KB4013429 Failed to Install... Again and Again

« Last post by IainB on March 26, 2017, 04:13 PM »

@Deozaan: The problem you describe sounds - almost word-for-word - like the problem I had in Sep. 2016, and I posted my solution (a destructive forced install of the Windows Update) in the DC forum: Re: Windows 10 - if update does not work, try a forced destructive update.

If you look at that and the post I made immediately after, you will find some potentially useful links. There was no solution proferred in discussion forums, and I had at least twice run the system health check/cleanup for Windows 10:

• sfc /scannow
• Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

If you have to take the same route, do ensure that you first take a copy of your current Windows 10 Product Key, as you will probably need it after the install (if not before, when getting the ISO). The forced update/install is likely to be destructive of your existing Win10 image and will obliterate lots of stuff, so back up all your data, just-in-case, though it's the Programs and User directories that mostly got zapped - the  Programs directories were largely deleted, and the User directories were partially deleted with the residue being moved to an "Old Windows" folder.

'Twas no picnic.   

1153

Find And Run Robot / Re: Exporting FARR result list using snagit TXT mode

« Last post by IainB on March 26, 2017, 03:34 PM »

@mouser:

i wouldn't mind adding an export result list function.
_________________________

-mouser (September 21, 2013, 09:27 AM)

That could be useful, but it would seem to be a chore to ask you to do it if you don't need to - it is only necessary now because of an intermittent requirement and one apparently cannot already access the FARR output pane using (say) SysExporter (though Snagit apparently seems to work to some extent).
I would be interested to learn/understand why that is the case. CHS seems to be in the same boat.
Playing around with SysExporter just now, one can see/copy all the installed items (not just those currently displayed) in Windows Update, and the files listed in xplorer² similarly, so why not similarly in FARR and CHS?

1154

General Software Discussion / Re: video manager / viewer which will show 4 or more images from the video

« Last post by IainB on March 26, 2017, 09:24 AM »

@Curt: Nifty find. Thanks. I could use that now I know it exists.   

1155

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Securing the DC website with HTTPS

« Last post by IainB on March 26, 2017, 09:17 AM »

Ruddy heck. What are we going to do about this?

1156

General Software Discussion / Re: Find And Run Robot - Sort by _____

« Last post by IainB on March 26, 2017, 09:10 AM »

I was going to suggest that this requirement could be resolved through the use of Nirsoft's excellent Sysexporter, but I thought I'd test it out first.
Sadlement, it doesn't seem able to catch the output to FARR's results panel.     
Bother!

1157

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on March 25, 2017, 10:34 PM »

@Arizona Hot:

I never knew I was that nerdy.

-Arizona Hot (March 25, 2017, 08:43 PM)

My apologies. I did not mean to imply that you were excessively nerdy, or cause you to reflect on your self-image and be disturbed by unwanted thoughts that you might be demonstrating  behaviours of excessive nerdity. I'm sure you are just fine as you are.   

1158

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer - initial feedback v2.13.01 x64

« Last post by IainB on March 25, 2017, 05:08 PM »

Not sure why, but this latest version of ProcessTamer doesn't seem to work fully.
ProcessTamerConfigurator.exe is v2.13.1.0
ProcessTamerTray.exe is v2.0.10.1

ProcessHacker shows the PT process as running OK, and its icon sits in the Systray, but it can't seem to come up with the About or Configure panels.

I shall investigate to see if I have some settings or something somehow left over from the previous version and which might possibly be messing it up.
I shall also check whether I have all the latest Windows OS updates.

PC is an HP Pavilion-15 laptop with an Intel i7 CPU, running Win10-64 PRO.

UPDATE: 2017-03-26 1449hrs
I made these changes, which seemed to fix it:

• Set PORTABLE=TRUE in ConfigDir.ini file (may not be relevant for all users).
  
  
• Set CONFIGDIR = . in ConfigDir.ini file (may not be relevant for all users).
  
  
• Restored old DonationCoder_processtamer_InstallInfo.dat file to application folder (C:\UTIL\Windows utilities\FindAndRunRobot\Plugins\ProcessTamer).
  
  
• Restored old DonationCoder_processtamer_Key.dat file to application folder (C:\UTIL\Windows utilities\FindAndRunRobot\Plugins\ProcessTamer).

I can confirm that PT seems to have no problem with either killing processes or adjusting the CPU priority of processes, with the several 32-bit and 64-bit apps that I have tried so far.

The only shortcoming seems to be that the PT Configure pane suffers - in common with most other @mouser apps -  from the excessively minuscule and apparently 1-pixel thick character font, making it difficult to read without magnification or specs of some sort (for those with imperfect vision).

1159

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on March 25, 2017, 04:56 PM »

@Arizona Hot:

17 jokes that only smart people will really appreciate
Everyone here is smarter than these jokes. Everyone!
___________________________

-Arizona Hot (March 25, 2017, 02:39 AM)

Could you please try to remember to put in some trigger warnings with jokes like that?
I was made to feel small/unintelligent and had feelings of inadequacy because I was unable to appreciate quite a few of those jokes on first reading and had to look up the explanations.
I wouldn't have read them in the first place if you had put a trigger warning up front that warned that the jokes may be excessively intellectually challenging for some readers and that the reader may feel dumb if he/she didn't "get" them, and thus I could have avoided the emotional stress which I needlessly experienced - not to mention that reading the explanations made them so unfunny (i.e., seeming to be not actually relevant humour for this thread), as pointed out by @tomos.
Thanks for helping to make this silly humour forum a safe space.   

1160

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CHS v2.41.0 - auto-merge a text clip with an existing Image?

« Last post by IainB on March 23, 2017, 03:44 PM »

@mouser: You know how when you make an image clip, it saves to the database as a 2-part clip - one has a Clip Text tab, the other has a Clip Image tab?

Would it be possible to have a facility to somehow auto-merge a text clip with an existing Image that doesn't yet have any text (apart from the image file path/name)?
The way I do this at present is manual, tedious, and error prone - I just copy and paste stuff into that Image's text tab.

1161

General Software Discussion / Re: video manager / viewer which will show 4 or more images from the video

« Last post by IainB on March 23, 2017, 02:23 PM »

When I last ran Picasa (Sunset version), I noticed that it did thumbnails for my videos like that. It was new to me - but that's because I would not have noticed when they introduced that as I usually only use Picasa for still image management (at which, it is excellent). Quite useful, I thought. Not sure if it does it for all video types though.

CORRECTION: Oops, sorry. Disregard what I wrote above. I was mistaken. I just went and quickly checked Picasa. It only does one thumbnail for each video - not several. The one it does may vary though - i.e., not always the same. Have not exhaustively tested it.

1162

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by IainB on March 23, 2017, 02:16 PM »

@panzer:

...I installed both on Slimjet. It looks like Johnny is a little bit faster detecting/disabling ads, and on some pages it finds more ads to block than ublock. If you click on Johnny's icon, then let say you click twice (to disable and enable) on stopping all ads, it starts talking (if you have sound on) .

I have no idea about memory footprint. Johnny is brand new, so there is no comparison against the others yet ...
_____________________

-panzer (March 23, 2017, 12:25 PM)

Oh, well done. Thanks for the report! BAJ does seem to be pretty quick/efficient. Yes, I have noticed that it talks to me. It has a rather more threatening personality than Talking Moose!

1163

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by IainB on March 23, 2017, 11:57 AM »

@panzer:

...I wonder how does it compare to ublock origin ...

-panzer (March 23, 2017, 11:08 AM)

I dunno. I thought about it, but ended up not trialling ublock origin - I recall thinking that it might take a bit too much time/trouble to install and use, so wished to avoid another potential time-bandit.
Maybe someone in the DC Forum has already trialled both and could write up a quick comparison, or maybe there's a comparison or review online that will do the job? I found several comparing ublock origin with others, but not BadAdJohnny (which seems to be a relative newcomer.).

1164

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by IainB on March 23, 2017, 10:44 AM »

@panzer: BadAdJohnny seems to be working quite well, so far. No reason to nix it anyway, so I shall leave it installed.

1165

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by IainB on March 21, 2017, 10:08 AM »

@panzer:

Email this:
https://chrome.googl...fnlefhnnpppndbbjallh
Extension Boilerplate - foundation for building cross browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox & Opera from a single code base (olny a sample extension):
https://github.com/E...xtension-boilerplate
_________________________

-panzer (March 21, 2017, 07:37 AM)

The email this extension looks rather good.
I was interested in it as I have had difficulty finding a replacement for the FF (Firefox) add-on Scrapbook, and email this could be an alternative (maybe better than ReadItLater, etc.).
However, what I am wanting is a copy of the full web page - i.e., including all items on the webpage - diagrams, photos, embedded links, even embedded/linked .ZIP, .exe, or .PDF files. (Scrapbook can do this).

As a potential alternative to Scrapbook, I have a provisional workaround in Slimjet, using the right-click menu option Save As, which provides the web page only, as a single file, saved in .mhtml format - which is highly compressed (compared to the .htm format) and can be read by most/any browser-reading tool  - including @skwire's excellent Mass HTML Viewer (refer Efficiently view set of .htm files, one after another)

This Save As functionality requires the Chrome extensions SingleFile and SingleFile Core.

These web page files can be saved to a directory on the local client, which can be (say) connected to a Cloud folder and accessed from any device. On a Windows client, the files can be indexed/searched by WDS (Windows Desktop Search), so file management, retrieval and access is performed using Windows Explorer and is actually simpler and more reliable than using the Scrapbook File Manager and Search tools - which can only be used in the FF browser and are slow as all heck, though there is the benefit of being able to make notes that are attached to (go with) the saved pages.
Using the NTFS as the database seems simpler than locking the data into some kind of proprietary tool (e.g., FF Scrapbook, or Zotero - both of which are rather similar in that they use similar code for copying web pages WebPageDump).

Anyway, having read this, if you come across anything that might be able to help further with this in Slimjet, then I'd be grateful if you would link to it in this thread. (Thanks.)

1166

LaunchBar Commander / Re: LATEST LaunchBar Commander VERSION INFO THREAD - v1.152.01 - Mar 15, 2017

« Last post by IainB on March 21, 2017, 08:23 AM »

@mouser:

"We recommend you to not perform this action" does not sound natural in (American) English, but perhaps it would sound better to say "We recommend that you do not perform this action."
___________________

-mouser (March 21, 2017, 06:53 AM)

That's what my English teacher would probably have recommended as the correct use of English in this case, but it might be regarded as being pedantic to insist on using "that" in modern usage - particularly in American usage, I would have thought. When I remember to do it, I would generally use "that" when I am writing, anyway, as it would seem to be more specific, which could reduce any potential ambiguity. However, when writing a negative (do not do this thing) instruction in (say) a Help file, I would suggest the passive form, taking out the 3rd person plural "We": This action is not recommended, or (say) This action is not recommended unless/except etc. (which @cranioscopical seems to be hinting at - i.e., there may be an implicit conditional "if" statement that is not spelled out).

However, it seems that, in common American usage, the verb "recommend" is often followed by an infinitive verb with "to".
Examples:

• "The man recommended to take the next turning on the left."
• "The man recommended him to take the next turning on the left."

- but what about: "The man recommended taking the next turning on the left."?

A dictionary does not always help:

• that
  · pron. & det. (pl. those)
  1 used to identify a specific person or thing observed or heard by the speaker. Ø referring to the more distant of two things near to the speaker.
  2 referring to a specific thing previously mentioned or known.
  3 used in singling out someone or something with a particular feature.
  4 informal, chiefly Brit. expressing strong agreement with something just said: ‘He’s a fussy man.’ ‘He is that.’
  5 [as pron.] (pl. that) used instead of which, who, when etc. to introduce a defining clause, especially one essential to identification.
  · adv. to such a degree. Ø [with neg.] informal very: he wasn’t that far away.
  · conj.
  1 introducing a subordinate clause.
  2 poetic/literary expressing a wish or regret.
  – PHRASES and all that (or and that) informal and so on. like that informal instantly or effortlessly. that is (or that is to say) a formula introducing or following an explanation or further clarification. that said even so. that’s that there is nothing more to do or say about the matter.
  – ORIGIN OE thæt, nominative and accusative sing. neut. of se ‘the’, of Gmc origin.
  Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th Ed.)
  _______________
  

  
  

• recommend
  · v.
  1 put forward with approval as being suitable for a purpose or role. Ø advise as a course of action. Ø advise to do something.
  2 make appealing or desirable.
  3 (recommend someone/thing to) archaic commend or entrust someone or something to.
  – DERIVATIVES recommendable adj. recommendation n. recommendatory adj. recommender n.
  – ORIGIN ME: from med. L. recommendare, from L. re- (expressing intensive force) + commendare ‘commit to the care of’.
  Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th Ed.)
  

Different dictionaries and other English references seem to give conflicting recommendations, and opinions differ.

Your American colleagues speak a strange variety of American English. I recommend them to stop giving grammatical advice! I recommend that they stop giving grammatical advice!
You can advise someone to do something, but can neither recommend nor suggest someone to do something, in my opinion.
In fact, you may hear recommend someone to do something, or even see it in writing, but it doesn't strike me as correct.
From: https://www.englishf...Forms/zxrnm/post.htm

Of course, it's not just Americans on this forum and so the correct English usage for this case could probably be endlessly debated!   

1167

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on March 20, 2017, 02:03 PM »

The language used here is Spanish, so this clever, wall-scaling family team of raccoons might be in Mexico - I'm not sure: (makes you think!)
https://twitter.com/...s/841910952563998721

1168

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on March 20, 2017, 01:09 PM »

Brilliant.
Flight attendant nails Britney's 'Toxic' video with onboard dance number

1169

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on March 20, 2017, 12:10 PM »

Trigger Warning!: - a public health initiative sponsored by LLF (Live Life Fully) and the RSHHJJCCU (Ren & Stimpy Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy Consortium for Career Underachievers).

This post and the image depicted:

• May make you wish you had never seen this as you may be unable to forget having seen it.
• May cause feelings of fear or danger as the scene depicted is a crime scene.
• May seem to be suggesting that drivers of Volkswagen motor vehicles will tend to make a habit of running people down on pedestrian crossings in London (UK), and that London therefore presents an unsafe environment for pedestrians and is a potentially dangerous place to visit or live (though this could be true, of course).
• May surprise you with the thought that the scene is actually Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a summer's day, all Photoshopped and made to look like London.
• May give rise to feelings that the image is racist or lacks social diversity, or worse - both.
• May induce morbid or sad thoughts.
• May seem to be unnecessarily silly.
• May seem to be insufficiently silly.
• May contain "adult content".
• May not be safe to view at the workplace.
• May not be safe and may be disturbing to view at home or with family and/or children.
  
• May be emotionally disturbing and cause feelings of regret if viewed by elderly grandparents who were smoking pot in North London or Chelsea in the '60s/'70s, or who might have wished they had been smoking pot at those places and times.
• May cause said elderly grandparents to go and fire up a hookah with some pot and start listening wistfully to endless tracks of Ravi Shankar playing the sitar.
• May not be safe to view in a public place.
• May not be safe to view in a private place.
• May not be safe to view in a music studio.
• May not be safe to view in a box.
• May not be safe to view with a fox.
• May not be safe to view on a smartphone whilst driving a motor vehicle.
• May not be safe to view on a smartphone whilst having a bath or in the rain, especially if a power charger is plugged-in to the smartphone.
• May make you think you have gone totally deaf or the volume is turned down, until you realise that there is no soundtrack accompanying the image being displayed.
• May risk offending people's sensitivity or musical tastes.
• May make you feel like cr#p as it may remind you that you are insensitive, or tone deaf and/or have no musical taste.
• May make you feel emotionally upset or disturbed in ways that are hard to describe, though the words to do so may be on the tip of your tongue.
• May make you feel funny inside.
• May make you want to sigh.
• May make you want to cry.
• May make you want to go out and kill someone or rip their eyes out.
• May make you want to kill yourself or rip your own eyes out.
• May cause mental confusion or anguish because the image as depicted is surreal humorous art tinged with tragic irony, but you just don't get it.
• May cause uncomfortable feelings of ego-hurt or inferiority because you are unsure what "surreal humour" is.
• May cause uncomfortable feelings of ego-hurt or inferiority because you are unsure what "irony" is either.
• May make you want to look up the definition of the words "surreal" or "irony" or "humour" or "lethalogica" in the dictionary.
• May cause concern in case the scene photographed contains residual particles of peanuts, or seeds containing gluten, or traces of dairy products or monosodium glutamate or dihydrogen monoxide.
• May make you wish there was a Down Vote or Burn button to press.
• May make you wish that the trigger warnings would please, please, just STOP.

Don't worry. All of the above concerns and feelings and any other feelings that you may be experiencing at this moment are perfectly valid and in no way indicative that you are anything less than perfect. They are your feelings and they are right and correct. So, don't let that nasty little voice in your head or that loud-mouthed opinionated, pointy-headed #sshole sat in the next cubicle or bus seat try to tell you any different. Just loudly speak the soothing magic invocation "Shut up, racist!" to them, to make them go away, and then embrace your feelings and thus embrace yourself. Give yourself a really good-feeling real or mental hug - in an entirely altruistic and non-sensuous way, of course (especially if you are in a public place, but it's OK if you are in private or your bedroom - you can knock yourself out then!).   



(By Tony Futura)

1170

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on March 19, 2017, 10:58 PM »

They Used To Last 50 Years

1171

General Software Discussion / Re: Any tool that immediately shows boot time problems?

« Last post by IainB on March 19, 2017, 10:28 PM »

@highend01:

...Boot time is now ~20 seconds (without SSD < 1 min). ...
________________

-highend01 (March 19, 2017, 01:30 PM)

That's pretty fast. Did you mean "(without SSD < 1 min)" or "(without SSD > 1 min)"?

1172

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Malwarebytes FREE and PRO/Premium - Mini-Review.

« Last post by IainB on March 19, 2017, 09:57 PM »

Well, I haven't yet found a suitable independent review of MBAM v3.x to post here, but there is some interesting user feedback about MBAM v3.x coming from users in this forum (DCF). For example:
From: Malwarebytes goes full Anti-Virus

I don't see what that has to do with the heuristic scanning.

-wraith808 (March 18, 2017, 01:43 PM)

Wraith, I'm very sorry to hear about your horrendous experience with MB3, but I'm most grateful to you for posting about it.  You've saved me from moving to MB3 from MB2.  One very weird thing about your present experience is that apparently it's the heuristic scanning that is taking so long. In MB2, the heuristic scanning occurs at the end of the scan and takes VERY little time, perhaps a minute or so. 

-cyberdiva (March 19, 2017, 07:01 PM)

My experience is that MBAM v3 seems to have become excessively RAM-intensive at times - e.g., taking up (accumulating) a lot of RAM whilst it is running the heuristic scan, and not letting go of it when done. Restarting it temporarily reduces the overhead. I feel sure that the developers would probably be aware of this inefficiency  (RAM being a finite resource) and would be working to resolve the problem it causes. We shall see.

As to the suggestion in the above quoted thread that MBAM might make it unnecessary to have a separate AV tool (e.g., such as Windows Defender, which is now bundled with MS Security Essentials AV), I would recommend users retain both - as a belts-and-braces approach, for the time being, at any rate.
I mean, there may be some surprises. For example, in terms of future developments, I have often wondered what MS might intend for the Malicious Software Removal Tool that they insert and run in successive Windows updates ... it seems to be rather good at what it does...   

1173

General Software Discussion / Re: I Think I did

« Last post by IainB on March 19, 2017, 09:39 PM »

...I'll update it with Gantt chart dependencies...
______________________

-PPLandry (March 19, 2017, 03:18 PM)

Impressive.   

1174

Living Room / Re: Arizona sunsets

« Last post by IainB on March 19, 2017, 09:34 PM »

I am not going to restrict this thread to just sunsets. ...
___________________________

-Arizona Hot (March 19, 2017, 07:38 PM)

As author of the OP (opening post) of this thread, you can change the title of the thread in the OP. if you do that, then all new posts made after that point will then contain the modified title - e.g., you could call it (say) "Arizona Eagle Eye", or something.
You could also edit/update the OP itself to say what other, new things/subjects you are currently adding to (including in) the thread.
In this way, one can develop a sort of "curated" discussion thread with an evolving purpose - though I dislike using that term "curated" as it can be a cliché.

1175

Living Room / Re: Arizona sunsets

« Last post by IainB on March 19, 2017, 09:17 PM »

but it has manual setting too doesn't it?

-tomos (March 18, 2017, 11:58 AM)

Definitely, but I haven't needed to use them and like you said it would take a long time to learn how to set them. These are casual pictures. I am not seeking artistic or photographic perfection or exotic attainment. If you want the manual you can get it here or it is attached below.

-Arizona Hot (March 19, 2017, 04:13 PM)

Yes, nice camera. When I downloaded that handbook  - "Sony Camera - DSC-HX20-HX20V-HX30-HX30V - Cyber-shot User Guide" (per the "View from my window" thread) - I saw what a seriously good camera that was.
Sony really do make some consistently reliable and good-quality gear, suitably over-engineered so as to be fit-for-purpose as a "general-purpose" camera, which could encompass a wide range of user requirements -
"You just want point-and-shoot? Yeah, sure, it can do that too."

I was sold on Sony cameras a while back when I bought a refurbished Sony DSC-H55 Cyber-Shot camera.

There's a lot of in-camera processing of images that could be added to digital cameras (some has been added as a trial, but seems to have been withdrawn in later models). Sony don't seem to do too much of that though, and that sort of processing now often seems to turn up in smartphone cameras.