Recent Posts

1401

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 09, 2014, 06:50 AM »

I haven't turned on my XP netbook for a couple of weeks, and now I'm wondering what the best thing to do is. Should I disable the automatic update the next time I turn it on or should I keep installing whatever updates have been or may still be released in the near future?

-dr_andus (April 08, 2014, 06:01 PM)

Quick guess (and prob part wrong!) is there are no "mainline" updates, so get whatever you can right up until today

-TaoPhoenix (April 08, 2014, 06:34 PM)

Thanks, TaoPhoenix, but I heard someone mention a nag screen. Wasn't that included in yesterday's update? I'd prefer to avoid that one, if I can.

-dr_andus (April 09, 2014, 04:27 AM)

Turn off Automatic updates - there won't be any now since MS turned off the updates except for the malware/scareware nag screen.

If you use MSE you should be able to use the built in update regularly to keep it up to date (but don't expect software updates). Better option is to dump it and download something else - for once I would argue a full suite would be in order including a good firewall and learn how to use it.

-Carol Haynes (April 09, 2014, 05:56 AM)

Well Carol that's kinda why I was saying do it once. Depending on settings, I just got the last two updates this morning. But then yes, after that, sure.

1402

Living Room / Re: application help

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 07:38 PM »

Somewhere in the middle of App's post and mine, that's why I suggested a "bicycle training" mentality. I am on here about twice a year looking for cute little slightly-above-snacks type apps. But if you cannot even handle one of my "easy" ones (and yes they have pitfalls!), then your basic goal to earn tons of money as a hotshot is kaput.

So I say to you:
A. Do a Snack in AHK.
B. Do a Lunch in your choice of languages. (And submit it to NANY under Mouser's newly easing rules!)

If you cannot do that, you are sunk.

1403

Post New Requests Here / Re: Inverse filter for white windows

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 07:07 PM »

Ask yourself if you're so desperately in love with Chrome/Chome-Clones that you cannot fill your other important need in Firefox. (After all rumor is it they are moving more towards Chrome in UI!)

In the Browser Wars, back when I just stopped being a Newbie, I had to pick a browser, and for all its minor faults about memory usage etc, FF/related won hands down for being the most extendable for "rare" custom needs like yours.

The crux is there is a key setting in FF that you *uncheck* that says roughly "allow page to pick its colors". To me that seems the key #1 to what you need. Then Key #2 is that a "Windows theme" is pre-picked, but *you make your own and save it somewhere*. Just to avoid a wall of text, I'll stop there and stay simple and post some screen shots to suggest my idea.

In my quick test, at no time (With Caveats! Ask me about C&C!) when "all the horsepower is turned on" did a truly "white" page appear while loading, which paraphrasing a software engineering spec "is what I think the requirement was".

I DID find an example where these sites that use these nasty Javascript slides and pops can try to use light colors, but that's Level 2 that we can get into later. To stay simple, see if these fit your bill.
Then the point is you have TWO themes (or three!?) and when you "want to turn off the lights" you switch on "Dark" and when you can handle the white you switch it back.

My rough point is it sounds like your light needs are pretty serious so some of the eyecandy seriously drops off, but that can only make nothing but sense if you view a special form of a website that isn't what the designer thought about. But if the text is there, and the links work, then I think you might "settle for a draw".

In my rough concept:

DC


Slashdot


Chessbase (with a medium light popup)

1404

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 06:36 PM »

It may really more like:

Microsoft will continue to provide support for governments and large institutions to keep large numbers of XP systems safe from being reformatted and having Linux installed on them for the next few years until it gets its head out of its butt and makes Windows 8 look and work just like Windows 7 does.

-40hz (April 08, 2014, 05:13 PM)

Going in reverse order, that's what I'm really hoping the new CEO does.

Meanwhile if I ever saw a business opportunity, I'd just resell establish a channel to re-push the official updates for free vs page hit revenue!

1405

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 06:34 PM »

I haven't turned on my XP netbook for a couple of weeks, and now I'm wondering what the best thing to do is. Should I disable the automatic update the next time I turn it on or should I keep installing whatever updates have been or may still be released in the near future?

-dr_andus (April 08, 2014, 06:01 PM)

Quick guess (and prob part wrong!) is there are no "mainline" updates, so get whatever you can right up until today, plus check if MsSecEssentials is up to date, and do your Spring Cleaning on the year's worth of Malware, then park it again with a plan to be 10% more careful not to explore too far afield with plugins.

1406

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 06:29 PM »

So... how long do they support a 12 year old operating system?  Does it matter that they don't support windows 95 anymore?  Or Windows ME?  Or... god forbid, Windows for Workgroups 3.11?

-wraith808 (April 08, 2014, 04:43 PM)

This one feels different to me. Vista didn't help so that XP became the only system back when vendors really had to define their businesses we see today, and we've seen a couple posts about "systems that can't change". (And The Economy is wrecking me so I *can't* change!) But I quasi felt then and sorta feel today that "computing was younger and exciting back then, but we also knew the lifespans were shorter where the hardware would push us first."

Fast forward, see my long post, with the correct money for quality spent, I built a comp like a tank and my *monitor* is going to die first! So to me the correct equation is more like "Microsoft is this huge behemoth. All they have to do is spend medium-few engineers just patching bugs, while the other 80% go towards building all their "fizzy new Windows 8 Metro/Modern disasters". In other words, quietly keep your "Geezer customers" happy and then see if you can *lure* them to your newest toy. But we're already seeing in some quarters that Win8 is *another* disaster. So they're using this tactic just to pressure customers. (Aka Oh look, why not Create Jobs and hire a few more bug-fixers while the rest of the team is working as hard as they can to alienate everyone?)

As I have posted elsewhere, I am hoping their new Engineering based CEO will really get in the trenches, listen to *all* the customers, then uncork a stunning new Windows 9 plus tweaks that makes the entire tech world sit up and go "Holy Cow, gawd forbid I actually *want* that!" Plus it gives us a couple more years of juicy hardware development, and then to me *that's* the sweet spot that creates sales. This End of Life approach is just jarring esp because the "emergency backup" OS is already one level back and MS has warned they "only support two" and they're trying to speed up their cycles.

1407

Post New Requests Here / Re: Inverse filter for white windows

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 06:16 PM »

Regarding Windows themes: I already use an awesome dark theme for Windows 7 that I made. It's great. But the theme has little to do with this case. The theme has no effect on the page color in Chrome.

JoTo: I'm happy to find another fanatic of dark backgrounds If you use Chrome, I recommend the Hacker Vision extension.

I still hope that someone could come up with a solution for me...

-cool-RR (April 08, 2014, 05:27 PM)

Heh I used to love Red on Black (I called it "Alien Computer") and Green on Black (The Matrix). But somewere along the line I "got boring" and went back to White...

I can tell almost when I switched because my first NANY had options for all those themes! (And "Commodore 64"!)

Okay, I'll look some more on this.

1408

Living Room / Re: The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 06:11 PM »

Actually, there was a classic short story somewhere where a plot line involved alien geometry and I'm pretty sure the key phrase was very close to "three perfectly parallel lines intersecting at ninety degree angles to form a perfect square with seven triangular sides."

(Ah, I miss the "sorta old days" when reading short stories from the "Golden Age" was fun. Best guesses are Mimsy Were the Borogoves or And He Built a Crooked House.)

1409

Living Room / Re: Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 06:02 PM »

Slashdot reports a study which shows that even elite  musicians can't tell the difference between what-are-believed-to-be legendary hyper-expensive instruments and modern instruments:

-mouser (April 07, 2014, 06:22 PM)

That's nonsense.  

The only thing this study shows is that a certain sample of violinists liked some modern instruments better than some older ones.  It doesn't mean they can't tell the difference, or that new instruments are better or the same as old ones, or vice versa. Nor does it mean that every study along these lines would show the same thing.

Before jumping to conclusions, it should be noted that the person responsible for the experiment, and the publicity surrounding it, happens to be a violin maker who stands to profit from the notion that his instruments may be just as good as any made by Stradivarius or Guarneri del Gesu.

-xtabber (April 08, 2014, 04:15 PM)

Well, I agree this study is quite limited and the flaws were pointed out in the review article. The key sentence in the whole thing is "when it came to telling old violins from new, the soloists did no better than if they had simply guessed".

So everyone agrees they could tell "#1 is not the same as #5", they just had trouble telling which of #1 and #5 was the old one and which was the new one. It's a very limited result and exactly the kind that gets mis-handled in the media! I would have done the headline as "they thought the new ones were just as good as the old ones and once in a while even better." (The other key item in the blog above was that there were suspicions that one of the Statavarius ones was not in absolute champion level tip top shape and for whatever reasons a lot of the musicians didn't like it.)

1410

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 02:35 PM »

I really enjoy pairing off Slashdot and DC. DC's Signal-to-Noise is way better, but Slashdot gets the volume and one fun "little hobby" (call out to xkcd!) is to "commission" something by hitting a really fast but decent little post way at the top of the chain before the snarks bog it down. This is this month's gem:

-----

Re:Fascinating release date timing (Score:5, Funny)
by MightyMartian (840721) Friend of a Friend on 01:44 PM April 8th, 2014 (#46696105) Journal

A long long time ago,
I can still remember how that NT kernel made me smile.
And I knew that if I had my chance,
I'd write a helluva lot cool VB 6 apps.
And maybe my manager would be happy for a while.

But April made me shiver,
With each Win 8 PC I'd deliver.
Bad news in the staffroom steps.
And I couldn't take one more step.

I can't remember if I cried,
When I read about some XP user heaved a sigh.
But something touched me deep inside.
The day Windows XP died.

So bye bye Windows XP has died.
Rode my Segway to the to the levy,
But the levy was dry.
And good ol' sysadmins were drinking coffee and Sprite,
Singing "This is the day Windows XP has died,
This is the day Windows XP has died."

 

1411

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 02:33 PM »

@Tao - I tend to avoid suites and just install what I need. That said I've used BitDefender AV and found it to be a very capable. YMMV. However, I have several clients with organization-wide deployments of BD that feel the same way about it.  And they all have sufficient budgets that cost wasn't a significant factor in making their final selection.

-40hz (April 08, 2014, 12:30 PM)

Fair enough!

So I'll probably go work on that coupon before it runs out to buy myself time. It would be nice to get a chip-in from a couple others though, just for perspective.

EDIT: I'm "skimming not reading" per another recent Slashdot post. So I didn't look at the date. So okay, I'll go look for those review articles. One of the ones mentioned with the unusual heuristic algorithm caught my eye as being interesting.

1412

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 12:23 PM »

MSE signatures *will* be updated for XP

-rgdot (April 08, 2014, 12:19 PM)

Hmm, I was looking at this nasty red box. So I don't doubt you, but it's at least a bit disingenuous on MS's part to "not support" it but behind the scenes only if you know what article to look at, to actually ... support it?

1413

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 12:16 PM »

From the other thread:

From a post on Wilders Security forum:

Free 9-month subscription to Bitdefender Internet Security 2014 (expires in about 40 hours)

  - http://www.bitdefend...edia/html/softpedia/

-mwb1100 (March 23, 2014, 12:20 AM)

Of more concern to me than "OhMyGawd XP is dead" is that MS says they're not going to support XP's copy of MS Security Essentials. So I *am* interested if anyone has reviewed those other threads about alternate AntiVirus/Security suites. (P.s. where *was* that thread?) Forgive me for asking instead of "ReadingTheManuals", but I'm a little behind on where BitDefender stacks up. But it's also nice to have "local opinion" esp since A, sometimes there's bias in those studies, and B, some of you serve clients and would only recommend what you think is the best.

So heh topic for a poll! For people serving clients, what AV suite have you recommended alternate to MsSecEss in the past on its own merits, and/or now that MsSecEss is dead too, is your next forward choice? (Does anyone want to set that up? I don't know the code for that.)

1414

Post New Requests Here / Re: Inverse filter for white windows

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 10:03 AM »

...
However, some programs don't allow you to define a light-on-dark theme. My main culprit is Chrome, who, while it does allow you to define a dark theme and even make websites dark, does show an annoying white screen for ~5 seconds when a site is loaded, which really hurts my eyes.

I want a program that does the following thing: Whenever I'm using any program, I can invoke a keyboard shortcut to activate it. Then, it'll constantly sample the pixels in the window of the active program. If these pixles go over a certain threshold of average brightness, it puts an inverse filter between the program and the screen, so dark colors appear bright and bright colors appear dark.
...

-cool-RR (April 05, 2014, 06:35 AM)

I got really close to this using themes for Windows via Firefox (because it's what I have the most experience with, I couldn't find the dark themes for Chrome before starting to run out of time for this).

So the basic idea is you can play with having two alternate themes which you toggle with at (for XP) RClickDesktop/Properties/Themes. So then you set the open window colors to be something dark with light text fonts. Then at least on Firefox when I set the dark theme there's a setting that you *uncheck* that says "allow websites to choose their own colors".

If I'm guessing right, you really don't want *true* inverse colors, aka "the opposite of yellow" = some gawdawful color. So my tip revolves around "subdue rather than flip". I also think f.lux is interesting. I had forgotten about it.

Then if you want white colors back, in Windows you have that second (maybe default) theme you just flip back to. It might take a few clicks, aka not as fast as a pure "hotkey" and not as "dynamic" as your original post. But fiddle around with that stuff, because in my half hour of playing I didn't get a single "white" page loading in Firefox when I had all the settings tweaked. (Just because all of this stuff could take a couple hours to ruthlessly optimize, I used dark grey as my test.)

Holler if any of our stuff helps!

1415

Living Room / Re: application help

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 08:57 AM »

any that is in trend and will be in future demand and enable me to get (after years) one of those GBP80k per year positions

btw, I am around 30, am I too old to get into programming? because I know many at my age that program from 12 years old kids

-kalos (April 05, 2014, 04:34 PM)

Hmm. I think there's a problem with what you are asking, and I don't know if any more than 1% of companies would "train you cold". For example, borrowing from one of my theories about education, a college class is "not much more" than "40 lectures, books, and tests to prove you learned".

Let's just assume Windows will be here for a while to stay, so it can't hurt to at least start on Windows. So have you ever looked at a programming book? Talk about no-risk investment, that's one of the few areas there are lots of free programming books on the web. So grab one and dive into it, then report back here.

Caveat: it's not so much if you are too old at 30 (but yes Ageism *is* a factor in IT!), but if you have any native talent at all. Sadly, I absolutely do not, so I went into accounting.

The devastating problem with trying to learn at a company is that they have to pay by the hour. But while you're learning, you may simply need huge blocks of time just to get the basics! Most companies need someone with as many skills as you can muster "off the clock" to get the best hiring value for the buck.

So a fun way to get some crucial info is to look at the Coding Snacks here, then go fish on the web, and see if you can actually do one. Take a stopwatch and record the total time it takes you. Then ask the guy who did the snack how long it took them! Then see if one of them will let you see their code if you promise not to re-share it.

Very rough metric: If what takes the hotshots here a day, see if you can do it in under a week "cold". Then if you get stuck and see "the answer" and *still* can't figure it out in *another* week, then you might be in trouble! But at least you'll have some crucial info that you can share with us in about a month.

Start with one of the AHK/other scripts. So then when for example Skwire posts the script (he has posted a couple of them here), you might wonder how he knew to call ___function. So then that means you have to dig up a book on those functions, etc! To me that's how fast the early stages of learning expand, and what will burn tons of time.

I really want to know how you do with a month's time!

1416

Living Room / Re: Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 08:39 AM »

...
My father would fix up old things rather than pay for new, even if the time spent was more valuable.  I didn't have a brand-name pair of shoes until I had moved out on my own.  Every dollar spent was weighed against how long the purchased item would last.  I believe this instilled me with a strange sense of worth, in which I do believe in paying for quality, but only to a definite, red-line point.  The line in the sand becomes deep and wide when you cross over from "quality" to "luxury" and I will not cross it. 
...
However, things like this are obvious, and the law of diminishing returns becomes more evident the more salesmen it takes to convince you to part with your hard-earned cash.  I don't like salesmen.  They make me itch.

That said, there have been times where I paid for quality
...
I ... focused on the 2hp motor, the legendary durability, and the 7-year warranty.  THAT is what I paid for, but we got more in return.  We would have worn out 3 or more consumer-level blenders by now, and the results would have been mediocre in comparison.  This is a tangible, demonstrable fact, not a 'perception of value'. 

-Edvard (April 08, 2014, 12:34 AM)

I'm fortunate enough that things like a $40 mistake won't sink me. So I needed a new pair of shoes this winter, and one of the street vendors sold what I knew full well were knockoff shoes *right next door to where I was working* this winter. I had no delusions - I just wanted February's Snow problem to go away and become August's problem! I believe sometimes you truly are stuck a bit having to settle for a mix of both short term cheap but crappy vs those times you go for long term quality. In that other thread, without being sizzled by sales, I *did* spend on quality for my project comp and my first 24" monitor (that finally hit end-of-life this year.)

However, I "chose poorly" and they are already coming apart! So even in the world of "crappy" sometimes there's differences between Grade F and Grade D!

1417

General Software Discussion / Re: Working with excel row and columns

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 08:28 AM »

Also checkout a free Excel addin called ASAP-Utilities.  It lets you transpose like that. 

-kunkel321 (April 07, 2014, 08:31 PM)

I've used ASAP-Utilities and I was impressed, even though I didn't need 95% of what it did.

1418

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 07:26 AM »

I think these security fears about windows XP no longer being "supported" are way overblown -- keep your internet *applications* updated and don't be stupid, and I think users of XP are going to be safe indefinitely, with nothing to worry about.

Having said that -- I held out upgrading from windows XP to Windows 7 for quite some time and I can say that minus some minor quibbles, I have been very pleasantly surprised with Windows 7 and would heartily recommend it to everyone.

-mouser (April 08, 2014, 12:43 AM)

Windows 7 is awesome. It's not perfect, but it's the best Windows experience I've ever had.

Sadly, my netbook doesn't run it (or XP) very well, so I've recently installed Linux Mint XFCE on it in place of XP.

-Deozaan (April 08, 2014, 02:38 AM)

XP is fine for anyone with any sense - trouble is 90% of people using it don't have any sense at all!

-Carol Haynes (April 08, 2014, 03:41 AM)

I imagine there might be a lot of people like me for whom their XP machine is not their primary machine but their netbook or laptop (my main PC is Win7). It doesn't have the specs to be upgraded to Win7 or 8.

I just find MS's move annoying. It certainly won't push me to rush out and buy a Win8 netbook/laptop/tablet. If anything, this move is more likely to prompt such people to explore alternative OS's such as Linux or ChromeOS (as Deozaan also said above).

-dr_andus (April 08, 2014, 04:50 AM)

I imagine there might be a lot of people like me for whom their XP machine is not their primary machine but their netbook or laptop is (my main PC is Win7).

very good point -- and those machines are completely fine to leave running win xp, imho.

-mouser (April 08, 2014, 04:51 AM)

But neither do I think the concerns are hogwash either. My machine is not going to fall over dead today, but it can't last forever either. However my opinion of Win7 is that it doesn't offer anything stunning to force a switch anytime soon. Rather, per my plan above, it's my "failsafe" for a much later decision. I see it more as a "Turbo XP and Not-Win8"!

The question of laptops/netbooks is fascinating though. Whatever I do on my project machine, it IS useful to have a fun little laptop for trips on the road, but you don't really care if an Act Of Nature kills it. So then if it's only on say 30 days a year, then I think XP can stay there indefinitely because I'd only be running about 10 programs and not experimenting all day like a mad scientist! I have a "decent amount of sense". Especially on that laptop, except for a little "Rule 34" browsing, the only news I'd really be scared of is if some devastating new exploit shows up that can smash XP to smithereens on a pure "out of the blue" attack.

However, I've given up on Linux. Too many little subtle apps and a couple of killer ones are on Windows. And I just don't have the chops to mess with those VM's and stuff.

1419

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 08, 2014, 07:05 AM »

the day has arrived! support for the persistent WinXP has officially ended. Anyone here going to defy Microsoft and keep using winxp?
...

-lanux128 (April 08, 2014, 12:18 AM)

I have no intent to "defy" Microsoft ... for me it's 180 degrees from "sticking it to the man". Instead, I'm part of the category that tremendously respects Linux but gave up attempting to convert for anything but maybe a special use case.

My personal history:
A. My "teeth cutting" machine was the Commodore 128, which was a perfect sweet spot between age 8 per the C64 which I gave up on as being too hard, and age 13 when I received the C128 a little after it released.

My father was savvy enough to jump into the Mac "paradigm" soon after they began appearing, so I got some important early experience with that GUI which sure enough became "the future".

In 1999 I received a Win98 machine as part of non-cash compensation for a project, and it was the first "Modern Windows" machine I had, which I treated as basically "Win95 SP1 with fewer bugs". A few years later I had a friend build a cut-rate Win2000 machine, but from my user experience as "promising novice" that also felt like "Win95 SP2" with even fewer bugs.

Then about 2007 with a little spare money from a good job, I began to think ahead with that same buddy about the future of Windows. By that point all the early "Longhorn" hope/mania had faded. The key story (via Paul Thurrott's version I think), was that at some crucial moment "one day at Microsoft", "Longhorn on the XP codebase died". Wiki's summary includes "...The original Longhorn, based on the Windows XP source code, was scrapped, and Longhorn's development started anew, building on the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 codebase".

There are some really nice people at the lower levels of MS out of the limelight. One day I'd really like to ask around and try to get "the history of that day". Probably some middle manager can authorize an interview this late in the game. I'm sure there were rumblings internally for years, but there has to be one key engineer's final report that then forced the top level executive official public decision. It would be awesome to get a copy of that report for official posterity because this is THE premier place where you gang can enjoy ripping into it!  


But by then some of the very early rumblings about Vista's famous problems were floating in. Not counting that first Win98 machine, I've been a late adopter, having previously learned a little about the woes of both Win Me and very early Win XP pre-SP2. But by 2007 Win XP SP3 had long since been cleaned up and became the standard OS today. So then on the hardware side I forecasted very well and spent the extra funds going for the first Kentsfield QuadCore with two Terabyte Drives.  

My nickname was also picked very well... "Twilight". Today that nickname became official: I would ride out XP "until it officially died" waiting to see what the future would bring far down, to get the late-adopter's hindsight opinion once again. (Marketing is Hype - intended to create "This Year's Sales". But the truth tends to show up about a year later.)

Quick rundown:
XP3 - "The gold standard to beat"
Vista - "Nope"
Win 7 - "Probably has finesses in the back engine but nothing exciting"
Win 8 - "Metro ModernUI usability ugliness"
Win 8.1 - "Weak compromise from MS - still nope".

Meanwhile I am *terrified* of the total cost of a real upgrade on my hardware. (Note my monitor is going to die any week now!) So I am hanging on tight with my best visionary thinking of 2007 on the Twilight project machine. Now I'm not happy at all being "officially out of support" for XP.

Here are the options as I see them:
Part 1: Temp use of XP for a while to buy more time.
Part 2a: Hope that the new engineering oriented CEO Satya Nadella is the next Dave Cutler and does a stunning job on Windows 9, then strip it aka turn off Aero/whatever and hope my comp can run it. Then I use my spare sorta-unused drive as a Dual Boot to test it.
Part 2b: Then if that simply does not work, get a copy of Windows 7 from somewhere which I *think* will run if I did my specs right, and then give up for a few more years. By the time *that* dies, I'll be content to let my 2006 machine go with a sincere "RIP and oh gawd thank you" in favor of something from 2016ish.
Part 3: Hunker down and reload the best 30% of the programs I experimented with, with a list of what the others used to be, and call it a day. (The soft data is easy, courtesy of that "backup" program with the funny name from here.)

Whew! Fortunately you gang are not scared of as long post. But I'm a little emotional here, because this is THE moment I have been watching for my entire modern computing life!

1420

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 07, 2014, 09:32 PM »

Suddenly upon an urge this week ... nothing!

More specfically, toggling hide-show icons. When I am "working" (even if just life stuff) I have a visual icon grid system that interacts with my note taking systems. But suddenly I became overwhelmed at all the loose ends and just wanted to take a break! My visual reflexes respond too fast to the various concept threads! So I just "whooshed them away" (though I left a Sticky way in the corner so I wouldn't freak out the next day after sleep! )

1421

Living Room / Re: Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 07, 2014, 08:44 PM »

Slashdot reports a study which shows that even elite  musicians can't tell the difference between what-are-believed-to-be legendary hyper-expensive instruments and modern instruments:

http://news.sciencem...olins-modern-fiddles

...

When it comes to appreciating these hyper expensive items -- the perceived quality is all in your head.  If you think you are experiencing something super expensive, you tend to experience it as being significantly better.

Break out of the cycle -- find alternative way to perceive quality other than money!

-mouser (April 07, 2014, 06:22 PM)

Hmm, I think the thread title here might be a little ...heh ... "tinged" with just a dash of snark. I think the general consensus is that "properly made modern violins are getting very very good". It's one of those where you have to be really sure exactly what questions are being asked. Rather than reinvent it all, I'll give you a blog by one of the members and the Slashdot thread.

http://www.violinist.../laurie/20121/13039/
http://entertainment...-and-a-modern-violin

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Living Room / Re: Best Investigative Journalism magazines or webistes?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 01, 2014, 04:20 PM »

I think it might still depend on living with a "slant". You can have "legit" sites that are left, right, or (rarely) center. But even if the first two have an overall tone, I think you are asking if the reporting looks fair, vs the growing trend to News-Spam we're risking on sites whose only goal is ad impressions on 400 word summaries.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Nice blog post on the parasitic software hosting sites bundling junkware

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 01, 2014, 04:16 PM »

Although this link is to a how-to article called 'Remove Trovi.com redirect', it turned out to be a good way to clean up my machine from other crapware problems.
It gives links to four cleaner programs and tells what order to run them in.
It's recommended by malwaretips.com as a sub-link.

Tnx for the head's-up on Softonic.

-bit (April 01, 2014, 03:28 PM)

Inspired by you, I ran an old standby, Mark Russinovich's "Rootkit Revealer".
(Forgive the now-Microsoft wrapping!)
http://technet.micro...ernals/bb897445.aspx

Mark R. made his name as a 1-man Windows expert and MS just kept offering him money until they snapped him up. I think he's a good guy. He made his "fame" in the Sony Rootkit mess by providing key details.

But bird's eye what's we're seeing is there's this whole class of junk that "good ol' " MS Security Essentials isn't picking up. Comp Security is Medium Hard. To be honest as a medium grade user I bet my meachine is only 80% at this point. There's just so much to do. But 80% is better than 20% etc...

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Living Room / Re: Payment Services - opinions and ratings?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 01, 2014, 04:10 PM »

Fascinating Info Mouser, that would have been hard to get anywhere else!

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Developer's Corner / Re: How The Most Expensive Game Jam In History Crashed And Burned In A Single Day

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on April 01, 2014, 04:04 PM »

That's a pity, because I don't know how it could have been stopped once the Big Media train started rolling out of the station.

My best layman's intro to game jams is Ludum Dare. Sure, a lot of the resulting games aren't my thing, but I (vaguely!) recall a couple here and there were worth a fun afternoon of silly true-indie gaming fun. (And I keep trying to invent concepts for jam-games! The Throw-Spiders-Out is my best one, but my satirical runner up is "how hard can you make it for the user to install their program?" based on that other thread, via several times before.)

This is where my memory begins to get fuzzy so don't quote me, but I think I recall a few quote snippets out of Ludum Dare interviews that would have nailed the original spirit. They went roughly "So we had this idea and this idea and this idea and it was an awesome concept. But then of our team, the Graphics guy got stuck making the renderer behave, the Gameplay guy got his part to work and we didn't like actually playing it, and the admin girl almost ripped her hair out trying to hold the micro chores together." A little honest yet soft film editing and that could have worked. (Plus, a few "victory" scenes of another team who just hit the sweet spot and started cruising.)

I notice they say this thing tanked on *day one*. Ten hours isn't a lot of time for anyone to realize something is out of control. This isn't a five week project. So maybe someone even smelled the rat, but more rats appear in the two hours it takes you to kill the first one...