Recent Posts

1276

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

« Last post by Innuendo on December 05, 2009, 02:31 PM »

Christmas... when it starts in October!

-cranioscopical (December 05, 2009, 09:04 AM)

Soon it will be starting the day after Easter. (he said only half-serious)

1277

General Software Discussion / Re: Monster Cables- The World should know!

« Last post by Innuendo on December 05, 2009, 09:46 AM »

Back a couple years ago I bought a used Xbox so I could soft-mod it, run XBMC, etc. and while I was shopping for accessories I managed to find all three types of Monster Cable branded Xbox cables new for less than $10 for the lot.

I just had to pick them up. They were cheaper than Microsoft branded cables & they most certainly can't be any worse in quality.

1278

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

« Last post by Innuendo on December 05, 2009, 08:57 AM »

Television and movie studios that feel they have to start advertising their new movie or TV series *FOUR* months in advance.

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Living Room / Re: Good TV series. What do you watch? I used to watch Lost to unwind need successor

« Last post by Innuendo on December 05, 2009, 08:55 AM »

It takes a special kind of person to 'get' British humor. I really enjoy it, but 90% of people who live outside of England do not get the humor at all.

1280

General Software Discussion / Re: which system tray network monitor - like a graph or something.

« Last post by Innuendo on December 04, 2009, 11:26 AM »

I just checked out all these for myself & the Networx Desk Band that puts a data graph on your taskbar just puts it over the top & outclasses the others mentioned in this thread, IMHO.

Thanks for mentioning Networx, guys!

1281

Living Room / Re: Notepad Fun

« Last post by Innuendo on December 04, 2009, 10:56 AM »

Someone has too much free time on their hands & needs a hobby. 

1282

Living Room / Re: Good TV series. What do you watch? I used to watch Lost to unwind need successor

« Last post by Innuendo on December 04, 2009, 10:36 AM »

Since this topic got resurrected....I'm usually not one for lawyer shows, but The Good Wife is an excellent drama. That's the only new show this season we've stuck with.

1283

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: True Launch Bar is on sale

« Last post by Innuendo on December 04, 2009, 10:33 AM »

I have been told it will work on Windows 7 as well

-Curt (December 04, 2009, 03:02 AM)

The latest beta works darn well on Windows 7.

1284

General Software Discussion / Re: which system tray network monitor - like a graph or something.

« Last post by Innuendo on December 03, 2009, 04:53 PM »

I've used NetMeter for years.

-skwire (December 03, 2009, 02:57 PM)

Judging from NetMeter's home page it looks like it has some problems under Vista.

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General Software Discussion / Re: which system tray network monitor - like a graph or something.

« Last post by Innuendo on December 03, 2009, 04:52 PM »

My friend swears by BitMeter II.

1286

Living Room / Re: Death in Family

« Last post by Innuendo on December 03, 2009, 12:15 PM »

I sympathize with what you are going through, Joker. We've had two over here in the last couple months. The holidays are not very joyful for us this year.

1287

General Software Discussion / Re: Unlocker 1.8.7 released - 01/05/2008

« Last post by Innuendo on December 03, 2009, 09:09 AM »

Version 1.8.8 is available. Still no 64-bits version, nor any Win 7 version. You may want to untick "eBay shortcuts" during installation.

-Curt (December 02, 2009, 04:26 PM)

Version 1.8.8 has been available for quite some time. It just never occurred to me to come over and make mention of it. It does work great with Win 7, though.

1288

Living Room / Re: 74% of the world, Google's Chrome OS is not for you

« Last post by Innuendo on December 03, 2009, 09:06 AM »

40 Hz, thanks for taking the time to type all that out. It illustrated my point beautifully.

Zaine, my cable connection is the most reliable part of the house as well, but while I have never had trouble getting to Google's servers I have have had trouble getting to other servers who don't seem to be as blessed with as reliable internet service as me.

For some Google's OS may be perfect, but it's just not for me. I can't imagine it's going to be for a lot of businesses, either. A lot use apps that are 'too heavy' like PhotoShop and AutoCAD. Others deal with data too sensitive to be allowed on the net due to HIPAA regulations and the like. Of course, a lot of businesses will turn their nose up at the idea because they don't want to retrain employees.

1289

Living Room / Re: 74% of the world, Google's Chrome OS is not for you

« Last post by Innuendo on December 02, 2009, 12:20 PM »

I think my point was not the level of technology used in the 80s as everyone can agree that things are much better. My point was is that everything is on the server. This did and still does suck mightily.

If your net connection to the server goes down...no access to your data.

If the server goes down...no access to your data.

If your cable modem breaks...no access to your data.


Comparing the number of failure points in between me and the data on my hard drive & the number of failure points between me and the data on Google's servers shows that there's a lot less chance of something going wrong if I keep my data right here on my PC.

Another matter is security. I control the level of security to access my PC. I cannot control the level of security to access a server on the internet. Those servers are a lot bigger targets than my PC. If everyone starts storing their data on them they are going to be even larger targets. I always hear about some server that got hacked and tons of data stolen. My PC is much more of a needle in a haystack than, say...Google's servers.

1290

General Software Discussion / Re: two more defrag tools - "UltraDefrag" and "Advanced Defrag"

« Last post by Innuendo on December 02, 2009, 12:10 PM »

The arrogance of the UltraDefrag developers doesn't really make me want to even try the app...

-f0dder (December 02, 2009, 02:10 AM)

Any app that has to have UAC disabled in order to work will never touch my hard drive.

1291

Developer's Corner / Re: Apple's App Store Mistake

« Last post by Innuendo on December 01, 2009, 06:56 PM »

Am I the only one in the world who can't get that stupid wheel to work? Most of the time it won't respond to my touch at all, and finally when it does it scrolls way too fast.

-Deozaan (December 01, 2009, 02:25 PM)

There are only two different kind of people in the world. Those who love the iPod wheel control scheme and those who hate it.

1292

Living Room / Re: 74% of the world, Google's Chrome OS is not for you

« Last post by Innuendo on December 01, 2009, 06:49 PM »

Seems to me that Google's OS is the return of old-style dumb terminals on an 80's style computer network. Everything (apps and data) were stored on the mainframe & the dumb terminals accessed everything off the mainframe in order to do anything.

No. No, thank you. Google's OS, and cloud computing in general, are the wrong direction for us to be heading. We already did this in the 80s and...well....it sucked. 

1293

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Innuendo on December 01, 2009, 11:01 AM »

XP is pretty fast and it'd very time consuming to switch to Windows 7. Annoying stuff *will* happen. Plus, I know that a big chunk of RAM will be gone and -- to a smaller extent -- speed will be a tad slower. Still, I'm tempted... Maybe in January.

-Armando (November 30, 2009, 11:16 PM)

I can't say every case is like mine, but on my PC I have the same amount of RAM free as when I ran XP (no "big chunk of RAM" gone) and, odd as it may sound, Windows 7 is noticeably faster than XP was on the exact same hardware.

1294

General Software Discussion / Re: Any XP users switching to Windows 7 yet?

« Last post by Innuendo on December 01, 2009, 10:55 AM »

If it was defrag it would run on.  I'm talking about a ticking like a clock every one or two seconds. The LED just lights, then goes out.

-MilesAhead (December 01, 2009, 12:02 AM)

Last time I saw something like that was when Windows 95 was out. A driver update and a new BIOS fixed it.

It doesn't stay on like when the HD is being accessed steadily such as during defrag.

Defrag-when-idle doesn't just access your hard drive steadily. It'll defrag a couple seconds, stop a couple seconds to see if any other program needs to perform any operations, defrag again a couple seconds, etc.

1295

Living Room / Re: How's *that* for a false positive? And is it? (Avira AV)

« Last post by Innuendo on December 01, 2009, 10:50 AM »

I'll take a false positive from AV software once a week or so(*) - though I do agree they are insidious and cause grief to upstanding developers. But so does UAC.

-tranglos (December 01, 2009, 02:13 AM)

I see a false positive from my AV maybe once a month. However, that's also the frequency I see UAC prompts as well.

1296

General Software Discussion / Re: Data integrity on longer term storage

« Last post by Innuendo on December 01, 2009, 10:39 AM »

Here's what I'd do if I were you. First I'd RAR up the data into a multi-part archive with a 5-10% recovery record. Then I'd create a PAR2 dataset for recovery redundancy. And finally, I'd take the original files, the multi-part archive, and the PAR2 dataset & copy all of it to multiple hard drives.

For good measure I'd also burn at least two sets of the files onto optical media. It'd be very cheap additional insurance. If you used two hard drives in this scheme you'd have no less than 8 full sets of your data (an archived and an unarchived set on two sets of optical media and two hard drives).

Bonus points if you pair up each hard drive with a set of optical media & store each pair in spearate physical locations far apart. There'd have to be something of Act of God proportions to keep you from accessing your data later.

1297

General Software Discussion / Re: Any XP users switching to Windows 7 yet?

« Last post by Innuendo on November 30, 2009, 10:20 PM »

For those of you experiencing the HD LED flashing thing....what might be going on is that Windows 7 will defrag your hard drives while idle if Windows deems it's needed. You can turn this behavior off in the Defrag app if you desire.

1298

Living Room / Re: New scamsites!

« Last post by Innuendo on November 30, 2009, 03:47 PM »

can you explain a little bit more about what you have discovered they are doing scancode?

-mouser (November 30, 2009, 12:18 PM)

Just going by scancode's Adobe Reader example it'd cost him US$2 just to install it. Then it looks like it runs a suspicious file called Peer2Peer.exe and installs a Firefox extension called Peer2Peer as well.

EDIT: scancode beat me to the punch.

1299

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Innuendo on November 30, 2009, 03:42 PM »

I'll also add that some NASes are not as "pre-packaged" as you might think. Some you can hack and get a full Linux distro running on them.

1300

Living Room / Re: The End of the CrunchPad

« Last post by Innuendo on November 30, 2009, 03:40 PM »

Perhaps Steve Jobs' greatest success was that he was able to get to market without the annual recurrent lawsuits.

-zridling (November 30, 2009, 01:49 PM)

His greatest success perhaps was that after he got to market he filed lawsuits against everyone else.