Recent Posts

1651

Living Room / Re: I had the strangest dream last night...

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 03:19 PM »

Windows for Telepaths

-Edvard (December 08, 2008, 01:02 PM)

Oddly, that wasn't the first thing that came to mind when I read "Windows TP".

Edit [couldn't sort out the '/quote' marks]

-cranioscopical (December 08, 2008, 02:47 PM)

You and I seem to have jumped to the same conclusion on first flush...

1652

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: StopKa - desktop search tool

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 02:05 PM »

StopKa is running. When selecting Index->start the program crashes - even if started in Administrator & Compatibility mode. Is it incompatible with Windows Vista?

-Crush (December 08, 2008, 12:52 PM)

I don't think so - it consistently crashes under XP Pro Sp-3 as well 

1653

Living Room / Re: Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You and other jewels by Bruce Schneier

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 02:04 PM »

  That video was funny - very colourful vocabulary - I learned at least one new idiom...

1654

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 45

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 12:19 PM »

I haven't been back to their forum at Wilders for three or four weeks so I don’t know if they released an amazing update or what!

-J-Mac (December 08, 2008, 12:09 AM)

I haven't been there in a while, either, but I seriously doubt that they've released a comprehensive and amazing patch. The accusation I have read most over the years (also levelled at Corel with PaintShop Pro), is that they use their existing paid customers as beta testers and then charge them for the fruits of their labours (ie to upgrade to the next version). Thus, buying maintenance agreements from them is a good idea. As I mentioned (and Carol seems to have gone the same route), I upgraded a few years ago to the Workstation version (now called Echo) which hasn't had a numerical upgrade in ages but has been rock solid. This is a version for their corporate customers and seems to be updated fairly often. Maintenace agreements are cheap, as well - $16 a year.  A LOT cheaper then buying upgrades.

Caveat: I have no idea what the built-in burner is like with this version, never having tried it.

1655

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: StopKa - desktop search tool

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 12:12 PM »

Yeah - no worries. I had no trouble configuring the program, it's just that a lot of computer users aren't savvy enough to figure these things out on their own, which will lead to a negative first impression of the software.

1656

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 10:52 AM »

Twice???  

BTW, they should have most of their stuff on sale over the next two months - you might want to hold off in anticipation of that...

...Does the program have an editor-style search-and-replace, or would one have to work on every repeated text object separately?  In the latter case, it would probably be better to convert to Word .DOC.

-rjbull (December 08, 2008, 10:16 AM)

In both cases I bought the software only to be offered large discounts at a later date, so I simply returned them and bought them again 

RE: discounts, my experience is that they usually offer a discount around the middle/end of Decmeber. Often, this precedes a new release, but not every year. I guess you've nothing to lose, really - if you buy now and the sale DOES happen, you can pull my little stunt and return it, then buy at the discount!

Finally, in place text editing/search-and-replace... I'm going to test it now. I'll post back in a few minutes 

UPDATE: AFAICT there is no replace feature. However, you can both Find and Search throughout a document - Find functions more or less like Find in Word while Search reports back with a list of all occurences of the search term:

1657

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: StopKa - desktop search tool

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 08:44 AM »

Hi again - just to note that "out of the box" StopKa is configured to save to a default location (D:\StopKa), which is an optical drive for most computer users. It also ships with a default .drj file that causes it to look for a non-existent backup folder on D drive...

1658

General Software Discussion / Re: How to share file access between two applications?

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 08:37 AM »

Hi David,

I don't have a definitive answer, BUT - backup programs like Genie Backup Manager Pro are able to access files that are in use to back them up. They do this via a plug-in that should work system-wide, I think (I'm actually out of my depth here  ). They've used two systems:

1. Open File Manager
2. File Access Manager

Both of these "solutions" are intended to be used to allow a backup utility to backup up files that are in use, but I am wondering if they might be used to allow you to do what you're after as well...?

1659

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: StopKa - desktop search tool

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 08:27 AM »

So, just to clarify - you'd like to switch to a shareware model for this, correct? Version 1.2 is freeware but 1.3 and beyond will require the purchase of a licence? Enquiring minds want to know!

1660

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: StopKa - desktop search tool

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 08:22 AM »

hi. thank you for interest! i'm developer. if you have to suggest some feature or find a bug - please write about it.

-vitali_y (December 08, 2008, 07:30 AM)

Welcome, Vitali! As I noted, we're always thrilled to have developers participating here - check back in every so often.

I'm downloading StopKa now... 

1661

Living Room / Re: Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You and other jewels by Bruce Schneier

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 08:19 AM »

What Deozaan said... I've yet to encounter anything that has been disabled by Vista's built in DRM. Actually, the only issues that I've ever had with DRM have been with music files purchased from Puretracks years ago - I've upgraded hardward twice since then and somewhere along the way WMP's useless licencing backup system has been removed altogether. Thus, no chance of my ever playing THOSE files again  Thank goodness for the ability to burn to disc and, more latterly, programs like Netburner and muvAudio. For DVDs there's always DVDFab or AnyDVD, but I don't tend to buy DVD's so am not so concerned.

1662

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« Last post by Darwin on December 08, 2008, 08:12 AM »

Well... what's worse about Nuance (unless they've changed their tune of late) is that they won't let you run a trial of their software - you MUST buy it. The upside is that they've got a generous 90 day no questions asked return policy, which I have used without fanfare or drama twice. BTW, they should have most of their stuff on sale over the next two months - you might want to hold off in anticipation of that...

1663

Living Room / Re: I had the strangest dream last night...

« Last post by Darwin on December 07, 2008, 05:14 PM »

All I dream about these days is getting some sleep (insomnia seems to be kicking in again after a good patch).

-Carol Haynes (December 07, 2008, 04:19 PM)

Hear, hear, Carol. I'm in the same boat 

@Deozaan and Perry - I think you both had too much to dream last night...

1664

Living Room / Re: prize contest

« Last post by Darwin on December 07, 2008, 05:09 PM »

Great find, cmpm  There're 49 other sites running similar contests for the same package. Most of them are more involved/specific in what you need to do in order to enter, though.

1665

Living Room / Re: prize contest

« Last post by Darwin on December 07, 2008, 04:43 PM »

I think they're talking about the portions of the prize package that the winner is going to giveaway...

1666

General Software Discussion / Re: Music files 101

« Last post by Darwin on December 06, 2008, 04:05 PM »

Eh?

-Carol Haynes (December 06, 2008, 03:03 PM)

http://shakespeare.m...nryv/henryv.2.4.html

1667

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« Last post by Darwin on December 06, 2008, 01:37 PM »

Well... PDF Converter Professional can do a number of things, such as make a pdf searchable, allow you to modify and move blocks of text and pictures around, encrypt pdfs, etc. I actually have Omnipage as well, it will certianly do some of these things, but not as easily or as conveniently. I'm not an Omnipage power user by any stretch, so others may be able to provide more insight.

1668

General Software Discussion / Re: What is your boot time?

« Last post by Darwin on December 06, 2008, 09:42 AM »

[OT]@nontroppo - are you running any sort of security applicatoin on OS X? Just curious if you have a recommendation. I'm appalled by the price of the commercial offerings (average is somewhere north of $70 US) but am looking at ClamXav...[/OT]

1669

General Review Discussion / Re: Zaine's review of Compression Tools is cited in an excellent book on Compression

« Last post by Darwin on December 06, 2008, 09:03 AM »

Congratulations, Zaine  This is exciting news   

1670

General Software Discussion / Re: New duplicate file finder... I am open to features suggestion

« Last post by Darwin on December 05, 2008, 07:03 PM »

4wd - love that GUI myself 

I like DoubleKiller, but setting it up is a bit of a PITA! I use it *just* infrequently enough to forget its idiosyncracies and have to fiddle around with it for a while before I can get it to return the result in which I am interested.

1671

General Software Discussion / Re: New duplicate file finder... I am open to features suggestion

« Last post by Darwin on December 05, 2008, 10:33 AM »

Sorry Darwin, I meant to say I supported your idea but somehow I left that bit out. My apologies.

-tsaint (December 05, 2008, 09:05 AM)

  No worries!

1672

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« Last post by Darwin on December 05, 2008, 09:21 AM »

I've wound up switching to Scansoft PDF Converter Pro.

-Darwin (December 04, 2008, 02:16 PM)

Is that the Nuance one?  I seem to remember someone complaining about problems with it?  Have you compared it with Able2Extract?

-rjbull (December 05, 2008, 05:01 AM)

Er... yes, to the first two points! And I've complained about it from time to time - but then it usually comes down to me complaining about something! I've got it running very smoothly, now. THere is a system wide glitch with it under XP that took me YEARS to solve (I was looking in other places for the fault - realised where fault lay when I uninstalled PDFCP a while back) - certain programs default to (in my case) displaying titles, taskbar titles, and open and save dialogs in Korean (or some other language, presumably, on other systems). Works BRILLIANTLY under Vista, though.

Haven't had a chance to look at Able2Extract, yet. Will do so soon (deadlines to meet today).

Just had a look at the developer's product comparison table - AFAICT, Nuance's PDF Converter Professional 5 (wish they'd do a matrix on one page) is much more feature rich, comes in one package and, as a result, is much cheaper. You can get PDFC Pro 5 for $99 (there's an Enterprise version with even more features for $149) - if you pay full price (usually not necessary) and it does everything on that table. To approximate the feature set of PDFC Pro, you'd need to buy both Sonic PDF Creator ($174.95) and Able2Extract Professional ($129).

1673

Living Room / Re: Christmas Gift Ideas Under $25... Make a List!

« Last post by Darwin on December 05, 2008, 09:17 AM »

Back to the reading light, were LED light bulbs available in the 90's?  I have a headlamp from about 1996 that uses a traditional flashlight bulb - as I recall I didn't have the LED option at the time. My year old LED headlamp is so much better on so many levels... Battery power being the biggest one.

That website is PRICELESS - I haven't seen one like that since about 1997 

EDIT: just noticed this:

all contents copyright © 2003-2006 ASF Associates Ltd. 

at the bottom of that page - inexcusable! Emphasis mine.

1674

Living Room / Re: Christmas Gift Ideas Under $25... Make a List!

« Last post by Darwin on December 05, 2008, 09:07 AM »

I tend not to read in bed. I discovered much better uses for my time when I find myself in one.

-40hz (December 05, 2008, 08:15 AM)

There are several variables to consider, though...

1675

General Software Discussion / Re: New duplicate file finder... I am open to features suggestion

« Last post by Darwin on December 05, 2008, 09:01 AM »

If these pairings are seperated by several other matches it's too easy to lose track of what you're doing. To my mind much better to see a list with, for example, check boxes, with all matching duplicates grouped together

-tsaint (December 05, 2008, 08:38 AM)

This is what I'm suggesting as well - unfortunate that  chose to limit my example to two files.

File Name
-------->Location One
-------->Location Two
-------->Location Three
-------->Location Four
...........Etc.

If you look at the first group in Vitaly's screen shot, it looks like he's already implemented this. Of course, it's 7 am here and I've only had one cup of coffee, so... 
 
BTW, I've been reading through TFM for DoubleKiller Pro and I can't see how to do this there. Caffeine caveat applies here, too, though...

PS WRT file grouping, it's the file name as group header that I'm looking for (in DoubleKiller)