Recent Posts

1526

Living Room / Re: How will the Earth end?

« Last post by zridling on December 15, 2008, 11:25 AM »

Which just reiterates my point: People who think they know what's best for the world are causing bigger problems.

-Deozaan (December 15, 2008, 10:53 AM)

Would you agree that ecology has both intrinsic and instrumental value for our species; therefore, not destroying the ozone layer is a good thing; not polluting the oceans, the water table, etc. are valuable behaviors in and of themselves? Come to the south side of St. Louis, Missouri, to Times Beach, and see an entire city that is abandoned like Chernobyl all because one guy wanted to save money by dumping dioxin in the ground. It's eery!

1527

Living Room / Re: How will the Earth end?

« Last post by zridling on December 15, 2008, 10:36 AM »

The overwhelming fact in Carol's argument is this: the rate of human population growth over the past 200 years. Sure, many developed countries have long scaled back their birth rates, but how many religions on earth preach that its followers should have an "annual baby" come hell or high water? Sustainability is not possible without the energy sources needed for a decent human life.

Otherwise, we might as well all be the poorest Africans who, when trouble arises, reach for the nearest genocide time and again. The cycle is already way old.

1528

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by zridling on December 15, 2008, 10:12 AM »

Add me to the Win 7 fan club!  I just bought a new laptop for my brother with pretty decent specs - HP Pavilion with 2.2Ghz C2D, 4GB Ram, Intel 4500HD integrated graphics (I don't trust Nvidia cards!).

-MrCrispy (December 14, 2008, 08:26 PM)

Good for you for not trusting Nvidia. While ATI has opened up their driver code, Nvidia has locked theirs down, making it difficult to run a new Nvidia card on a Linux machine.

I really haven't read any bad reports on Win7 yet. By all accounts, they're busting their brains to make Vista what it should be (if you assume Win7 is an upgrade to Vista since they share the kernel), and it already preserves battery life better on laptops. I hope it's one of those versions that users can sit on for years like we have with XP. With Win7 running on an i7 chip, I can't imagine needing to upgrade for 4-5 years afterward! By the way, here's an updated calculator shot:

1529

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by zridling on December 15, 2008, 09:54 AM »

Doh! Yes, let me edit that. Thanks!

1530

Living Room / Re: Finally a DonationCoder.com License Key for Time Travelers..

« Last post by zridling on December 13, 2008, 06:21 AM »

Welcome, Jim!
_____________________
Best laughs I've had this week. Thanks for the licenses, mouser!

1531

General Software Discussion / Re: Another 'Lifetime' license bites the dust

« Last post by zridling on December 13, 2008, 06:14 AM »

[DonL]: XYplorer (previously TrackerV3) always had a lifetime license and still has one. Customer Number One from April 2000 is still happily using the app without any additional payment ever.

Thanks Don! The one thing I appreciate it is that XYplorer has a donation link for guys like me who benefit from that across major versions. You don't have to donate, but I'm glad the option is there. I contacted the WinRAR guys about donating last year and they thought I was nuts. Go figure.

[Josh]: This is yet again proof that the modern day person expects everything to be free on the net because it can be pirated for free. Lifetime updates means just that, lifetime updates.

Far too many do. When you consider the incredible odds of building, and then sustaining, a good app over time, it's an extremely improbable event. Pirates suck the motivation out of coding for a living. Whether by donations or license fees, devs should be able to go to the bank. And if they are one of fortunate few to make enough so they don't have to work a side job, then all the more power to them. Instead of pirating, use free software and be happy with it. If you can code, contribute and make it better. Otherwise, pay up.

But given the complexity of explaining what Slysoft is doing here, at the very least it confuses users. I paid for lifetime licenses for both regular and HD versions. But to save myself future money on licenses and present money on discs, I setup an old (networked) PC in the living room and watch movies from it rather than bother converting them (to disc).

1532

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by zridling on December 13, 2008, 05:44 AM »

The latest Win7 Benchmarks are fantastic news. Speed might likely be the single most important factor in getting users off of Vista sooner than later.



Cinebench was the one test where Win7 was slower than Vista.

1533

General Software Discussion / Re: Another 'Lifetime' license bites the dust

« Last post by zridling on December 12, 2008, 01:54 PM »

[Carol]: Actually the one that pissed me off is FruityLoops. They SOLD lifetime updates and then changed the product name from FruityLoops to FruityLoops Professional and said it was anew product.

Josh is absolutely right: you gotta stay in business first in order to offer any license, whatever it is. But I would urge every developer and company not to offer any 'lifetime' option if you're not going to honor it. Remember, it was barely a year ago when Slysoft renamed AnyDVD as AnyDVD-HD, and then came back to us lifetime licensees to buy an entirely new "lifetime" license at full price, claiming that because AnyDVD-HD was an entirely different product with more features than AnyDVD, it required a new round of cash.

Also, plain old AnyDVD sells today for €49 with the 20% discount, no lifetime license option is offered during the purchase process. The final point I'd want to know is whether Slysoft will continue to support AnyDVD on future OSes, i.e., at what point does 'lifetime' end for them?

Profits bring more code. However, companies like Slysoft shoot themselves in the foot with these outlandish prices. The result is that, along with most other high-priced software, AnyDVD is one of the most pirated apps online (as is Photoshop, Apple's Final Draft, et al.).

1534

Living Room / Re: Linux holds kids back - that's what the teacher says! Windows fundamentalism?

« Last post by zridling on December 12, 2008, 01:37 PM »

My question is: what the hell is an 8th grader doing with a laptop in class? Are we removed from books, pen, and paper now?

1535

Living Room / Re: Linux holds kids back - that's what the teacher says! Windows fundamentalism?

« Last post by zridling on December 12, 2008, 01:35 PM »

Here's the relevant followup:

"The student did get his Linux disks back after the class. The lad was being disruptive, but that wasn't mentioned. Neither was the obvious fact that when she saw a gaggle of giggling 8th grade boys gathered around a laptop, the last thing she expected to see on that screen was a spinning cube. She didn't know what was on those disks he was handing out. It could have been porn, viral .exe's... any number of things for all she knew. When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling. Coupled with the fact that she truly was ignorant of honest-to-goodness free software, and you have some fairly impressive conclusion-jumping. In a couple of ways, I am guilty of it too."

What triggered the flaming response was when she reached for the lawsuit bomb. Bring pitchforks, guns, and lawyers!!

1536

General Software Discussion / Another 'Lifetime' license bites the dust

« Last post by zridling on December 12, 2008, 03:43 AM »

This one from Slysoft (annotations mine):

Dear valued customer,
     As of January 1st, 2009, Slysoft will change its update policy from free lifetime updates (I paid for it, how was it free?) to an annual subscription fee. All license purchases made before January 1st, 2009 will not be affected by this change; as promised, all licenses purchased before 2009 will still be honoured under Slysoft's free lifetime update policy.
     SlySoft announces this step in advance in order to provide its customers with the choice between the old and new licensing model. Buyers who act quickly can get an additional discount with the current ongoing special promotion. (This change is often made right before the company changes its name and cancels everyone's license!)
     Until Wednesday, December 31 2008 Slysoft offers a 20% discount on all software products -- except upgrades. If you are entertaining the thought of purchasing one of Slysoft's products, now is the right time to act!
     Happy Holidays!
     Gordon Reeves, Customer Care Center

________________________________________
There's still a few heroes left in the 'Lifetime' license club:
(01) XYplorer file manager
(02) xplorer² file manager
(03) Total Commander file manager
(04) UltraEdit
(05) WinRAR
(06) MediaMonkey Gold
(07) WinPatrol
(08) Where Is It? cataloging software

What others are there?

1537

Living Room / Re: How will the Earth end?

« Last post by zridling on December 10, 2008, 05:16 AM »

[f0dder]: If the question is to be interpreted as Earth, not humanity, I vote for being wiped out by aliens in order to build an intergalactic highway.

So Douglas Adams was right? That would be wild. Although I think App's cat takeover is more likely in the short run.

1538

Living Room / Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes

« Last post by zridling on December 09, 2008, 04:53 PM »

Please get me right, this is not a rant against linux.

-iphigenie (December 09, 2008, 05:55 AM)

And then you go on to rant about... Linux.

I am a big fan of opensource, i think it is the future and have been saying it for over 15 years. I have forced it down the throat of numerous people... But it is not perfect, it does not have the monopoly on innovation, good ideas, efficency.

-iphigenie (December 09, 2008, 05:55 AM)

Who's making this "monopoly" claim?

But as someone who has used many OSes, I get tired of the arrogance of some linux users, an arrogance that often makes claims that are totally untrue.

-iphigenie (December 09, 2008, 05:55 AM)

Again, who exactly is confusing distro flaws with the kernel? Neither is perfect, and no one is claiming them to be. In fact, I've never even read anyone claim such a thing. What follows is a matter of defining terms such as "Linux," "free software," "open source," and the difference between a "distribution" and the Linux kernel.

The one that really irks me is that many of the claims are linked to things used by linux distributions which arent at all linux. They are used by linux, but they come from other projects, other people, and they existed independently of linux. Open souce is not Linux! Most innovations do not come out of linux, they are just compiled on it or ported to it.

-iphigenie (December 09, 2008, 05:55 AM)

But Linux is open source software. I sense a straw man argument here, unless you mean that Windows will not run those programs. I'm not sure. Most of the major apps on Linux are cross-platform to Windows.

Innovation happens in open source projects, and also in closed source projects, and in universities and companies. Most of it does NOT happen in linux distributions, very few innovate in anything (very few write anything apart an installer and package manager, very few create anything except a wallpaper and icons), all the rest comes from other projects.

-iphigenie (December 09, 2008, 05:55 AM)

Of course. What's the problem, then? A project like the Fedora distro serves as a testbed for the Red Hat Linux server software. Every other major version is a disaster because it's bleeding edge, not leading edge. (Fedora 10 is fantastic, whereas 9 was user hell.)

Innovation finds its way onto major linux distributions after it appears elsewhere. Now some people involved in some distributions volunteer on some of the innovative open source projects, but that is usually after these projects have left the forefront of innovation. Neither is there that much innovation in the linux kernel, it is all about stabilisation and steady performance on multi cores these days (as it should be!!! don't mess with it!!!).

-iphigenie (December 09, 2008, 05:55 AM)

Yes indeed, and the problem again is? The real "innovative" advantage to Linux occurred as it was being built: scalability to any device. I don't know anyone claiming innovation for distros, except lots of newbie praise for Ubuntu since 2006.

And while we are at it, gnome is not linux, kde is not linux, gimp is not linux, firefox is not linux, apache is not linux, perl is not linux, openoffice is not linux, reiserfs is not linux, iptables is not linux, mysql is not linux neither are the hundreds of librairies everything rests on, or the applications everyone uses, or the windows managers, or the games... oh sorry, i ranted about this already.

-iphigenie (December 09, 2008, 05:55 AM)

Glad you cleared that up, or did you? Let's clarify our terms.

Linux = the kernel.

GNU/Linux = the larger OS and free software surrounding it, and used to build the kernel.

Distribution = distributions change the appearance and function of Linux completely. They range from large, fully supported complete systems (endorsed by companies like Novell, HP, Red Hat, Sun, IBM) to lightweight ones that fit on a USB memory stick or run on old computers (often developed by volunteers). The Ubuntu family is currently the most popular "distribution."

Open source = Open source is a development methodology.

Free software = Free software is social movement; more specifically, it is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

1539

General Software Discussion / Re: Is XP really that good?

« Last post by zridling on December 09, 2008, 04:10 PM »

[iphigenie]: This would have been a very commendable attitude if it wasn't followed by a list that is more religious belief than truth - made me want to rant, which i did elsewhere.

Methinks you protest too much. I did acknowledge XP's utility, however, where exactly is the untruth and "religious belief" in my response to "For your normal user, there is little reason not to run Windows"? (emphasis mine)

No big deal. I disagreed and gave 11 specific reasons based on my experience with Linux as a reasonable alternative to Windows. I used Microsoft OSes from 1985-2007. I have definitely earned -- not to mention paid for -- the right to try something different. God forbid it should turn out to be fortunate in every way.

1540

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft updates - annoying folder proliferation

« Last post by zridling on December 09, 2008, 03:56 PM »

One site I go to for help on these things is Annoyances.org

1541

Living Room / Re: A rant on religiousness about OSes

« Last post by zridling on December 09, 2008, 03:50 PM »

In the end, an operating system is just another tool based on your needs at any given time. Somewhat like App103, I no longer had the money to keep sending to Microsoft, nor could I afford to continue annually upgrading my favorite apps. Nor could I afford to keep buying ever newer, more powerful, and expensive hardware to run the next version of Windows. (I shouldn't have to!) So I switched to Linux. I've really had a lot of fun in the process. A few frustrations, of course, but nothing a google search didn't solve.

But while OS fundamentalism is tiresome and predictable, both Apple and Mac have spent billions on OS advocacy and comparisons:

• The Mojave Experiment (Microsoft)
  
• Get a Mac (Apple)
  
• Get GNU/Linux

1542

Living Room / How will the Earth end?

« Last post by zridling on December 09, 2008, 03:23 PM »

and then there's always this scenario (humorous/NSFW). How do you think it all ends?

1543

General Software Discussion / Re: Is XP really that good?

« Last post by zridling on December 05, 2008, 08:56 PM »

This just in: Dell is charging $150 to downgrade to XP!

"Essentially how it works is the customer prepays for an upgrade to Vista Ultimate in exchange for a preinstalled copy of Windows XP Professional."

Dell, you suck.

1544

General Software Discussion / Re: XP SP3 blocks .NET security patches

« Last post by zridling on December 04, 2008, 11:37 AM »

Yikes. Microsoft's whole re-proach of XP since Vista arrived could not have been handled worse.

Damned if you don't upgrade, damned to use Vista if you do. Oy.

1545

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by zridling on December 04, 2008, 11:34 AM »

Yes, the ribbon is not efficient in all contexts, and Microsoft should not force it onto simple apps.

1546

Living Room / Re: Your favorite quotes?

« Last post by zridling on December 04, 2008, 11:32 AM »

The problem of youth is to get out of one extreme without falling into its opposite.
 - Aristotle

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.
 - Alfred North Whitehead

1547

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by zridling on December 03, 2008, 09:55 AM »

As for sheer video eye candy, here's some to have fun with.

OK Go - Here It Goes Again


For the guitar hero inside you, Queen and Pachabel would be impressed. (Warning: crank it!)

For the geek inside you, The Machine Us/ing Us. Very nice video.


So sue me. I have a thing for girls in short skirts. (110 million views!)

Finally, one of the strangest and most moving videos I've ever seen by Unkle called, Rabbit in your Headlights. It was sad and powerful and strangely damning. And then there's the end of the video, the part no-one forgets. The whole video is utterly cryptic. It's almost impossible to say what it means, but it's equally hard to find someone who can watch it, really watch it, and remain unmoved.

1548

Living Room / Re: Why Windows Rules: the QWERTY phenomenon?

« Last post by zridling on December 03, 2008, 09:08 AM »

[Paul]: In fact, they're almost a pioneer of this concept just based on their success with this while many novelist/musicians are only starting to wisen up to this marketing strategy of providing their paid products for free via p2p.

Wow. So true. However, cheaper generally wins. How many times over the years have we seen a program break out during its beta and 1.x versions, gaining wild popularity, only to declare it's going shareware in version 2.0, and then it falls off the table? Even for music, the new DRM-free MP3 store at Amazon.co.uk is a better value than any DRM music.

1549

General Software Discussion / Re: Is XP really that good?

« Last post by zridling on December 02, 2008, 02:30 PM »

Carol has often said it before, but the one vast advantage that XP enjoys is its application base. Not only users, but businesses don't want to give up that advantage. And now that enough people (or corporations) didn't switch to Vista, they know they can wait Microsoft out.

Automatically upgrading is no longer inevitable for everyone.

1550

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by zridling on December 02, 2008, 02:25 PM »

Holy crap, this is a lot of fun guys, thanks.