Recent Posts

201

General Software Discussion / Re: Best method for a dead simple web site?

« Last post by eleman on May 12, 2013, 12:56 PM »

Try weebly or wix or any one of the alternatives.

202

Living Room / Re: Internet Sales Tax Passed

« Last post by eleman on May 08, 2013, 01:39 AM »

But online stores do not have to pay for fancy store designs, store rent, franchise fees, and salaries of as many staff as brick and mortar thingies have to employ.

I'm curious what will be the next argument of those who are feeling the brunt of obsolescence.

203

General Software Discussion / Re: Steam, and customer satisfaction

« Last post by eleman on May 03, 2013, 03:42 AM »

I feel your pain and agree that it is not fair to make you download further (and ridiculously huge) stuff to let you play the game you bought.

But I need to ask one thing:

Which third world country is the one you live in?
For comparison purposes (and I really don't intend to brag, it's not good enough for that) even the most remote village in Turkey has reasonable (4-8 Mbit) dsl connections available, with unlimited data costing 30-40 dollars a month. If you agree to a data cap of 6GB per month you get to pay no more than 15$.

204

Living Room / Re: [reminder] I'm giving games away 2 DC memebers

« Last post by eleman on April 30, 2013, 07:01 AM »

Thank you

I'd have thanked much more if this came 8 years ago, when I was still at school

205

General Software Discussion / Re: Office 2013 drops cleartype, fonts a disaster. Any way to fix it?

« Last post by eleman on April 25, 2013, 08:29 AM »

Any way to fix it?

-urlwolf (April 25, 2013, 07:18 AM)

Apparently none. You have basically two options:

a) Fall back to 2010 (2003 I'd prefer, but not everyone is as old fashioned as me) and wait for microsoft to get its act together. Win 8.1 is supposed to fix some of the absurdities of 8, so can office 2015 help with idiocities of 2013. Yet MS may not return from the stupid track it is decidedly embarked upon, so this option may not work.

b) Get on the libreoffice bandwagon, and try to hold your temper when it does not open .doc files accurately. Recent 4.0.x version is much better than 3.x thingies, so you probably won't come across such horror scenarios though.

I'm going to use 2003 for a year or so, and when I finally upgrade this machine circa 2008, I'll move on to libreoffice.

206

Living Room / Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying

« Last post by eleman on April 25, 2013, 02:50 AM »

I really don't think the ignorant masses will care when compressing files.

I, on the recipient end of their archives, made a few adjustments to winrar's default extraction profile, so that it won't extract thumbs.db or desktop.ini files. But the trick doesn't work on _Macosx crap. As always, Apple's junk outdoes that of Windows.

207

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst Javascript/other intrusions?

« Last post by eleman on April 19, 2013, 03:46 PM »

If you're going to block javascript, use noscript or don't bother. And it's really not that much bother once you get into the habit.

You can't really call ghostery an "adblockplus" spinoff, they do quite different (and complimentary) things.

The next step is RefControl+RequestPolicy... this does add a fair amount of management overhead for first-time visits to new sites, but IMHO it's worth it... you'll end up blocking a crapload of stuff that even ABP+Ghostery+NoScript misses.

You'll also want to turn RC+RP off temporarily if you're shopping, because it's way too much bother once credit-card handling stuff is involved... but it's really nice armor for your everyday surfing

-f0dder (April 19, 2013, 03:40 PM)

And wear a condom at all times you surf the web. A radiation suit would also be useful. And have 3 bodyguards close by, as well as a secret service evacuation protocol.

Are you serious or are you just being sarcastic?

208

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst Javascript/other intrusions?

« Last post by eleman on April 19, 2013, 12:44 PM »

Just put a yesscript button on firefox's toolbar. Right click on the toolbar, go to customize, find yesscript's button, it looks like this:

Drag it and drop on Firefox toolbar. When you feel the need to use it, just click on the button while the naughty page is open. The button will now turn to brown. Reload the page (f5) and voila.

It won't forget which sites you blacklisted, so it's very handy. If you need to delist a site, just click on the button while it's brown. It will be removed from the blacklist again, and the button will return to its original color.

209

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst Javascript/other intrusions?

« Last post by eleman on April 19, 2013, 12:27 PM »

I usually use it to block search assistance offered by google (don't guess me when I type words into a search box, I know what I'm looking for), or similar useless javascript junk. It's efficient, does the job well, and doesn't break the web by default as noscript effectively does.

I really don't understand why people see this as an "all or none" business. Noscript is like an a-bomb, too powerful to be of any practical use. Yesscript is more of a taser gun. You can actually use one if you need it.

210

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst Javascript/other intrusions?

« Last post by eleman on April 19, 2013, 12:06 PM »

Yesscript

211

Living Room / Re: An End To The Aggregation Debate?

« Last post by eleman on April 17, 2013, 12:00 PM »

If I was careful, there's a massive copyright issue there.

-TaoPhoenix (April 17, 2013, 11:35 AM)

Show me one place where there is not a copyright issue nowadays. It's long past ridiculous.

212

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by eleman on April 15, 2013, 03:33 AM »

Well, peer review has its load of problems. At the moment we don't have a better alternative though.

213

General Software Discussion / Re: Favorite Firefox Builds for Windows?

« Last post by eleman on April 13, 2013, 03:22 PM »

Why not use a single mail account to manage all the addresses? I know Gmail and Hotmail (or whatever microsoft calls it this year) can do that. I bet Yahoo also provides that functionality.

You can use labels to clearly identify mails from various accounts.

214

Living Room / Re: Nasdaq execs get spanked for screwing up Facecrook's IPO

« Last post by eleman on April 12, 2013, 11:41 AM »

Greifeld's bonus for 2012 fell 62 percent to $1.35 million...

Yeah, take that biatch... you'll get merely my whole life's earnings as a full year's bonus. That should really teach you a lesson.

215

Living Room / Re: Google Reader gone

« Last post by eleman on March 26, 2013, 07:42 AM »

Digg have plans:

-tomos (March 26, 2013, 07:36 AM)

Down with the cloud, and down with any cloud-based plans. I have 40 years to live [at the outside], and I believe I can make do with my desktop based paradigm for that period. Dad was able to find a typewriter repairman 3 years ago, I am sure I can find spare parts for my computer in 2050.

216

Living Room / Re: Rapidshare - WARNING - some of your data may be deleted in less than 24hrs time.

« Last post by eleman on March 21, 2013, 08:04 PM »

In the past Rapidshare BEEPED its customers over and over and over. Anyone who still is a customer of such a firm deserves this treatment if you ask me (but no one did, I know).

217

General Software Discussion / Re: New Keyboard Concept: Minuum Keyboard

« Last post by eleman on March 18, 2013, 04:47 PM »

Uhh... well... Remember T9?

218

Living Room / Re: Google Keep note-taking app spotted

« Last post by eleman on March 18, 2013, 03:52 PM »

Hahaha 

I had today's laugh. As if I'd sign up for any more google services after the reader debacle.

219

Living Room / Re: Google Reader gone

« Last post by eleman on March 14, 2013, 04:28 PM »

Most android/iphone apps are a web interface disguised with a dedicated shortcut, you know...

220

Living Room / Re: Google Reader gone

« Last post by eleman on March 14, 2013, 12:57 PM »

Thanks for the suggestions. After some consideration I decided to go with bamboo, a firefox add-on. I will not use another cloud service if I can help it, and separate desktop applications did not look very handy, as I usually jump to a site after seeing a headline on the RSS feed aggregator. So a firefox add-on seems like the best solution.

Yes, I'm aware of the advantages of cloud solutions. For example if I don't run firefox for a week or two (i.e. vacation in the mountains) I'll miss some feeds. And I won't be able to check feeds from another computer/phone etc. But I'll have to live with the former, and I don't do the latter anyway.

221

Living Room / Google Reader gone

« Last post by eleman on March 14, 2013, 08:23 AM »

Google Reader's gone the way of dodo.

Google willfully axed functionality (sharing etc.) from Reader to boost google+, a product no one demanded, and now it's axing Reader completely on the grounds of falling usage.

Way to go Google. You really inspire confidence in all your users.

Any desktop RSS aggregator recommendations? I certainly will not invest time and effort in another cloud junk. Experience, after all, is learning a lot of things you shouldn't do again.

222

Living Room / Re: "Half of our users block ads. Now what?"

« Last post by eleman on March 10, 2013, 08:21 AM »

There are ads, and there are irritations. Anything that moves on a web page (other than videos which I specifically press play on) is a source of distraction and/or irritation. So I block them all without any conscience suffering.

Blocking just the animated/irritating stuff is more work then I intend to put up with, so I use universal ad filters such as fanboy's list or easy list. If non-intrusive ads are collateral damage, so be it.

223

Living Room / Re: Demolition man

« Last post by eleman on February 27, 2013, 11:34 AM »

I was looking forward to their Darwin Award Ceremony speech, but alas...

224

Living Room / Re: Show us a picture of your.. CAR!!!

« Last post by eleman on February 21, 2013, 06:22 PM »

Here's my Dacia Duster. Yeah, we have weird cars here in greater Europe.

I like it because it's cheap, it has high ground clearance, and it's a miser diesel.

225

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / N.A.N.Y. 2013 text-writing improvement idea

« Last post by eleman on February 04, 2013, 04:37 AM »

I have an idea to improve text-writing, but I am unable to implement it, if it has to be done properly. I can fix a crude version of it in autohotkey, in a day maybe, but it wouldn't be worth using. So if anyone finds it useful and can work it out, here it is:

I sometimes use specific words more frequently than I like. It would be a nice and very unique feature if I could implement a check for repetitive words in typing. For instance, a beep or display a pop-up (at user's option of course) if any word (other than those in a whitelist. we don't want to make the computer beep every time we write "the", "I", "a", "in", "that", "and" etc. You get the idea.) is typed twice in the list of last n words (let the user define the variable n).

In a nutshell, it is basically to remind me I repeat some words too much. Basically, it serves to help me produce better texts. Basically, it would warn me against writing "basically" three times (four technically) in only so much words.

I believe I can use some form of array to store a fixed number of words typed (separated by spaces, quotation marks, punctuation etc.), and check every new word against those in the array, and make a beep if a match is found. But the whitelisting function and the user defined number of last words to be checked are beyond me.

Even a further refinement would be to provide an option to query a thesaurus and offer replacements. But I am not sure that would be wise to provide such a tool to college freshmen writing essays.

Anyway, if you like the idea, it's yours now.