Recent Posts

1326

Living Room / Re: Anybody else playing with Wave?

« Last post by J-Mac on October 15, 2009, 09:20 PM »

I'll gladly accept an invite if someone still has any to offer.  PM me for email addy.

Thanks!

Jim

1327

Living Room / Re: Can someone remind me why are we using email ?

« Last post by J-Mac on October 15, 2009, 09:18 PM »

and why technology ?

Suddenly I have some doubts....
http://www.dailymail...aster-broadband.html

-Whereismyangel (October 14, 2009, 09:37 AM)

Just look at the other articles in the left sidebar to get an idea about what The Mail Online sees as "...all the news that's fit to print..."   

Jim

1328

Living Room / Re: Man names son 2.0

« Last post by J-Mac on October 13, 2009, 11:45 AM »

I wonder how the divorce papers will read?   

Jim

1329

Living Room / Re: Man names son 2.0

« Last post by J-Mac on October 13, 2009, 11:45 AM »

Seriously though how many parents actually think about the consequences when they inflict names on their offspring!

-Carol Haynes (October 13, 2009, 02:36 AM)

About a third. Unfortunately.

-40hz (October 13, 2009, 10:20 AM)

Within each family.... 

Jim

1330

General Software Discussion / Re: On free speech in forums

« Last post by J-Mac on October 12, 2009, 01:07 AM »

This thread for some reason keeps bringing the BoingBoing "disemvoweling" method of comment moderation to mind. Though I do enjoy the articles over at BoingBoing I have never taken well to the "disemvoweling".

BTW, in case anyone is not aware of what that is, BoingBoing uses a program to literally remove all the vowels in some posts. This completely ruins things for me because I cannot help but to stare at each disemvoweled post and try to decipher it in my head; they're like cryptograms just begging to be solved! By the time I get through two or three blog posts there an hour has passed me by because of my having to decode the damn vowel-stripped posts!

Sorry for the totally inane post here...

Jim

1331

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

« Last post by J-Mac on October 05, 2009, 01:29 PM »

I've had my share of problems with PDF-Xchange. Don't now if they are universal issues or specific to my setup.

For one, any time I open a document with PDF-Xchange, it sets itself as the default PDF reader - without asking. Annoying as all hell! And lately it has been running OK and then suddenly starts crashing if I open more than two documents with it. Again, very weird. I, too, am now using the portable version.

Jim

1332

General Software Discussion / Re: Win7: Anyone else getting excited?

« Last post by J-Mac on October 05, 2009, 12:35 AM »

I'm looking forward to it but I'm still ticked about their treatment of the Ultimate version. Both Vista and the Vista to Win7 upgrade path. Unbelievably poor behavior.

Jim

1333

General Software Discussion / Re: The quiet disappearance of the top two mp3 cataloging software.

« Last post by J-Mac on October 03, 2009, 08:58 PM »

Surely you're not surprised....

Jim

1334

Living Room / Re: Play Media Files on my Network House-wide?

« Last post by J-Mac on October 02, 2009, 09:11 PM »

@Grorgy: Yeah, doesn't sound very user-friendly. Thanks for the tip. 

@yOhimba:  Maybe I am not seeing what you mean...  How does Windows 7 allow me to receive media files from my network around the house? I am looking for ways to receive and play the media files; I can already serve them.

Thank you.

Jim

1335

Living Room / Re: Play Media Files on my Network House-wide?

« Last post by J-Mac on October 02, 2009, 01:08 PM »

One problem is that it is DLNA, not DNLA. That helped a little. Not much, though.

E.g., JVC has such devices but they will only play mp3, wma, and jpg files. Great. And DivX has some but they require you to insert a DVD-R or CD-R in order to play your media. I can do that now. Oh well, I'll keep looking but I am not optimistic. Why the heck all the fuss about streaming media all over your house if it is almost impossible to play it, other than on a networked computer?

Jim

1336

Living Room / Re: Play Media Files on my Network House-wide?

« Last post by J-Mac on October 02, 2009, 12:46 PM »

I don't see why you couldn't do what you wish without entering a proprietary solution. All you have to do when shopping for components is make sure they are all DNLA-compliant. It's a standard that ensures equipment from different manufacturers all work together without any vendor lock-in.

-Innuendo (October 02, 2009, 12:36 PM)

Thanks, but DNLA-compliant equipment like... what? I generally don't see such a designation when, for example, shopping for receivers. Can you tell me what equipment you know of that I can look at for an example of what to look for?

Thank you.

Jim

1337

General Software Discussion / Re: Complaint: FeedDemon is now adware, but does not disclose it

« Last post by J-Mac on October 02, 2009, 02:09 AM »

I knew about the ads in 3.x, but then again I had known about them for some time. I believe that when FeedDemon was abandoned as a paid software and made freely available, it was widely mentioned that the biggest change would be the addition of ads to the free versions. Also, I do browse the NG forums - not regularly anymore but I am there enough to have read all about the ads. So I wouldn't have noticed mention of them missing from the installer and elsewhere.

I do want to say that Nick has indeed always treated his customers with respect and while I don't know him personally, I have never felt that he was one to sell out his customers/users for a buck. (Though I will admit I was pretty hot myself when, shortly after renewing my FD subscription - which I had for a number of years - Nick announced that FD was no longer being offered for a price and paid up subscribers would get nothing for the time left on existing paid subscriptions. Yeah, I was not a happy camper then, Nick. I subscribed and paid for the desktop and Pocket PC versions).

Only issues I am still having with, I believe, FD 3.00.38, is that mine is updating feeds considerably slower than 2.7 had. I notice that the order of updating is not straight down the list as it used to be. Instead the little busy symbol seems to jump around the whole time. Probably something to do with Google's order.

Just my 37 cents!

Jim

1338

Living Room / Play Media Files on my Network House-wide?

« Last post by J-Mac on October 02, 2009, 01:33 AM »

OK. I have a wireless network. Had one for some years now. Excellent for roaming around my property with my notebook. Also just perfect that I can wire my own desktop along with my wife's and we can share the high speed cable internet connection, as well as share files among these computers. After all, I guess that was my primary purpose in setting up the network. However.....

I have a load of media files stored on my desktop computer and also on external drives, both USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (Firewire). I keep hearing and reading all about how great it is - running an NAS or especially a home media server - that I can enjoy my media files all over my house. But can I? I mean, practically? I realize that I can access and play any of my media files on the network via my wirelessly connected notebook. Heck, I do that all the time. But let's face it: music sucks big time when it's trying to blare out of the tiny speakers that most notebooks have.

I would like to be able to play my music in any room in the house I like. From my network storage. And on something that is made for listening to music! I finally developed enough interest in this to start roaming the web, looking high and low for receivers of some kind that will play my music from my network. Without, that is, having to outfit the house with another, new-fangled "system". Without dishing out several hundred or a couple thousand dollars of new equipment.

Alas, I don't think that I can. 

All my searching keeps bringing me to sites selling great and wonderful "systems"; basically meaning linked, proprietary servers and receivers, that will only work with each other. All naturally claim to be the latest and best out there on the market. Yeah, right. I'm talking about systems like Popcorn Hour which is now owned by Logitech. (Which means that they will very soon have drivers that will confound your computer to no end!).

Is there really no way to listen to my music over my network using just a media server, like maybe an HP Media Server, and some sort of standard receiver? Not a personal media player. Something that has speakers and can be heard throughout a room? Am I really required to purchase a bunch of new equipment to send and receive the files which I already have the ability to send? Just no way to receive and play them...

I recently read a ton of forums and blogs that all had a lot about house-wide A/V options, but didn't really give me a clue as to how to do that without getting a new, proprietary set of equipment. Aaarrgghh!

I'm hoping that we have some experts - or even pure amateurs - here at DC who can advise me about this. Or at least point me in a direction where I can learn without being bombarded with ads/advice about new whole-house systems.

Thanks!

Jim

1339

Living Room / Re: Be warned - Acronis Backup and Recovery

« Last post by J-Mac on October 02, 2009, 12:56 AM »

Its all a bit shoddy and isn't going to do their corporate image much good.

-Carol Haynes (September 30, 2009, 04:31 PM)

Acronis makes some of the most clever software in its market segment, but when they come out with a new version it's always one step forward & two steps back for a while. I'm really looking forward to a version of their software that has all their newest nifty tricks working in Windows 7, but I'm not holding my breath while I wait.

-Innuendo (October 01, 2009, 09:16 AM)

Unfortunately Acronis often doesn't fix the problems at all - they just wait out the year and release a new upgrade, claiming it fixes the bugs from the previous version. Of course the new versions always have their own bugs. Pretty bad when one of your most prominent features for new versions is that it fixes bugs from the previous version.

I've used Acronis True Image Home from version 8 through the 2009 version, which would have been 12 if they had stuck with their previous version numbering. And, as is the case with all overly greedy developers, the more added features that have appeared (read: bloat), the more troublesome the software becomes.

Jim

1340

Living Room / Re: My Computers Latest Woes - Seeking Advice

« Last post by J-Mac on September 28, 2009, 11:24 PM »

Thanks 40hz.

It's not anything in Startup - I use Chameleon Startup Manager and always keep a close eye on those items. Nothing was changed there, and nothing there can cause these problems.

Not a service; I did review all of them and once again, nothing new there that would cause such a problem. I am almost positive that it was the installer for PDF Converter Pro 6, either the over-installation of the Visual C++ Redistrib or the PDF program itself. It is a monster of an installer package and Nuance definitely has had similar issues in the past.

I ended up restoring another System Restore point, one from earlier that same day of the initial installation. The freezing has not reoccurred as yet, though I am now having to reinstall a number of program updates and Firefox extension updates. I never saw before where if an updated extension was installed and you go to a restore point prior, the extension is no longer installed even though the earlier version was installed and working at the time of the restore point creation. Apparently FF extensions remove the previous extension's version altogether, thus system restore is prevented from restoring those extensions.

Thanks all.

Jim

1341

Living Room / Re: My Computers Latest Woes - Seeking Advice

« Last post by J-Mac on September 27, 2009, 11:23 PM »

If you can get into safe mode. remove both programs and any MS Visual C++ Redistributable package. Reinstall what you want later.

If you can't get into safe mode with f8 or whatever, shut off the computer while it's loading with the loading graphic of the green dots moving from left to right. That should trigger the options to load safe mode.

I also would use acronis after this action and before loading the pdf program and MS Visual C++ Redistributable package.

If you have a registry backup of right before the problem, that might help to restore it as well.

Or all this might make it worse, darn windows.
My 2 cents.

Then see what you have after each step.

-cmpm (September 27, 2009, 08:22 PM)

Oh, I can start in safe mode; that's not a problem - yet! And as I mentioned I do have 2 Acronis images from before that program installation, as well as registry backups using ERDNT. Still, since I already restored from an earlier system restore point and am still having the same problem I am hoping to pinpoint what the hell was added or removed - I suspect removed - that could be causing this. It is especially frustrating that the freezing itself seems to be preventing any diagnostics from seeing what is happening.

Thanks!

Jim

1342

Living Room / My Computers Latest Woes - Seeking Advice

« Last post by J-Mac on September 27, 2009, 06:24 PM »

My big, beautiful, expensive custom-built PC is limping again, unfortunately. It now freezes the taskbar and most system activities at least every time I am running it, requiring a reboot. It is running XP Pro, SP2. Box has a 2.2 AMD Athlon processor on an Asus mobo, 4GB RAM.

Symptoms:

• It appears that explorer.exe is what freezes things, but that's just a guess at this point.
• Most or all activities that that involve explorer.exe definitely result in a required reboot.
• Task Manager cannot be opened.
• All taskbar/systray buttons are frozen with no tool tips. The clock is stuck at the time it froze.
• Any programs that are running are usable - if I can access them. Alt+Tab doesn't work. Taskbar doesn't work. If programs are minimized I cannot restore them.
• Opening LaunchBar Commander with a keyboard shortcut works but starting any program with it gets a short hourglass and then nothing. Same if DOpus is open - I can double-click exe files but no programs can start or close.

Triggers for this behavior that I know about so far:

• Running any installer - if I install an update to a program - any program - when I'm done the taskbar and system tray cannot be clicked anymore.
• Opening and using some Windows utilities. E.g., it has frozen twice when I was configuring Windows Updates in the General Policy Editor using Computer Management.

Other times it has frozen before I noticed it, and I can't determine or remember exactly what I was doing when it occurred - remember, the program I am in continues to run fine so I might not notice the problem until I try to click on a taskbar button or systray icon.

This all started while I was installing Nuance PDF Converter Pro 6. PDF Converter Pro 5 was already installed; I purchased V.6 via a Nuance promotion. Since Nuance uses an activation scheme and checks for a previous version installed on the computer, I left V.5 installed. Documentation says to do this and that the installer will remove the previous version after it checks it. The installation never quite finished. It froze up the taskbar and systray during installation. Arrgghh.  That was the first time it occurred. First, the Nuance installer installed MS Visual C++ Redistributable package, even though it was already installed via a recent MS Auto Update. Then it froze the taskbar et al. removed whatever parts of PDF Converter Pro 6 that were installed via Add/Remove and also used System Restore to restore the point I set immediately prior to starting the installation. All OK again except now the taskbar and systray keeps freezing as described above.

The next day I uninstalled PDF Converter Pro 5 using Revo Uninstaller and then tried to install V.6 again after a reboot. This time I selected Custom Installation and deselected the MS Office components - I saw that as a suggestion on the MS Technet forums to another user and it worked for them. V.6 installed OK this time, though the installer froze everything again requiring a forced (power switch) reboot. However the program was installed and working. Yay! Nope - Too soon.

The taskbar freeze-ups started again almost immediately, and continued quite often. After several days of trouble=shooting I used System Restore and restored to the point before the initial PDF Pro V.6 again. But this time it did not restore PDF Pro 5. It also left behind a number of files from PDF Pro 6.

Oh - and yes - the taskbar and systray freezing is still here.   :(  :mad:

BTW, nothing - and I mean nothing at all - appears in the Event Log about any of this. I am guessing that's because the Event Log probably freezes up at the same time everything else does. I cannot find ANY reference at all anywhere on my machine that gives any hints or clues as to exactly what is messing up. A missing DLL? Driver? What could PDF Converter Pro 6's installer have messed with to cause this? I am running Process Monitor now to see if it can catch anything when it next freezes, though I might have to examine a kazillion line items and still not get a clue from them.

I would normally have just given up and reinstalled Windows but I refuse to do that now and then again in three weeks when Windows 7 is released. I am contemplating going beck to another Restore Point, maybe a few days before any of this started, though I am certain that will screw up other installations and or updates. Or I could try mounting an Acronis image - I have two of my C:\ drive that pre-date the PDF Converter Pro 6 initial installation. Though I haven't tried to restore an Acronis image - ever.

Thanks!

Jim

1343

Living Room / Re: The Pricelessware Scam (Alt.Comp.Freeware)

« Last post by J-Mac on September 26, 2009, 12:45 AM »

** J-Mac nods off, spilling his beer and popcorn into his lap.  f0dder and 40hz squirt shaving cream on his hands and tickle his nose with a feather... **

1344

Living Room / Re: Question About MS Word Lists & Tables

« Last post by J-Mac on September 24, 2009, 01:58 AM »

Aha! Table>Autoformat did the trick, but...  only after I inserted a hard break after each line.

-J-Mac (September 23, 2009, 10:39 PM)

Using Find-Replace should be an easy way to change those pesky end of lines: (see attachment in previous post)

-Perry Mowbray (September 23, 2009, 11:34 PM)

I'll try that. Thanks!

Jim

1345

Living Room / Re: Question About MS Word Lists & Tables

« Last post by J-Mac on September 24, 2009, 01:57 AM »

OK, you mean if I copy a table. But I'm talking about copying lists only.

BTW, copy/paste table from the web works about half the time, in my experience.

Thank you.

Jim

1346

Living Room / Re: Question About MS Word Lists & Tables

« Last post by J-Mac on September 23, 2009, 11:27 PM »

I think what Andy would be getting at is that one of the formats on the Clipboard may have been a Table (depending on what you were copying from).

-Perry Mowbray (September 23, 2009, 11:25 PM)

OK, I still don't quite get it. If I highlight and copy, say, a list in a post here. How would my clipboard have a table format? I'm not saying that it doesn't; just that if it does, I sure never knew about it!

Thanks!

Jim

1347

Living Room / Re: Question About MS Word Lists & Tables

« Last post by J-Mac on September 23, 2009, 10:39 PM »

Aha! Table>Autoformat did the trick, but...  only after I inserted a hard break after each line. Leaving the text as pasted caused it all to go into one cell, which was the problem all along. So I guess I'll have to manually add a lot of hard returns whenever I want to do this, but it's still a heck of a lot easier than moving each line into a table cell one by one!

Searching online wasn't coming up with much useful; then again Google has been so subverted by SEO that it is difficult to find relevant results until you blow past the first couple hundred it seems. Sad really. And my Word Help file crashed and wouldn't start again. (Never, ever had a Help file crash before?!?!)

Thanks all.

Jim

BTW, Andy - Exactly what you would expect: the text is pasted normally onto the page. It was getting it into a table with each line in a separate cell that was stumping me.  Yet I am guessing that you have more in mind. What is your idea? All advice is appreciated!

1348

Living Room / Question About MS Word Lists & Tables

« Last post by J-Mac on September 23, 2009, 01:06 PM »

Here's hoping that we have a Word expert here at DC. Or at least more expert than I!

Is there any way to get a list into a table in Word? I have Office 2003 on my desktop and Office 2007 on my notebook, so replies regarding either are fine with me. I want to know how I can copy a list - of sentences, of phrases, of words; whatever the case, but a text-based list - and either paste that list directly into a table, or paste the list onto a new page and then somehow format the list so that it becomes a table. Just a simple table; it can be one column wide or more, and as many rows as the list is long. BTW, if there is a way to do this in OneNote 2007 that would be just as welcome!

This is not for a specific project, but for any old time. There are so many times that I copy a list from a web page or from another application and I want to put the contents into a table. And right now the only way I know to do that is to paste the list into OneNote or Word, create a table, and then move each single, stinking, rotten word or line into its own cell. Sometimes I highlight and then drag-and-drop each piece of text, and other times I copy and paste them. And it is maddeningly slow, time consuming! Occasionally pasting the entire list into a table column works, but most of the time the entire list squashes into one cell instead of filling the column. Blah! I keep thinking that there must be a way to do this; I can't believe that everyone goes through this terribly slow process of cut/paste, cut/paste over and over again like me. I would guess that a macro could be recorded or written to do this but my own attempts at it have failed.

So if anyone knows how to get a list into a table quickly and easily, please do tell!

Thanks!

Jim

1349

General Software Discussion / Re: how do you download a 'for a previous version of FF' firefox addon?

« Last post by J-Mac on September 17, 2009, 01:56 AM »

We all know that most addons work on newer versions of FF.
One just have to unpack, change the max. FF version number, repack, and install.

Problem is, the FF addons website (trying to be smart ) gets your FF version and plain won't let you get the damn file!

So, how do you download a 'for a previous version of FF' firefox addon?
Thanks

-urlwolf (September 15, 2009, 03:43 PM)

If you login to the Addons site you can install any of them. Also, if you install the "Nightly Tester" extension it has an override feature that allows you to install any extension no matter how old. Of course they all might not work.

Jim

1350

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you touch-type or hunt-and-peck?

« Last post by J-Mac on September 17, 2009, 01:51 AM »

More like "Hunt & Pound" method here. Especially if I am not getting the Google results I want or something similar. I go through keyboards as if they are consumables. 

Jim