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1776

Living Room / Re: YouTube finally forces creation of google+ A/C to comment

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 12, 2013, 09:22 AM »

I don't mind needing a G+ account to comment, since I rarely ever comment on youtube.

But what I do mind is how when I share a video on G+, or comment on a video on G+, all the comments from the videos will now appear on Youtube. And this is retroactive. And it also means that if anyone replies to a G+ imported comment thread on Youtube, it will now appear on the original thread on G+.

Be really careful what videos you share on G+. If the quality of the comments are poor on Youtube, or there is a whole lot of trolling and flaming going on, you can now expect that type of comments to spread to your G+ like a disease.
...
I have a youtube account that is not associated with my real name/G+ account. Google forced a secondary G+ identity on me that exists as a Youtube channel under my main account. It allows me to keep them separated, but not have to deal with having 2 google accounts to do it.

-app103 (November 07, 2013, 01:30 PM)

Yeah that's REALLY unfortunate because except for some misc thing I never comment on YouTube. But G+ (why did we get addicted to +1?) was supposed to be the "Geek's Facebook" ... with a higher standard of user! So with sneaky changes like this, it's mashing basement dirt YouTube comments with what might be carefully curated G+ account! And mess up one little feature, or some strange click box, and Boom! You just wrecked your G+ account!

Facebook has their own evils, but I don't know of anything comparable on their side that can cause that much damage! (Instagram maybe?)

1777

Post New Requests Here / Re: Separate out and move files to subfolders

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 12, 2013, 09:11 AM »

Hmm.

Well the good news is it didn't hang!

The "Ugly news" is that you said you wanted it to be NANY and not just a "snack"... that's my famous topic I keep saying about "Coding Snacks vs Coding Lunches"! NANY's are Coding Lunches ... or maybe Cereal?

Skwire, can you weigh in on the differences between this and Files2Folders? They're suddenly sounding similar, except this time Chris's version "did what it does" and I think I recall yours making my system grumpy, so I don't know why because it feels like the same "mechanical end result". So maybe feature differences, and maybe a quick summary of the "backbone".

So to continue the "Ugly News", how many use cases do you want vs "easy for a user to walk into"? Since "no one reads the Readme's anyway", I thought "Optional Setting - File - Prefix" would only move the files *with that prefix* ... imagine my shock "Holy @#$@#$@, it blew up my data??!" So for example a dialog box indicating that data could be totally unrecoverable if you had more than my trivial case carefully file named, like 100 songs with descriptive names, only to have them all become "song1 song2 song3"!

If I ... uh ... hadn't used bvckup like last week, and did that to my music folder...  

Another example pops up from what would have been my use case at work. I used to do Change Orders to contracts in construction accounting. So here are my juicy 85 change orders from my hard working manager, all sensibly named "ChangeOrder1 ChangeOrder2"... and off I go... out comes folders 0-84 ... (the manager grabbed #s 45-84 for the lawyer, who signed the contract... with addendums 44-83!!) (Gets fired)  

So this feels like a Bill Murray in Groundhog Day making ice sculptures with a chainsaw! Very powerful, but if you slip on that ice, you might lose a hand!

I think somehow Skwire's mechanic of selecting relevant files to be processed feels a bit safer, so maybe your current UI might be some kind of unlockable "advanced power mode".

1778

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2 is in open beta !

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 12, 2013, 08:45 AM »

...
One solution to get multiple snapshots would be to do like in the screenshots, and create a daily job that syncs to a folder called daily, and a weekly that syncs to a folder called weekly. That way, even if you screw up the daily snapshot, you have a weekly to fall back to.

-Jibz (October 23, 2013, 02:09 AM)

Sure, and my sync needs are very simple so I don't even do it monthly. "When I get bored" every few months or sometimes years is sorta my theme - because of all the "Cloudiness" of everything, I don't really mind losing a month's stuff of random notes. Just not to lose all of everything, ever. So because I for example already have that test sync done, because of the way I "collate and batch" stuff almost like "filed by month", I don't need 12 copies of my complete desktop - maybe two or three is fine, then I just drag "this month's folder" via boring old "drag and drop".

The first sync was just because I had no idea where anything was, so power-synced it. But new stuff would have to only be in like ten places. 

1779

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: The NANY Retrospective Thread

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 11, 2013, 11:25 AM »

^ I don't think that NANY is enough to give something like that traction.  *You* have to use it and evangelize it and be interested in it, from what I've seen.

Look at the OpenMenu NANY entry.  It took a while for it to gain traction, but it has, and I see it being used in places.

The short- end-user software gets immediate results; tools and concepts need evangelization.

But I will agree with you on the support.

-wraith808 (November 11, 2013, 08:12 AM)

I dunno, "Tools" covers a bunch of stuff. You have to decide what "traction" means. Only by DC users? Elsewhere?

There's some 7-10 "tools" from here I use to the max. ScreenShot Captor (even though only one "feature" out of the zillions!), into Tom Revell's Stickies (not DC), then TranDesk from here from oddly not a NANY but a "C contest", Miles Ahead's BBSS mod that reads Firefox tabs and produces paired lists, my own "File Extension Toggle" that I contributed as a "Gift to DC", and a few other things. Chris G's UnzipSnack.

So when I find a tool I like here, I do evangelize it here and there!

1780

Living Room / Re: Looking for a seventies music title...

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 11, 2013, 11:11 AM »

I'm guessing it might be somebody singing a Breton variant of puirt-a-beul vocalisms (rather than a made up language) - but the date and the fact it was a pop performer have me stumped.

-40hz (November 11, 2013, 07:16 AM)

Not necessarily "Pop Performer" ... "using words like Pop". ("Maybe")

Heh this sounds like a programmer's dream!
"Go Go Music Database Boolean Search!

Give me all 45's from the 70's with female singers in France and UK with Non-Obviously-Identifiable-Language"!

That Language thing really chops it down because it knocks out all the English and French songs. So you for example might not recognize Japanese (on a cross-euro cheap Italian re-issue etc) but say there's 500,000 eligible songs from the 70's on 45
RPM, Non-English Non-French would chop out 490,000 of them!

1781

Post New Requests Here / Re: Separate out and move files to subfolders

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 11, 2013, 11:04 AM »

Updated to 1.0.2.0

Fixed bug where it would not process files over 999 very well or at all. Added Abort button. All controls are disabled when processing (except Abort).

Please give this a try. http://cgs.vdsworld.com/click.php?id=64

Thanks

-c.gingerich (November 11, 2013, 09:55 AM)

My test case only had four files!

My note crossed yours. See what you think!

1782

Post New Requests Here / Re: Separate out and move files to subfolders

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 11, 2013, 11:03 AM »

Heh hmm.

Well, it doesn't work at all for me!

For example:
I extracted it all to a folder on my desktop, same name "File Groupie". So it has a bunch of stuff. That Readme opens in a strange app that wasn't easy to print from. So I copied it and pasted it into a text file.

Then I hit ControlC-ControlV a bunch of times and got stuff like "Copy2 of Readme" "Copy3 of Readme".

I made a folder called "Test MoveTo Folder".

I ran Groupie. Selected "Sort by name". Prefix "Copy". Picked the folders.

Then I ran it.

Not unlike Skwire's, it locked up my entire comp (quad core, but one thread? "CPU Use" went to 100...), and stayed there until I killed the process in Task Manager. Abort didn't work!

Now I know my machine is a little feisty but it generally does everything else, and it's only these kinds of shell-esque AHK tools that really tank!

So there's my use case!

Current Status for me: 100% Fail. Park Until Advised.

Edit: My test is already in the 1.0.2.0 version.

1783

Living Room / Re: Adblock Plus Letting Ads By

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 10, 2013, 09:09 PM »

Wikipedia is getting more strident with "pity us, we were free and now trying to PBS-Monetize! Look! Big ugly Orange strip on the page!"

But Adblock won't kill it because it seems to be locally generated or whatever.

1784

Post New Requests Here / Re: Separate out and move files to subfolders

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 10, 2013, 09:07 PM »

Wow. That was unexpected... ... Thanks for the testing!

-c.gingerich (November 10, 2013, 01:19 PM)

Heh since my tests often produce odd results lemme try a couple of tests two, from a diff angle! More news in a bit!
(Hi Skwire!)

1785

General Software Discussion / Re: I hate the word "anathema"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 10, 2013, 09:02 PM »

I just can't stand that word.  From the first time I heard it and all the years since.  Whenever it is used, it always sounds like something wrong just happened in grammer.

-superboyac (November 07, 2013, 05:36 PM)

Well of course it did! Your Gram'ma and Kelsey Grammer are upset! 

Muphry's Law:
When someone complains about spelling or grammar, woe betide them if they make a spelling or grammar error in their rant!
 

1786

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: The NANY Retrospective Thread

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 10, 2013, 09:00 PM »

Abusing another thread:

WELCOME TO THE NANNY NANY STATE GOVERNMENT OF THE U.S.A DONATIONCODER!.

-Tinman57 (November 13, 2012, 06:43 PM)

Some Acronyms can never be UnLearned!
Fear Mouser, for he made NANY one of them!

 

1787

General Software Discussion / Re: new Site for my Software

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 09, 2013, 02:04 PM »

One thing I noted that you make it hard to contact you. Obviously we all hate spammers, but from my experience, I found that no matter how hard I try, it is the legitimate user, who just want to simply say thank you, go away, but the spammers get what they want.
Anyway it is your choice.

-anandcoral (November 09, 2013, 02:28 AM)

Oh Wow! I didn't even notice that on first pass (I actually thought the page wasn't done yet). That is pretty user hostile in the jumping through hoops department. I just use the embedded send mail control (CDO IIRC) so the address is never displayed on our companies websites and it seems to be doing fine. We get spam sure...but it isn't routed through that Email address.

For my own site, I don't bother hiding the Email address at all as it's already displayed in various programs I've written (so it's out there already). The result of that is the signal to noise ratio of my inbox is typically in the 80-90% (spam) range ... But this serves a purpose as I like to see what type of Email shenanigans are going on out in the wild to better prepare for their aftermath on client machines at work.

Note: I am not recommending the second practice as it is indeed risky as hell ... But the first one (for company sites) has worked out quite well.

-Stoic Joker (November 09, 2013, 07:27 AM)

"Everything that rises must converge" - Flannery O'Connor

I've been a bit grouchy lately, taking a bit of the "undercurrent side" of the sugar-gloss of what is going on tech world. So skipping the Anti-Company rants for this note, "in this FaceBook Like and GooglePlus +1 World", ponder for a moment why you think that the email address will stay hidden at all very long? I'll step back this time, but nothing prevents "me" (aka anyone ever) from just pasting the plaintext email address.

1788

Living Room / Re: Lavabit & Silent Circle Bring You ==> DARKMAIL

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 07, 2013, 02:16 AM »

I don't get where the comment is related to the service?  

-wraith808 (November 06, 2013, 09:35 PM)

Because I'm in someone's target victory of "I will never trust any service ever again to be "dark". Period. "The best I can hope for is a social revolution or to die in my sleep", to borrow a song.

My cryptic reference was to the xkcd comment of:
Nerd1: "Look, 'Silent Circle and Lavabit are developing a new way to do email with end-to-end encryption.' "

But then see stuff like Mouser's note 4 posts above:
'Op-ed: Lavabit’s primary security claim wasn’t actually true Ladar Levison stood up for users' privacy—but perhaps a little too late.'

There's your primary conflict. I don't care what gorgeous bitcoin-enabled 512-bit-key security-through-the-roof system you have, because somewhere, someone, knows how it works and if "they" stick that fella on a stupid fifty dollar piece of molten steel heated to 2668 degrees until he breaks and spills the details, then none of it matters.

That's what Edward Snowden taught us, and that's the message of "SnowdenGate". Because all of these systems were supposed to be secure. Sure they could raid your house and subpoena stuff, but it wasn't really supposed to be auto-there wholesale from AT&T's Room 538.

Not unlike BitCoin: Some clever math there, but we're just starting to see its endgame, and there are two endings. A genius IQ 188 marketing plan where the first X fellas with easy to mine early bitcoins who can cash in can/are making a killing, and not only is it now almost impossible to mine a new coin, the Feds are on the edge of shutting all of it down, making it this century's Dutch Tulips again. That second movement is an "xkcd moment" - skip the math, pass a couple laws, invoke a couple older ones, and start applying bully force until someone caves in.

That's the real warning of that comic panel.

1789

General Software Discussion / Re: Stickies 6.0a released

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 07, 2013, 02:03 AM »

Do not buy before you have tried The Reference:
NoteZilla - it can do so much more!

- unfortunately NoteZilla is $30   - but worth it  

XP & Vista only.

-Curt (January 29, 2007, 08:54 AM)

For me the difference is always about when the dev is "small enough" that he can sneak your feature in. So I am still a fan of Stickies because Tom Revell stuck "multi undo" in. That means that unlike before, if you place a text box, draw an arrow, place a text box, then the next morning go "what was I thinking??", you can Undo all three actions without wrecking your base image sticky. Not that hard of a concept but it wasn't possible until about last year in 2012.

So I'm a bit against the mood of "try X" if one super crushing killer feature isn't present in "that program" despite maybe X many cute little small improvements. Totally different Genre, I spent a year discovering Tree info software, but exactly two of the thirty candidates could export the notes properly into a universal web site, so the other twenty eight candidates just lost out no matter what little tweaks built in since I knew at the end of it all if the Killer Feature wasn't there, there wasn't really any point in bothering to learn the finesses!

So I'm all Stickies-Go! : )

1790

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 07, 2013, 01:57 AM »

Someone get CWuestefeld's 900th post, coming up!

---

CWuestefeld
Supporting Member
**
Posts: 899

1791

Living Room / Re: Making a new page of "DonationCoder's Favorite Web Sites" - suggestions?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 07, 2013, 01:55 AM »

Aeclectic Tarot - are you into Tarot and other oracle card decks either as a collector, practitioner, or true believer? If so, Aeclectic Tarot is THE site for news, reviews, essays, and preview images for just about every tarot and oracle deck out there, including unpublished, limited edition collectible and rare decks.

-40hz (September 07, 2013, 10:06 PM)

This one looks different.

I studied Tarot for a couple of years under the "conservative" school where it was just a system of metaphors, not some magical way to predict the future. Just recently I have undergone the "Crashing Tower" moment from the Major Arcana, so a bit of minor interest has been rekindled, though I'm now too pulled in many directions to give it the depth of study I once did. But it's worth a nice month's project!

The art was always huge for me, in Tarot work. So sorry to say for example "today's" deck picks, (in the web sense of Thurs 11-7-2013, not the "biz sense" spanning 30 years of "today") just look terrible to me. I am just about to get some stuff out of storage, and I think that includes about five Tarot decks.

I use variants of the "upside down card = modified meaning" systems. But I'm so rusty on my "interpretation systems", and actually having moved to NY City, there are "themes" that those old school books don't cover, so I might be due for a cutting edge new Tarot book medium soon!

1792

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2013, 07:52 PM »

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. – C.S. Lewis

-IainB (November 04, 2013, 08:09 AM)

Here's a little bit of help from about 1985!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=WfgKy6B-1R8
Stabilizers - Tyranny
...
_______________________

-TaoPhoenix (November 06, 2013, 03:21 PM)

That has reminded me of the SF story about the inventor who designed a robot with built-in programming to ensure the health, safety and happiness of humans, and other programming to enable it to be self-replicating and able to improve on the basic engineering design, as and when necessary.

A swathe of the robots offered themselves up to a grateful mankind as personal servants. They automated all the dangerous things like cars, motorbikes and so forth, even bicycles, so that people could not get hurt using them any more. No more rock-climbing though, for example. They steadily took all the fun out of life that comes from risky behaviour and skill development.

The inventor realised that he had let an awful and unstoppable tyranny loose on the world, and he could see no way to reverse it. He became terrified of the robots. The robots were concerned for him as they strove to ensure his health, safety and happiness. And though he tried desperately to hide his unhappiness from them, they were skilled in human psychology and could see that he was not happy, and so did the best they could for him and gave him a frontal lobotomy, after which he seemed quite happy.

-IainB (November 06, 2013, 07:46 PM)

Yikes!

But before you go even that far, I meant it at a people level, it's a theme vs the whole Snowden mess. "You don't have a privacy violation if you don't know it exists" type of comments!

1793

Living Room / Re: Lavabit & Silent Circle Bring You ==> DARKMAIL

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2013, 07:49 PM »

Also, one thing I found while reading the comments was ThreadThat.  Has anyone used/heard of this service?

-wraith808 (November 06, 2013, 06:31 PM)

A big problem is that with say 12 layers to the internet, it's gonna be REAL hard for even average techies like me to figure out "where the trust is". xkcd's Wrench Solution comes to mind. Those forces at the gates are getting bolder, and one day, someone has the info, and will break.

1794

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2013, 07:43 PM »

Why the death of the PC is a myth

-Arizona Hot (October 28, 2013, 02:23 AM)

I'm not usually a fan of Fox News, but this time they finally put "official words" to my view that absolutely the PC is not dead, it's a "PC Plus" world.

I do a decently large variety of things on my PC. And while I do like about 12 phone apps, there's no chance if someone carted my comp away as "dead, so what do you care", could I function!

I view Phones-Tablets sorta like "Brothers" that trade phone calls vs screen space, but I am suspicious of tablets because why isn't a "PC" that form size?

Anyway, just sounding a vote of support for the Desktop PC (or Mac/Linux, not going OS war here). Phones don't run ANYTHING ... certainly not the some 50 programs I have loaded and use, and the other 200 I have looked at and let sit there!

1795

General Software Discussion / Re: delete rows with duplicate cells

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2013, 07:34 PM »

Shorter answer (less reading)

Highlight that data you want to work with, and click the Remove Duplicates option on the Data tab of the ribbon (07 and up). Then select the column(s) you want to search for duplicates.

...I just discovered this option a while back ... Right after spending an entire day manually sorting down a 7,000 item inventory dump.

-Stoic Joker (November 05, 2013, 06:59 AM)

Yikes!

Well this prob and many not dis-similar ones can be tackled with "intermediate skillz"! "Not all these steps all apply, but in holistic theme they do".

1. So the offending Duplicate Column is Column H. So during all this, save version controlled copies so if you mess it up learning you can go back! Copy 1a sort by col H.
2. Create a new column, whether it is Col I or Col AA or whatever, and do something like "if (Cell to my left) = (cell to my left and up 1), then "dup", else "clear".

-- You can't quote literary and quote an excel command but that's close enough to give the gist.
3. So then hopefully the first of anything always goes through, and all the dups get tagged as Dup. So then you save 1a at that point. Then in a fresh new copy 1b or 2a or whatever, you SORT BY DUP. So ALL the dupes float to the top!
4. Delete the dupes. Even on my aging comp or the one at old work, fifteen seconds because after about ten scrolls it starts flying by! Save that copy.
5. Create a fresh new copy. 3a, or whatever. But Bump the Version Number. Because by now that should have totally nuked all the dupes from one column. You can repeat as needed for other columns. But that's the method.
6. Save a final "Production Copy" after you've fixed the usual junk that just happened to catch your eye, irrelevant to this process.

Hope that helps!

I'm not a total "expert", I don't script Excel much, but I came to believe in it after my last job and now I am suspicious of anything "manual"!

Bonus - Rules of thumb

A. The first three letters of RIS(C) (No Chip). Reduced Instruction Set Winz! Fatality! (Mortak Kombat I miss you 1995!) So even if you can't totally kill the problem, there's a darn good chance you can take the manual part down from say 23 actions X 1000 lines down to say 7 actions X 1000 lines.

B. An unbelievable incredible number of things can be done with Chained Logic. So (If you've earned the right!) tell your boss you need two hours to think, because if the manual version of something takes 4-7 days but a five column logic chain can do it in twelve hours, think about it! The secret is heuristic rules. "Precisely why am I doing this?" If it's just a total crap data set you're a bit stuck, but if the action is suspiciously familiar, then do junk like "Length-mid-characters 5-8;;if they are such and such, flag to just kill".

(Totally not valid Excel Syntax, but 15 min will give you the right one.) Point is, For ex, if your correct data HAS to be 1112223333 for say a phone number but it all comes in 111-222-3333, characters 4 and 8 "cannot be dashes", so set up your five-seven column logic chain to kill them.

Whew! Enough for now! Just be Werry Werry Leery of manual junk in Excel/clones!

1796

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2013, 07:17 PM »

(see attachment in previous post)
Train eavesdropper tweets former spy chief's briefing

-Arizona Hot (October 25, 2013, 01:50 PM)

This is one of the few sensible outcomes. They could easily have tried their usual "stifle" campaign and in the pre-net era they would.

I think more puppet strings from SnowdenGate are showing!

This would have been called "unrealistic" as a plot line from any generic TV show 15 years ago!!

1797

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY Submission (another) - Tab Launcher

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2013, 07:12 PM »

Yes I am sorry about that. I had to take it down and put it on hold. I do plan of starting it back up ASAP.

-c.gingerich (November 06, 2013, 04:00 PM)

Specifically why exactly take it down? Because you don't believe in having a site when you are not working on a project? I'd think at least a "Hi. Sorry that this project is not being actively developed. But maybe you might want to check again in a year" type of placeholder page might work!

I would think ANYTHING is better than "page not found" which to me signals the worst of the web!

Years ago I did a study of free hosts, and I have a little space on tap, certainly enough to host a few random "parked project pages" for ex if y'all just do a re-direct.

Just sayin' as time creeps on, Page Not Found is a slowly growing disease!!

 

1798

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2013, 03:26 PM »

I'd say that the strings are showing more than anything else.  The President of the United States is a position of great power at the behest of great powers it seems to me.

-wraith808 (November 06, 2013, 12:00 PM)

Isn't that theoretically the first step towards change?

And I missed when the "gate" opened to make the term SnowdenGate :  )

Which is rather funny ... wasn't that episode about spying too? : )

1799

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2013, 03:21 PM »

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. – C.S. Lewis

-IainB (November 04, 2013, 08:09 AM)

Here's a little bit of help from about 1985!
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=WfgKy6B-1R8
Stabilizers - Tyranny

I can see you've got things well in hand
You seem to think this is your promised land
No parade without a tip of your hat
If the people cry -- you give them what they ask
Both good and bad -- and as the sky turns black
CHORUS:
What's a little tyranny to you?
When all you need to do -- is come to me
So what -- what's a little tyranny
Now the plan begins to take some form
I could swear you had a soul before
You're in command -- holding tight to your course
You close your hand and promise them much more
From behind your door -- they've heard it all before
CHORUS
Now it seems your luck is running down
A masquerade in pieces on the ground
The fear you've lost has suddenly been found
They've come for you -- go to your angry crowd
Hear them calling out loud
You're wearing a smile through the frown
CHORUS

1800

Post New Requests Here / Re: Separate out and move files to subfolders

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on November 06, 2013, 03:09 PM »

That looks pretty neat for an idea!