Recent Posts

11726

General Software Discussion / Re: Can anyone be a Hacker!

« Last post by mouser on March 06, 2012, 11:36 AM »

The term hacker is also used in the most positive general sense to describe someone who likes to understand how things work, and tinker with them -- someone who is not satisfied to just use devices as they are, but likes to understand how to make them do unusual things.  

A wonderful book about the history of "hackers", in the most positive sense, is "Hackers" by Steven Levy:
http://www.amazon.co...volution-Steven-Levy

11727

General Software Discussion / Re: Why 24-bit/192kHz music files make no sense - and may be bad for you!

« Last post by mouser on March 06, 2012, 11:29 AM »

Nice find, thanks for sharing 

11728

Living Room / Re: The conflict of interest that is Google

« Last post by mouser on March 05, 2012, 01:02 PM »

Article today slamming google for increasing tendency to bury real search results in ads:

http://www.edbott.co...-out-search-results/

That’s a total of 23 links on that page, as it appears on a typical computer. Only one is a search result.

11729

Living Room / Re: More Complete Patent Insanity (Warning -- You may vomit)

« Last post by mouser on March 05, 2012, 12:34 PM »

That flowchart is depressingly accurate except there is no big black box.. all paths connect to the red box in the bottom left, except for the one box not shown -- it's a big green box for if you are a billion-dollar plus corporation, in which case everything is working just fine thank you very much.

11730

General Software Discussion / FreewareGenius.com: The Best Free Compression / ZIP program

« Last post by mouser on March 05, 2012, 05:32 AM »

Big long piece on freewaregenius.com today, comparing free zip/compression tools.  Quite an impressive amount of work they did comparing the performance of the tools.

We set out to test what we thought to be the best free compression programs in a head-to-head QUANTITATIVE comparison, where we collected actual compression and extraction data on different system. We also took other, qualitative aspects into consideration, such as the features, the appeal of the interface, etc.

One of two tied for first place should be no surprise, it's the well known and powerful "7-zip"; the surprise is the other top place contender, "HaoZip", which is new to me.

http://www.freewareg...rogram-a-comparison/

11731

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.107.04 beta - Sep 23, 2012

« Last post by mouser on March 03, 2012, 03:00 PM »

FARR 3.0 will include an option for indexing and probably a revamped plugin system.  release date unknown.

11732

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.107.04 beta - Sep 23, 2012

« Last post by mouser on March 03, 2012, 02:28 PM »

oops

11733

Official Announcements / Re: I want to try an experiment on the site for March 2012

« Last post by mouser on March 03, 2012, 06:37 AM »

I would be pissed off if i visited a website and a java applet started, especially if it were to generate bitcoins, etc.

It's one thing to have a special page for it and a link to the page explaining what's going to happen if they click -- but quite another to just launch it when someone lands on your regular page.

Just my 2 cents.

11734

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 to offer nine versions for sale

« Last post by mouser on March 03, 2012, 03:12 AM »

It is an interesting user interface design challenge that horizontal scrolling is quite natural on a tablet/phone/touch, but just about the most painful thing to have to do on a desktop.

11735

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of: Tool to show multiple (hard drive) temperatures in the system tray

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2012, 05:49 PM »

We have a winner.  CrystalDiskInfo is free and great.  

My system tray:


Thanks Nigel!

11736

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of: Tool to show multiple (hard drive) temperatures in the system tray

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2012, 05:24 PM »

Doesn't look like Real Temp even monitors hard drive temperatures -- so that's a miss.

11737

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of: Tool to show multiple (hard drive) temperatures in the system tray

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2012, 04:41 PM »

I like Speed fan but it cannot show multiple tray icons (one for each hd) -- at least as far as i can tell.

I don't know if Hardware Sentinal Pro can, but it's too expensive and too big for my needs (though it sounds excellent for someone who really wants to monitor their hard drives).

I'll check out the others.

11738

General Software Discussion / In search of: Tool to show multiple (hard drive) temperatures in the system tray

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2012, 04:00 PM »

I'm looking for a utility to show multiple hard drive temperatures in the system tray so i can tell at a glance the temperatures.

• My number 1 request is to have multiple system tray icons, one for each hard disk temperature.

Other features that would be nice would be:

• Monitoring other temperatures (motherboard, gpu, etc.)
• Color changes in temp according to my preset ranges
• Small (and preferably free or at least very cheap)
• NOT a big full featured suite of tools to do everything under the sun

Anyone have any recommendations?

11739

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Antivirus Software a Waste of Money?

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2012, 02:44 PM »

I basically take Innuendo's view - the cost of running an antivirus program and firewall, in terms of money and cpu cycles, seems low enough that it's worth doing, even if the chances of it catching anything useful are slim.

I don't think i've ever in all the years I've used a computer, had a virus detected in a program/document that i didn't already view as too suspicious to run.  Except one or two cases that an item was caught on a compromised web page.

But I would never assume that something is clean just because an antivirus program doesn't detect something.  I view them only as a minor line of defense.

I think the point about antivirus software not catching brand new malware is just one more reason why it always pays to try to delay using new stuff whose source you are unsure of.  Let the other canaries go into the mine first..

11740

General Software Discussion / Is Antivirus Software a Waste of Money?

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2012, 07:59 AM »

Interesting points here -- nothing really new just confirmation that an antivirus program is not going to catch the newest attacks:

The problem is that most criminals are smart enough to test their attacks against popular antivirus products. There’s even a free website called Virus Total that lets you see whether any of the most popular malware scanning engines will spot your Trojan program or virus. So when new attacks pop up on the internet, it’s common for them to completely evade antivirus detection.

http://www.wired.com...e/2012/03/antivirus/

11741

MEWLO Web Framework / Re: OLD - Unfinished Web project: YUMPS

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2012, 05:13 AM »

yeah makes sense to keep it where yii lives.

11742

Official Announcements / Re: I want to try an experiment on the site for March 2012

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2012, 03:50 AM »

When is that (basic curiosity) not a good reason for running an experiment?

well said -- i agree completely.

what i meant to say was: let me not waste the patience of our visitors and members by just doing random things that have little chance of providing some useful insight; let me wait until i have some experiment that is more interesting.

11743

Official Announcements / Re: I want to try an experiment on the site for March 2012

« Last post by mouser on March 02, 2012, 03:21 AM »

Ok.. after chewing over everyone's comments, I decided to abandon the one month ad experiment for now.

Not because I think there is anything wrong with experimenting -- but because I think the comments exposed that I didn't have a good reason for doing it other than basic curiosity.  So I think instead we will wait until there is some question worth answering -- some new idea to experiment with.  If you think of anything that might be worth an experiment let us know.

11744

Web Link Captor / Re: Web Link Captor - Links to Reviews and Comments - Add yours!

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2012, 03:49 PM »

Very nice long writeup at PC World today:
http://www.pcworld.c...r,4/description.html

Web Link Captor (free/donationware) would be a cherry pitter, something I would need maybe once every few months for a very specific task--but does its job like no other tool can.

11745

Living Room / Re: Paypal: Censors in the name of Profit

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2012, 09:17 AM »

My instinct tells me that this is NOT at all about about paypal trying to impose their morals and not wanting to traffic in porn or sexual stuff.  I suspect this is at heart a business decision.

Now whether it's a business decision based on high numbers of callbacks, or pressure from government, or pressure from community groups, or fears of being sued for or charged with aiding and abetting the sale of illegal content (that would be my guess), I can't say.  But these kinds of companies don't have morals in the way that a person does -- it is about the money.

11746

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 7 Days of Free Downloads from VideoBlocks.com

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2012, 08:28 AM »

Nikki, thank you for your post here.  Sometimes we can get a little over eager when it comes to "protecting" our members and may be too quick to throw around accusations.  I apologize if I jumped the gun accusing you guys of bad behavior.

When someone posts telling our members about a service on our forum (as stephen did with VideoBlocks), we feel a little responsible to look out for them when they use it, and I was just trying to encourage Curt to let you guys know that he didn't feel good about what happened.

I think it speaks very well of your company that you took the time to reach out to Curt here.  Speaking as an observer it gives me a good feeling about VideoBlocks  

11747

MEWLO Web Framework / Re: OLD - Unfinished Web project: YUMPS

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2012, 05:52 AM »

I've also decided to open source yumps.

11748

LaunchBar Commander / Re: LBC with two monitors problem

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2012, 04:35 AM »

Great 

11749

MEWLO Web Framework / Re: OLD - Unfinished Web project: YUMPS

« Last post by mouser on March 01, 2012, 04:13 AM »

Following up on my focus on making this a very robust *core* for user/group stuff, I've spent the last week putting in place a system if "bridged" logins.

This means users will be able to login to a yumps site using openid/facebook/twitter/etc, with very robust support for managing their linked/bridged logins (creating multiple ways to login, removing them, optionally requiring additional security like local password), and automatically creating local accounts from the bridged logins, so that the entire process is transparent to the rest of the site -- including all the normal operations for validating/approving accounts, etc.

In other words, if you build a site using yumps -- your users should be able to create accounts and login normally, or using a wide variety of 3rd party sites, and it should happen totally transparently to you as the site coder.  Yumps will also be a host (via something like OpenId) for providing such authorization of yumps accounts to other sites.

11750

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by mouser on February 29, 2012, 04:58 PM »

I think it will be a great experience for you if you take more of a hacker mindset to it -- don't expect everything to be go perfectly smoothly and for it to be a smooth "transition" -- think of it more like exploring an alternate reality.