Recent Posts

2026

Living Room / Re: Is a college education worth the money?

« Last post by superboyac on February 17, 2012, 06:59 PM »

The name means a lot, I hate to admit.

-superboyac (June 09, 2010, 08:56 AM)

School name means about 20-25% more in your starting salary offer last I heard.

When I graduated, having one got me hired (in a tight job market) by a Fortune 500 company after a twenty minute token interview. The interviewer even said "Oh, you went to ____? Well, we can skip the academic questions then. ______ graduates know their stuff. We hire a lot of them."

So much for "It doesn't matter where you go to college." right?

-40hz (June 09, 2010, 09:17 AM)

Yup.  I wish I were more convinced of that earlier on.   

let me also add some of my more interesting life experiences, and I'm doing this to give parents something to think about.  What it all means to you individually, I'm not sure, but these are the facts:
--I have several friends in Wall Street that make amounts of money that I can't post because it's just too much.  A couple of them work in a company that will ONLY hire Harvard MBA graduates.  Think about that as it relates to this thread.  And that's just the one I know about, who knows what the others are like.  So you're out of luck if you have a Yale MBA.  And when these companies do these hirings, they generally come to the person...it's not like the individual needs to seek these companies out.  Think about that.  It's one thing to walk around campus and run into somebody who is looking to pay you $200k a year...it's another thing to graduate and send applications around and try to CONVINCE companies to consider you.

2027

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: RightNote PRO 50% off

« Last post by superboyac on February 17, 2012, 05:47 PM »

Everyone should buy RightNote if it helps them do what they do! I'm just too old to make the switch.

-tranglos (February 16, 2012, 06:55 PM)

Does that mean you're still using your own seminal KeyNote, despite your comment that the interface is now dated, and your evident preference for the search behaviour of EverNote or CintaNotes?

-rjbull (February 17, 2012, 03:03 PM)

Yes, all the time. I have 15 KeyNote files, of which 9 are archives of stuff I'm keeping around but won't ever need to modify, and the other 6 are in constant use. My Dreamhost logins, account numbers, travel plans, critically important bits of information I need to keep in my head at work, favorite quotes, cooking recipes, to-do lists, emergency addresses / numbers, registration keys for apps I've bought, Delphi code snippets, discussions-with-myself about how best to implement features in my apps, any random snippet of text I want to keep, up to and including my very real world domination plans and activities.

It's hard to change the habit and hard to move so much data in a way that won't create more mess than I'd be leaving behind.

OTOH, I find that I have almost no use for all the then-unique special features such as virtual nodes, plugins, or all the rubbish on the "resource panel". I even forgot it existed for a while until I accidentally triggered it :-)

Search in KeyNote is weak, but it does let me search all the nodes and notes when I need. I hardly ever need it though. I tend to remember where a particular node is located in the tree, and 90% of the time it is sufficient to locate it instantly.

I use Evernote only for a handful of things that I absolutely want to have on my phone as well. A shopping list, an occasional Google Maps screenshot or address, stuff like that. So I don't ever get to use the search that's actually quite nicely done. Somehow, I am not comfortable in an app where I have nothing but search to locate data.

Let's say you're going through an archive of web articles: is it "Guantanamo", "Guantánamo" or "Gitmo"? Bin Laden, Binladen, Ben Ladin, Ibn Laden or... Google handles all that in one query and checks for typos too, but desktop apps don't.

Tagging would help, as it gives you one fixed term for all the possible variants, but (a) entering tags is tedious; (b) having to remember what that special tag is is even worse; (c) there's always the nagging thought, „what if there's a very important article I forgot to tag"? At that point you're back to searching.

In KeyNote I rely on grouping related items instead, and as long as the tree size is manageable, finding stuff by browsing is very easy and eliminates all worries about missing something just because it was misspelled or not tagged.

Of course RightNote does the browsing just the same *and* has both tags and a better search, so it's totally cool to drop KeyNote for it :-)

-tranglos (February 17, 2012, 05:07 PM)

Nailed it!

2028

Living Room / Re: Who's up for a DonationCoder talk show?

« Last post by superboyac on February 16, 2012, 07:40 PM »

  'tis true, 40.

I'm probably not going to do more than 3 of these.  I'm really mostly trying to find an excuse to figure out this live talk show setup.  Not really sure what it would be used for at this point, but I love doing stuff like this and it always seems to come in handy in the future.  I love creating good content.

Here's the real thing: if I can get this setup working, that means I can very easily do some cool business conferencing in a way that is almost completely self-reliant.  No cloud services, just an ISP and a website host...pure freedom.  The other great feature of icecast and the setup I'm doing is that it doesn't need a special software for managing the radio stuff, like SAM.  Instead, it just takes ANY sound being played on my computer and that's it.  So I can use my favorite music player, my favorite chat service (skype), my favorite midi software.  I don't need to find an all in one software, and then realize it doesn't have midi features, so I have to now look for another one, etc.  The more easily we can do these kinds of things, the less we have to rely on these big companies that seem to be taking a lot of our money and not really being all that nice to their customers.

2029

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Wing FTP Server: A mini-review

« Last post by superboyac on February 16, 2012, 08:46 AM »

Looks like a nice piece of software, but the license prices...

-eleman (February 16, 2012, 08:12 AM)

Yes, it is expensive.  But it's the only software that can do what it does.

2030

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by superboyac on February 16, 2012, 12:31 AM »

^^^AAAHH!! 40...you're too much.  That poster is my favorite one from years ago!  We actually spent an hour browsing and bought a framed one for work!

2031

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: TreeProjects 40% off

« Last post by superboyac on February 15, 2012, 10:54 PM »

I prefer TreeProjects because it does keyboard captures, organization of nodes (keyboard shortcuts to add a child or new item for example) and search more simply in my opinion. I also like TreeProjects' 'reference' item (basically items are referenced or 'exist' in more than one place in a database)

RightNote is more feature-rich though (calendar, spreadsheet support, paragraph styles, bookmarking web pages with an automatic thumbnail...just to name a few) I think one place you see that is when you right click a node or tree item in RightNote but I believe TreeProjects is adding or planning some similar features -  there is or was a roadmap page for TreeProjects - so it depends if you really need or want them.

-rgdot (February 15, 2012, 04:01 PM)

I got em both!!
But I'm using RightNote currently.

2032

Living Room / Re: Who's up for a DonationCoder talk show?

« Last post by superboyac on February 15, 2012, 10:52 PM »

*bump*

Dead project? 

-Stephen66515 (February 15, 2012, 07:50 PM)

No!  I still want to try it.  I'm not comfortable with my setup right now.  I've already purchased like $200 of stuff.  It's the website work that is the most difficult for me.  I don't know how to embed my icecast stream into a simple html page.

I already have some notes about you for talking points.  Hope you don't mind me nosing around!

2033

General Software Discussion / Tagging audio files in itunes+ipod is an absolute NIGHTMARE!!

« Last post by superboyac on February 14, 2012, 10:33 PM »

So my mom really wants to be able to play our childhood music to her grandkids.  But most of the stuff is on records, and so I volunteered to get everything on an ipod and just connect it to their audio system.  Now, I am a stickler when it comes to tagging my music and organizing them into folders with proper filenames.  So I expected not to have any problems as far as tags go since I've been so diligent about it.

WRONG!!  itunes and these i-devices are a tagging nightmare.  If you don't know, the only two tags that really matter (as far as organization) on the ipod is artist and album.  But it will fuck up that artist tag a LOT.  In these tagging protocols, the artist name is stored in multiple places: artist, album artist, etc.  Well, the ipod decides to read it from the Album Artist tag, which is the less common one in most tagging programs.  Now, that's fine, ok.  But what's the worst part is if you try to fix all this in itunes, it will show all the fixed tags in the itunes application, but it doesn't change on the ipod itself.  So you have to remove all the music and upload it again.  Man, this has taken me hours!

Normally, I wouldn't care.  But the BIG problem is that on the ipod, if the album artist isn't done right, a single album can be split up into multiple artists (like eagles, various artists, various) and before you know it, the ipod screen is filled with all these artists that you have no idea where it came from.  Bach may be Back or Johann Sebastain Bach or the conductor of the album...and it's all invisible.  It's been a nightmare.

Once again, this is the kind of thing that makes Apple evil.  The problem for us is this: even after years of these ipods and audio players and tablets, the i-devices touch response (swiping smoothness) and overall interface is still better BY FAR than all the other devices out there.  That's it.  These competitors (Android, Windows, webOS) better make darn sure their interface can equal that kind of smoothness and responsiveness or else they will NEVER catch up to Apple.  Every time I pick up the new Android device I can immediately tell how awful the touch-features are compared to Apple's.  Immediately.

I don't know what these other companies are doing with their time.  They need to stop everything and just get the dam touch response right.  But maybe it's just, who am I to tell them how to do it.  But don't listen, fine.  Keep coming out with model after model after model with that awful touch response.  Keep doing it, it's fine.  

Anyway, I hate buying this Apple stuff, but it's a hell of a lot easier than teaching my mom how to use the shitty Android interface.

The good news is I gave my mom a little sneak preview of what this new fangled technology can do, and she was more excited than I've seen in a long time once she heard her favorite records playing again.  Now it sounds like I need to do the same for my sisters and their kids!  Glad to!

2034

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by superboyac on February 14, 2012, 04:56 PM »

Yeah!  I think you got it...we have to play with this one.

2035

Living Room / Re: May I Have A Download Please?

« Last post by superboyac on February 13, 2012, 01:11 PM »

^They're already busting down on bars and local cover bands for playing unlicensed music.

I knew somebody who was part of a non-profit that had a thank-you picnic for their volunteers last summer. It was held on private property and it was by invitation. Somebody attending must have ratted them out to a buddy in the recording industry.

The local organization got a polite "reminder" a few weeks later that any public performance (which apparently includes playing a CD through a portable stereo system out on your patio) requires some sort of license in order for it to be done legally. The letter suggested that next time they hire a DJ who had already obtained the requisite performance rights in order to stay on the right side of the law.

The letter wasn't exactly a threat. It was more like a "perhaps you didn't realize you have just broken the law and could be in serious trouble had we decided to pursue it" sort of things. It was probably left at that because this was a recognized charity with some very serious money and political cachet behind it, so they wouldn't have simply rolled over and played dead if it escalated much beyond "a word in your ear."

But it wasn't a joking letter either.

Crazy.

-40hz (February 13, 2012, 12:33 PM)

It's really a little TOO crazy.  Cover bands...it's reediculous.  All their doing is playing the music they love.  It's such a personal insult on so many levels.  What if I hum a tune?  What if I am thinking about a particular song?  If a song gets stuck in my head, do I have to pay royalties?

What's next?  Are we going to start copyrighting phrases?  Do I have to reserve in advance the sentences I want to say in my life?  Do I have to keep track of what I say, and then pay the royalties on it periodically?  If I play the blues, do I have to give money to the descendants of African American workers from the 19th century?  Did the music industry pay for those rights to the blues?  I bet I can find that 1-4-5 progression in most songs owned by the recording companies.  Shouldn't they have to pay for that to the *original* innovators?

2036

Living Room / Re: May I Have A Download Please?

« Last post by superboyac on February 13, 2012, 12:16 PM »

No joke, the recording industry is trying to figure out how to charge someone for HEARING a song played anywhere.  Let's say I go to my friend's house for a party, and he's playing some music on the stereo at the pool.  If they're going to charge per device, why stop there?  Should all the people who are hearing the music have to pay some kind of license fee for that?  What?  They just get to freeload listen?

2037

Living Room / Re: Upgrading RAM amount; please help me choose.

« Last post by superboyac on February 10, 2012, 10:53 PM »

Just an update:
I haven't had a crash in a while now.  And what seemed to have fixed it (after removing Comodo) was doing a defrag on my pagefile.  I don't know why, but that seems to have worked.

2038

Living Room / Re: Just like the MPAA didn't learn from the RIAA, the games industry is next

« Last post by superboyac on February 10, 2012, 03:55 PM »

 
40!  Stretching out the legs in this thread!  Loving it!

2039

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by superboyac on February 10, 2012, 11:58 AM »

They were probably "asked" to stop doing it since it cut into ad revenues for the sites it was getting the feeds from. Ads are one reason why so many sites no longer provide full text in their feeds. (Although that doesn't excuse them making you land on two seperate ad pages before they let you get to the ad strewn article page either.) There was one other site (Feedbook?) that did a download/PDF thing too, but it's not the one I'm thinking of - and they also discontinued that part of their service. I do remember reading about it on Lifehacker. But I can't see the point of going back something like four years to find the article. Especially since its now moot.

Guess if you still want something like that you're going to have to kludge up your own.

I used to go into NYC a couple of days a week to handle a contract client. I loved having my little personal newspaper with me those mornings on the metrorail in.
 

-40hz (February 10, 2012, 11:20 AM)

Sigh...copyright and ads.  These two things take all the pleasure out of life AND they are holding all sorts of creativity back.  Ok, looks like I need to frankenstein it myself.  Yeah, having a custom newspaper is a pretty cool thing.  I KNOW a lot of people would love that.  Imagine waking up in the morning and having all your website articles and blogs all packaged nicely in a pdf on your tablet, very clean, no ads, no clicking around endlessly.  Do we really have to wait 10 years until people figure out how to work in the copyright laws into something like that?  I mean, the technology has been here for 10 years already.

2040

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by superboyac on February 10, 2012, 10:30 AM »

aignes, thanks!  I'll check that feature out and see what I can get.

40hz, I'll check out that MyRSS as well.  It seems like the hardest trick is to get the actual article content and not just the rss summary.  I'm sure I can come up with theories why the service you mentioned disappeared...without a trace! 

2041

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by superboyac on February 09, 2012, 06:21 PM »

I found some other tools.

But they seem...shady.

2042

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by superboyac on February 09, 2012, 03:24 PM »

I wonder if there is a way automatically 'scrape' the good content from a website and use that to create a pdf.  I know website-watcher can catch certain things, but I doubt aignes will partake in any kind of scraping activity.  I know there are tools like dtsearch that sound like they can do some things like this.

Do you guys know of any tool that can be trained to extract text that matches a certain pattern from a website (to just get the article content and leave the other stuff out) and then sent to a text file or something for printing?

2043

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by superboyac on February 09, 2012, 02:57 PM »

I agree it should be possible, but I can't see a seamless way to do it either.  I started to ponder semi-automated ways of doing it with external software, but it began to look a lot of effort.  However I haven't updated my copy in nearly three years, so don't know if that area has been improved.

Because your suggestion seems eminently sensible and should be available, I've sent an e-mail to "Aignes" requesting he review this thread.

-rjbull (February 09, 2012, 02:50 PM)

Thanks!  I appreciate it.

I think the reason why it's impossible is because of, surprise, copyright.  Just about any big name rss feed is useless...just the article title and 5 word summaries.  Then you have to click to be sent to the original page for the content, where there will invariably be an article split into 7 parts, each with about two paragraphs of content, surrounded by much larger areas of ads and other distractions.

So trying to read one article is like this:
1) click to update articles in your rss reader
2) click on a headline to open up the rss feed for that article
3) which sends you to the rss version of the article, which is pretty much exactly the same as the headline in step #2 (what's the point?)
4) click to take you to the official website for the article
5) click through everything to read the entire article

Now, what makes you think they are going to make it easy for you to collect just the articles that you want and read it through in one shot, without all those clicks?  Not likely at all.  All of those clicks and inefficiencies I listed above is exactly how people are making money now.  Can you make money by making it easy on the reader like I'm describing?  Nope.  You will try, spend a lot of effort, and realize you can't sustain the effort with the money coming in.  So that's why we're where we're at.  Then, if you try to make it better, you will be accused of copyright infringement because you are shortcutting all those ads and clicks.  This is what happens in a market where the only way to make money is by making in harder for the customers to get what they want.

2044

Living Room / Re: New weapons in the file sharing war.

« Last post by superboyac on February 09, 2012, 12:12 PM »

I think at 39.9hz ;p. Just kidding, I'm in my mid-thirties. Dunno if that makes me a child of the 70s, as I was too young really

-db90h (February 09, 2012, 09:25 AM)

Perhaps only "too young" in years. You have a capacity for insight into 'power politics' that Noam Chomsky would find admirable.

 

-40hz (February 09, 2012, 09:38 AM)

My first intellectual reference to Noam Chomsky was:
http://www.youtube.c...v=_ADoo_xBy7s#t=308s
(Zach Galifinakis...NSFW!)

2045

General Software Discussion / Re: Cnet's Download.com and the installer scam

« Last post by superboyac on February 09, 2012, 08:51 AM »

@Superboyac but how you get the traffic for your software them ? organic SEO ?

-supermimai (February 08, 2012, 06:40 PM)

OT maybe and old, but: Do not listen to the Black Hat SEO people (like the ones who will call you out of the blue) who will lie to you and do various 'tactics' to get you promoted. If you have something that is *good*, word will spread itself. Google penalizes sites they find practicing Black Hat SEO stuff. Of course, promotion of your stuff is fine, but no tricks!

-db90h (February 09, 2012, 08:46 AM)

This has been my experience also.  Those engineering articles that I wrote here on my dcmember site over the years have become organically popular and now show up at the top of certain keyword searches.  I never did anything with SEO.  I didn't even really want those articles to be popular, I just put them up at the time because I didn't have anything else to fill up the site yet.  I also noticed the same thing last year with my side business...it just naturally moved up the search list.  We didn't do anything.  We tried some of the paid google ad stuff, but it was FAR too expensive and we saw zero profit from it.  So, for me at least, I've become convinced that organic is the way to go.  Now, maybe I don't know enough of the "tricks" but if I'm overlooking something...please let me know! Howz that for hypocrisy?

2046

General Software Discussion / Re: Cnet's Download.com and the installer scam

« Last post by superboyac on February 08, 2012, 07:11 PM »

@Superboyac but how you get the traffic for your software them ? organic SEO ?

-supermimai (February 08, 2012, 06:40 PM)

Wouldn't that be nice?

2047

General Software Discussion / Re: Cnet's Download.com and the installer scam

« Last post by superboyac on February 08, 2012, 06:04 PM »

I just asked to Softonic to remove my programs, or to remove the softonic downloader, as I don't like the fact they make money on my back..

-supermimai (February 08, 2012, 06:28 AM)

I have been asking most download sites to remove my software, regardless of whether or not they are bundling it with adware or using downloaders.

They are all making money off my software by keeping people away from my website, keeping me from making any money from the ads displayed on my site, and making money off the ads they display on pages where they list my software. Furthermore, most of them are hotlinking to my downloads, which means they are abusing the bandwidth that they are not paying for. Too many of these download sites have a really bad reputation for not practicing quality control with the apps they list, spreading malware to unsuspecting users, getting themselves red ratings on WOT, which can damage the reputation of any developer that has his stuff listed right alongside the malware.

A lot of these download sites are engaging in what could be called content theft, trolling the internet for software that they can hijack without permission to stick on their own site, copying the descriptions right off the developer's site, stealing their screenshots, and stealing their bandwidth by hotlinking to their files, then throwing ads on it to make money. If they did this same thing with other types of content, like say blog articles, the bloggers wouldn't be too happy about it. I don't see a reason for me to be happy about it, either.

I am sick of working for them for free and having them profit from it. Since my stuff is all freeware, it doesn't make any sense to me to allow them to list it. It makes about as much sense as voluntarily infecting myself with a tapeworm.

If they were in the habit of sending their visitors to my site to acquire the software, I would probably feel very differently about it. But that's not what they do.

-app103 (February 08, 2012, 05:43 PM)

Yup.  You do ALL the legwork, and they reap in all the profit while they kick up their heels and sit there.

2048

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by superboyac on February 08, 2012, 02:49 PM »

In WebSite-Watcher, if you open the properties of a bookmark, one of the tabs is Actions, which allows you to do things like export the page, with or without HTML tags, or run a program against the new version of the page, including highlighted changes if you want them.  Or automatically export the page to Local Website Archive.

-rjbull (February 08, 2012, 02:10 PM)

I was looking over those options.  but is there any way to export a bunch of bookmarks to a pdf?  I don't care if things are highlighted or not.  I want something where I come in the morning, open website-watcher, and I can click a button and create a pdf of all the things I want to read today.  It does seem like WW should be able to do that, right?  I just can't figure it out yet.

2049

Living Room / Re: Hard drive shortage

« Last post by superboyac on February 08, 2012, 11:28 AM »

HDD Pricewatch: Three Months Into the Thai Floods

-PhilB66 (February 08, 2012, 10:43 AM)

Hmmm... Glad I'm going to Korea next week. I may pick up a few drives there depending on if they've dropped back down there.

Thanks for posting that.

-Renegade (February 08, 2012, 11:06 AM)

Can you get me 5 or 10 also?

2050

General Software Discussion / Any way to automate news compilation (rss feeds, websites, etc.) daily?

« Last post by superboyac on February 08, 2012, 10:24 AM »

I've been using rss feeds in feedly, on my ipad, on my android, etc...I've used website-watcher for a while.  But eventually I always tire of these tools and go back to using a normal browser.  And I've realized why...it's too much work.  Trying to setup these things to work easily is too much work.  If you use website-watcher, you miss all your firefox addons when reading the websites.  Rss feeds make you click 4-5 times before getting to the actual content...and it's annoying that most feeds are just a title and the real content is only on the actual website (what's the point?).

So here's what I want:
Something like website-watcher that collects all these feeds and prints it to a pdf file every morning for me.  Then I go grab the pdf and just read that.  Automated.  Is anything like this possible?  It's like your own custom newspaper delivered each morning.