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1251

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Web-Browser Review: Opera 10.00

« Last post by Josh on February 02, 2010, 07:25 PM »

Nigel, I do not expect ANYONE to alter their position on a program, issue or debate based on my thoughts. What I do hope for, especially on DC, is good content in a review. Simply saying "everything" is good and "There are no cons" does not help someone, as a reader, understand why a program is good. That is all I am asking for here, not that he change his viewpoint on opera.

One thing I have noticed on DC, in particular, is that when a user writes a mini-review and includes a good amount of content, the MR topic will get a lot more attention than one which uses wording as described above by myself and other posters.

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Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Web-Browser Review: Opera 10.00

« Last post by Josh on February 02, 2010, 12:44 PM »

You also come forth to say that "I wont even put it in the same league as internet explorer". I see no justification for this comment based on this review. IE is a browser, Opera is a browser. What basis do you make these comments on?

What are these "Advanced security features" you speak of?

What makes the RSS reader "awesome"?

Easy to change themes

Ability to store notes and connect to your e-mail client (basically an outlook style application)

Options to Save, Manage, Import and Export your browsing sessions, so if you have a few tabs open that you usually use, you can set that to be the default session.

Option to restore previous session after unexpected crash or system reboot.

All of these are capable of being done in Firefox, IE and Chrome. How are these "Opera-unique"?

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Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Web-Browser Review: Opera 10.00

« Last post by Josh on February 02, 2010, 11:25 AM »

What I learned through this "review" is the same thing I already knew...Opera users, generally, treat themselves as elitists due to their low market share. It seems any product which holds a small portion of the market for such a long time ends up being tagged as an elitist product simply because "I use something not very many others use, look at how cool I am".

Stephen, I hate to be so critical publicly but if I wanted to see a "review" where an opera user gives me 200 reasons they the product is great with absolutely no shortcomings listed or no objectivity given, I would go to the opera forums. I would then ask them why after all of these years they fail to implement common features found amongst all other browsers and choose to ignore thousands upon thousands of user requests. I would then put on my flame-retardant pants because those are the only replies I would receive minus the one or two who agree buried in those replies. It's almost as bad as walking into a linux IRC channel after installing ubuntu for the first time and asking how to install a program "RTFM NOOB!!!!!"

1254

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Discount Software + Hardware for Students

« Last post by Josh on February 02, 2010, 05:44 AM »

I would only post sites that you personally have experience with so as to avoid spamming with many many links.

Journeyed is one I have used and is sponsored by my previous college. That said, most colleges offer similar sites with similar discounting and chances are your school already provides you this info.

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Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Web-Browser Review: Opera 10.00

« Last post by Josh on February 02, 2010, 05:36 AM »

Because opera developers, no matter how much they claim otherwise, do not know what is best for every user? Because user made addons let me PERSONALIZE my browser to the way I surf and the information I want available? Because opera developers choose to not add support for certain features *cough* autocomplete *cough* that are widespread in every other major competitor?

Do you want me to continue?


Plus, why does this mini-review feel like every other comment I see from an opera user? They fail to admit where their product falls short and any mention of a way in which the product does instantly results in a comment like "Who uses that" or "You can do A by doing B C D followed by E while holding F G and H"?

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General Software Discussion / Re: What would life be like without Windows?

« Last post by Josh on January 30, 2010, 10:48 AM »

Stephen: People have been saying what you are since Windows 95. Windows is far from dead and in fact Windows 7 actually brought quite a few users back after the Vista debacle. You have to remember, the number of users for Apples OSX and Linux variants can really only go up. When you have the market share that MS has with Windows, it is not that you want it to keep going up, its a matter of maintenance. One thing stats don't account for is how many users own multiple systems in their homes, how many of these homes are DEDICATED *nix/Apple users, and how many of these homes use one platform just because they have to or have no need for something else? Saying Windows is going to meet its demise soon is like calling the end of days which so many tabloids try and do with "Nostradomous" predictions. Apple and Linux can gain all they want but until they offer the majority what they require, Windows will still have its place as it does what a good majority of the population wants.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Red Hat launches OpenSource.com

« Last post by Josh on January 28, 2010, 07:36 AM »

Does it matter? Didn't Sun start this when they were Sun and not an oracle subsidiary?

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General Software Discussion / Re: Collectorz.com... again!

« Last post by Josh on January 19, 2010, 04:04 PM »

Perhaps something similar happened with other services which caused the move to a standalone db from the start? Perhaps IMDB or others complained in a similar fashion. Either way, I know Alwins eyes lit up like a child on christmas opening the new xbox 360 they wanted when he saw this message.

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

« Last post by Josh on January 17, 2010, 12:20 AM »

people who type without any sense of grammar, punctuation, proper capitalization, etc. I realize the internet has made people lazy, as has auto-correcting word processors, but that is no excuse for not adhereing to certain basic standards such as capitalizing the letter of a sentence or using apostrophes correctly, etc. I dont consider myself a grammar nazi but I do expect that people show some sort of intelligence when writing papers, posting to a forum, etc.

I realize i omitted most of that in my post, it was done ironically.

-Side Note

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Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Requesting baby cody

« Last post by Josh on January 14, 2010, 03:01 PM »

He isn't a chicken? Wow, musta been the toxic fumes from the porta-johns here.

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Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Requesting baby cody

« Last post by Josh on January 14, 2010, 02:47 PM »

Baby cody SHOULD (*nudge* app103 *nudge*) be in route to afghanistan where he will be on a country wide tour and flying over a combat zone. He might get a purple heart while here

1262

General Software Discussion / Re: ToolTipFixer 2.0 for Windows < Vista

« Last post by Josh on January 11, 2010, 07:07 AM »

Yeah, please do not take my posting as an attack at you. It is just something that urks me. I see lots of people complain about .net dependencies but none of them provide rationale as to why.

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General Software Discussion / Re: ToolTipFixer 2.0 for Windows < Vista

« Last post by Josh on January 11, 2010, 04:06 AM »

Not to sidetrack here, but can I ask what exactly the big deal is with .NET? Why does everyone hate it so? I have yet to find a single reasonable explanation as to why it is so horrible.

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General Software Discussion / Re: ToolTipFixer 2.0 for Windows < Vista

« Last post by Josh on January 10, 2010, 01:34 PM »

What about the TTFH (ToolTip From Hell), aka the one that JUST WONT GO AWAY!!!! is there a fix for that?

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General Software Discussion / Re: recommendation: sabayon linux

« Last post by Josh on January 09, 2010, 01:06 PM »

You mean Windows 9x where you had to reinstall every few months just because things got too slow? Now who wouldn't love that!

</sarcasm>

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General Software Discussion / Re: Thunderbird 3 Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by Josh on January 08, 2010, 06:32 AM »

One and only: Enigmail

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General Software Discussion / Re: Stop Windows from calling home

« Last post by Josh on January 05, 2010, 11:27 AM »

My second sentence does not imply that I prefer speed over security, merely that running a dedicated firewall on a modern pc is actually FASTER than on the router because of processor speed.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Stop Windows from calling home

« Last post by Josh on January 05, 2010, 11:18 AM »

Did I say that? Please quote me where I said I prefer speed over security. I am not saying that the windows firewall is the greatest solution but it is a good enough and more than enough of one for a good majority of the populus. Yes, there are far better FIREWALLS, but none of what you listed is directly related to the functions of a firewall. Telling people to disable something which they do not have a replacement for is not a solution.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Stop Windows from calling home

« Last post by Josh on January 05, 2010, 01:05 AM »

After all of this discussion, the real reason to disable windows firewall has not been given. I see you have given personal reasons for not liking the Windows PFW but have not seen concrete evidence, or anything remote to that, where you show why users should disable it.

The Windows PFW does what it is supposed to do, filter packets. The case still remains that it is NOT a host intrusion prevention or detection system. Those are an entirely different suite of applications.

So please tux, I ask you in this post, give me a reason that a user should remove this layer of protection which shows it as being unnecessary. Added layers of security are always better than none. Telling users to run as a LUA is fine and good but when this is mom and pop and they do not want to have to login and logout, or enter credentials every time they run something, or even understand why they have to do that, I guarantee they will be just fine leaving the Windows PFW enabled because it will serve as an intermediate between the packets from the internet and their applications (the exploitable code, for the most part). Also, saying that running a software firewall is nowhere near as good as a hardware firewall is laughable due to the fact that hardware firewalls are SOFTWARE based running embedded on a set of dedicated hardware. In most cases, systems running personal firewalls are faster than the hardware included in the average home user firewall/router.

So, I await your reply and hopefully this can be backed.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Stop Windows from calling home

« Last post by Josh on January 04, 2010, 05:29 PM »

I have yet to see where you say it is not useful. You merely point out features it does not have and is not designed to have. If you install bad stuff, then your A/V or spyware app should catch it. Windows firewall routinely prompts me when a new program attempts to establish a connection.

So basically, because this firewall does not do application filtering (web content, etc) it is not a good measure to have? Most of what you have listed here is speculative and has not shown me a truly valid reason to disable something that, for most, will do what it is supposed to (filter traffic). It is not a PIX device or a router with the firewall feature set, it is a firewall designed to be operated at the lowest level, the host. Let the antivirii and spyware apps do what they are supposed to do but don't tell a user they should disable the windows firewall because it is useless when there is no backing for that claim.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Stop Windows from calling home

« Last post by Josh on January 04, 2010, 05:02 PM »

1. It can not detect if "explorer.exe" is really "explorer.exe" when asking you if explorer.exe may access the internet.

-Tuxman (January 04, 2010, 04:57 PM)

That is an application change detector. Firewalls filter internet connections, they do not check checksum values or file integrity by nature. Some advanced firewalls ADD THIS FEATURE ON but it is not something that most do. Do iptables or other *nix variants do this? Do they check integrity of files?

2. It is not that hard to write a script which automatically clicks "Allow".

And this can be done with just about ANY firewall application...

3. It is behind your internet connection, so any packets passing it are already on your computer.

This acts as a host-level firewall. If the user has a home router, which most do and most provide some basic firewalling functions, how can this additional layer be bad? There is a reason the US Military has mandated the use of HIDS on all systems using the "Defense in depth" strategy and protection at the lowest level (host).

4. ... if they pass it anyway (there is always a way to create your own, independent TCP connections).

I am really not sure what you are getting at here.

5. A virus, worm or trojan runs with your own user privileges, so it can easily disable your PFW completely.

And again, this can be done to ANY firewall product and it is not the firewalls job to prevent malware from getting onto the system. It filters traffic. Again, some firewalls add application layer filtering, malware and spyware checkers, but not all. So, if you install something bad, then chances are your firewall is the last thing you need to worry about.
Now what is the point in using something like that which also depends on the user's own "Brain 1.0"?
If you actually use software from dubious sources and click unknown links (the only ways to get infected), you'll fail anyway. A "personal firewall" can not help you.
[/quote]

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General Software Discussion / Re: Stop Windows from calling home

« Last post by Josh on January 04, 2010, 04:48 PM »

Tuxman: I would like to see those reasons backed by some sort of evidence documenting them as valid. The windows firewall might not be as advanced as some, the Windows vista/7 one is quite advanced and powerful, but it does far more than any average home user will ever need at protecting them.

So please, post some examples because I am quite interested to see what you deem a valid reason to disable it.

1273

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

« Last post by Josh on January 04, 2010, 04:21 PM »

The version of daemon tools I just installed adds an entry in programs and features in Win7 x64 and x86.

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

« Last post by Josh on January 04, 2010, 02:07 PM »

Install programs that DO NOT put an uninstall link in the start menu!

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Site/Forum Features / Re: Should we experiment with google ads on the site for 1 month?

« Last post by Josh on January 04, 2010, 06:19 AM »

We have a cafe press site but mousey prices everything above normal spenders pricing because he only wants stuff given out as gifts. I would love to buy some DC Merch, but mousey refuses to ablige to my requests.

Donationcoder.com Cafepress shop