Recent Posts

1951

General Software Discussion / Re: The Apple Headache

« Last post by zridling on February 26, 2008, 09:11 PM »

And now, Google comes down against MS-OOXML and in favor of ODF:

In September 2007, the original request to ISO was defeated. After further technical analysis of the specification along with all the additional data available on OOXML, Google believes OOXML would be an insufficient and unnecessary standard, designed purely around the needs of Microsoft Office.... We join the ODF Alliance and many other experts in our belief that OOXML doesn't meet the criteria required for a globally-accepted standard. (An overview of our findings and sample technical issues unresolved are posted here.)... A document standards decision may not matter to you today, but as someone who relies on constant access to editable documents, spreadsheets and presentations, it may matter immensely in the near future.

1952

Living Room / Re: Apple ][ software

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2008, 10:48 AM »

Wow, I wish I did. You might consider checking with high schools and junior highs. If they didn't keep any of that, they might know the teacher who did, and if he's an Apple fan, he might have a basement full of disks. Worth a shot.

1953

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2008, 10:46 AM »

Slow people, and jackasses who walk through stores talking to themselves on phones. I start cursing, hoping we'll both be offended. Or how about the guy who talks on the phone in the public restroom?

1954

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2008, 10:42 AM »

Lately, I've really enjoyed editing movies with TMPGEnc 4 XPress. Easy, works with a lot of formats, and keeps file sizes smaller than normal (with the right codec, xvid being my fav).

1955

General Software Discussion / Re: The Apple Headache

« Last post by zridling on February 16, 2008, 12:27 PM »

Dang, you think you do everything, and then blma! you misspell blam. Thanks Lashiec!

1956

General Software Discussion / The Apple Headache

« Last post by zridling on February 14, 2008, 01:41 PM »

"First of all, I will like to point out that the format of documents produced by Microsoft Office 2007 is not OOXML (Ecma 376).



Martin Bekkelund exposes Microsoft's claims for MS-OOXML on the Apple side, and you can only open, not create or save an MS-OOXML document in any of Apple's programs. Makes me wonder whatever happened to all those MS-OOXML converters that Microsoft promised when Office 2007 hit the scene in late '06.

1957

General Software Discussion / Re: Do You Purchase Software on Impulse?

« Last post by zridling on February 12, 2008, 08:30 PM »

[Curt]: I have never heard of this before. Quite frankly: You are scaring me! Will you (any of "you") please tell what this is about?
________________________________________________
After five reinstalls, Vista kills itself and you have to purchase another license and activation key. Worse, if you flash your bios, change something like a videocard or processor, you either have to call Redmond and obtain another activation key, or, you have to buy another copy of Vista when you change too much on your system that Vista is licensed to — it's all in that crazy EULA that drove me to GNU/Linux last year. I torch my system at least once every few weeks, not to mention I build and upgrade my own computers. Vista really put a damper on the enthusiast market. At least they're getting rid of the remote kill switch in SP1!

1958

General Software Discussion / Re: Do You Purchase Software on Impulse?

« Last post by zridling on February 11, 2008, 10:39 AM »

[curt]: A bigger problem may be that I don't actually need all these programs...
________________________________________________
Yea, there's the rub. Until recently, I kept about 180 apps on my systems, including several text editors, a wide variety of archivers, and image editing apps. Because of the reinstall restrictions for Vista, I don't feel like I can freely install programs. After so many reinstalls, you have to buy the darn OS again!

1959

General Software Discussion / Re: Do You Purchase Software on Impulse?

« Last post by zridling on February 11, 2008, 09:23 AM »

After two decades of buying the latest and newest, I finally began to wean myself from the (software purchase) impulse. Now it's moved to chess books, chessboards, and pieces. On top of that, since the USDollar is less than half the value it was just a few years ago, all my favorite software has in turn double or tripled in price, to the point that I can no longer justify the cost.

This came at a good time for me, since several open source apps have matured to the point where I only want to use them. Now instead of impulse spending, I can donate on impulse when I finally have some extra money.

1960

Living Room / Re: Stephen Fry has a blog!

« Last post by zridling on February 10, 2008, 04:12 PM »

Never have, Darwin, and had no idea Laurie was his partner (that's a shame, really). I'm just familiar with his movies and documentary series (american TV is heavily skewed toward reruns, syndication, and that pure shit called 'reality teevee'). Thanks for the link nudone. The petition page is found at: http://www.qi.com/tv/petition.php

1961

Living Room / Stephen Fry has a blog!

« Last post by zridling on February 10, 2008, 08:11 AM »

Stephen Fry is one hardcore techie and long-time Apple fan. Now he's found epiphany on open source software. Kudos to suleika for linking to it last Fall. Here's the URL:

http://stephenfry.com/blog/



He owns the second ever Macintosh computer sold in Europe, and has never met a smartphone he hasn’t bought. To introduce his new column, Stephen Fry explains why he’s deeply dippy for all things digital.... Digital devices rock my world. This might be looked on by some as a tragic admission. Not ballet, opera, the natural world, Stephen? Not literature, theatre or global politics? Even sport would be less mournfully inward and dismally unsociable.... Well, people can be dippy about all things digital and still read books, they can go to the opera and watch a cricket match and apply for Led Zeppelin tickets without splitting themselves asunder. Very little is as mutually exclusive as we seem to find it convenient to imagine. In our culture we are becoming more and more fixated with an “it’s one thing or the other” mentality. You like Thai food? But what’s wrong with Italian? Woah, there… calm down. I like both....

1962

Living Room / Latest DC demo poll: When were you born?

« Last post by zridling on February 07, 2008, 04:03 AM »

I notice the membership of DonationCoder.com continues to grow, so let's revisit this question.

1963

Living Room / Re: Microsoft Disavowing Vista?

« Last post by zridling on February 04, 2008, 12:30 PM »

Check out Linux Mint, too, which really improves on Ubuntu's usability, imo.

1964

General Software Discussion / Vista-SP1 available today (Feb.4th)

« Last post by zridling on February 04, 2008, 09:47 AM »

Vista-SP1 has been released to manufacturing and is available in a few languages starting today. Cool.

Microsoft will be deploying SP1 in two 'waves,'" said Tech ARP. The first, on Monday, will include just five of the 36 available language packs -- English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. The second wave, slated for one to two weeks later, will include all 36 language packs.

1965

Living Room / Re: Microsoft Disavowing Vista?

« Last post by zridling on February 04, 2008, 09:30 AM »

Good find, Lashiec, but you have to admit that before XP-SP2, it was pretty rough sailing for users, notably with security. Most forget that its first years were plagued with bugs, driver hassles, and a variety of security problems (remember Blaster?) that weren't stamped out until XP-SP2

1966

Living Room / Re: Microsoft Disavowing Vista?

« Last post by zridling on February 04, 2008, 09:28 AM »

If Microsoft hasn't put Vista behind them in their minds, perhaps they should truly consider rebranding themselves. Lots of folks in internet land have been hyper-critical of Vista, including SJVN and PCMag Editor Jim Louderback, Dan Tynan, Chris Pirillo, Dan Reisinger, the British Government, and yes, even moi. But as PC Mag editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff told a Microsoft rep at this year's CES:

"There's nothing wrong with Vista," I told him, "but you guys have a big problem on your hands. Perception is reality, and the perception is that Vista is a dud.... the operating system is too complex, too burdened by things people don't need. It's trying to support the world, and most times it feels like it. I have a quad-core PC at home, with 3GB of RAM and a powerful graphics card, and I still wonder why Vista sometimes seems so slow."

Worse yet, even where Vista seems to succeed, it fails. Ulanoff gives four suggestions for a complete Vista makeover, among them:
Stop trying to make Windows all things to all people. Build it for three core tasks: e-mail, Web browsing, and document creation (which would cover 75 percent or more of the computing world's needs). Sell the OS for $19.99. Then build a dozen or so add-ons that users can bolt on to create the task-oriented OS they want: writing, music, video creation, art work, accounting and business, and so on. (Ironically, the whole Linux distro scene has long done this very thing, allowing you to have as much or as little in your OS as you want.)

I've made clear that Vista's heavy performance, its EULA, forced automatic updates (for a long time), the infamous kill switch, and combined with the fact that the more Microsoft makes it more difficult to legally use their software, the more piracy becomes a self-reinforcing act. It’s now easier to pirate Windows than to hassle with registering, validating, and upgrading it. And it's been enough to move me to GNU/Linux last year. Not to mention, for lower middle class guys like myself — which includes a good percentage of the US — I can no longer afford to keep buying bigger fatter machines just to keep up with Microsoft, but I shouldn't have to either. Moreover, Vista cedes the low-end PC market to Linux, with Dell, Lenovo, and HP selling cheap Linux desktops for as low as $150.

Lance Ulanoff suggestion of starting over is on the right track, but I don't think Microsoft gets it just yet. So far their solution is more marketing, damnit! In a way though Vista has been very helpful to Linux and Apple. Who among us doesn't know someone who has either bought a Mac or simply begun using Linux as a test replacement for Windows in the past year? And trust me, once those users migrate, they're gone for a very, very long time, if not for good.

Will Microsoft disavow Vista? No. Will they move on? Check back in 2010.

1967

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder Reviews at "My Free Review" Blog

« Last post by zridling on February 04, 2008, 02:24 AM »

Wow, I really like it, Barry, thanks for sharing man. Lots of content and links galore. Well worth bookmarking!

1968

Living Room / Interesting interview w/ GNU/Linux kernel creator Linux Torvalds

« Last post by zridling on February 04, 2008, 02:17 AM »

Available by both transcript and podcast, Linus Torvalds, creator of the GNU/Linux OS kernel, does a lot of interviews, but this one is exceptional because it reveals his humility, frustrations with corporations and patent trolls, why you don't need to code perfectly, but you'd better be ready to improve it as soon as you've written it, and examples of how when companies get too big, they can't code anymore because no one knows what the other is doing (Sun Micro became a victim of this). He freely gives interviews (it seems), but if you're not familiar with him, this is the interview to read.



I have a policy that he who does the code gets to decide, which basically boils down to there’s a – it’s very easy to complain and talk about issues and it’s also easy for me to say, 'You should solve it this way.'...But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is actual code and the technology itself and the people who are not willing to step up and write that code, they can comment on it and they can say it should be done this way or that way or they won’t, but in the end their voice doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is code.

1969

Living Room / Re: Microsoft bids $44.6-billion for Yahoo!

« Last post by zridling on February 03, 2008, 08:32 AM »

The Globe & Mail is one of my favorite newspapers. Seems like MS has spent this entire decade -- not to mention the previous one -- protecting its monopoly instead of innovating and building good, new software. I can't see how buying a very distant second-place search engine in Yahoo, who is laying off workers faster than AOL did, is going to help them compete with Google. Google's built-in revenue model seems to be the one thing that MS desires more than anything else, and unable to see the bigger picture, they keep missing the mark.

1970

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

« Last post by zridling on February 01, 2008, 01:11 AM »

You guys don't auto-login?

1971

Living Room / Re: ASUS eee PC - Any owner?

« Last post by zridling on February 01, 2008, 12:20 AM »

I wish I had one of these. If I ever go the laptop route for travel, this is it. Seems like they combined the best of a lot of great ideas here.

1972

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: FastStone MaxView Mini-Review

« Last post by zridling on January 31, 2008, 09:07 PM »

Thanks jgpaiva. I gave up VuePrint (which does gallery views) for MaxView a couple of years ago and haven't looked back. I just use it to look at pics. And when I want gallery views, I flip back over to ACDSee or XnView. Well worth a donation to the author. I love how it gives snapshot info at the top if you like, and in more detail when you move your cursor to its right border.

1973

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera Browser Power-User Mods

« Last post by zridling on January 31, 2008, 08:48 PM »

Wow, thanks nontroppo! Considering most of us spend a good portion, if not the majority of our day in and out of our browsers, these are great tips. And this is especially helpful with so much webware now. Being able to assign so many (that is, any) functions to keyboard shortcuts in Opera makes everything fly. nontroppo's tips save a shite-load of time and experimentation.

1974

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

« Last post by zridling on January 31, 2008, 08:42 PM »

Depends on the OS for me, and like so many others, boot-time is not that important to me. It would be if I used a portable (ASUS EEE) or laptop on the go, but it's really not a bragging-rights feature for me. Like mouser and darwin, I'm only rebooting when the machine tells me to.

Vista x64 — 1m,15s
Linux Mint — 55s
FreeBSD — 21s !!

1975

General Software Discussion / Re: Money saving budgeting options

« Last post by zridling on January 30, 2008, 03:38 PM »

I will become a millionaire the way Steve Martin advises: First, you get a million dollars....