Recent Posts

2076

Site/Forum Features / Re: what's with the scroll-bars?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 11, 2006, 01:07 AM »

Never seen it. Opera 8.52 here.

- Oshyan

2077

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: screen saver that runs 24/7 regardless of user privileges?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 10, 2006, 09:34 PM »

Yeah, I looked at the general policy editor but you can't set most power settings with it. What you want to do then is just setup 2 .reg files, one to turn this functionality on via the registry, the other to turn it off in the same way. Then you can just double-click the relevant .reg and you're set.

- Oshyan

2078

Living Room / Re: Everyone's Photo Portfolio, Purlease!

« Last post by JavaJones on October 11, 2006, 12:02 AM »

Ah ok, thanks. I don't see why they don't just make the mid-size version clickable to get to "large" size. But oh well, now I know.

- Oshyan

2079

General Software Discussion / Re: Outlook 2003 - PST file corruption. Is it X1 ?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 10, 2006, 11:58 PM »

Yeah, I use tasks a lot in Outlook. There are other apps for it of course, I just haven't found a lightweight one I like enough to replace the Outlook functionality while at the same time also finding an alternative email client.

- Oshyan

2080

Living Room / Re: Everyone's Photo Portfolio, Purlease!

« Last post by JavaJones on October 10, 2006, 02:57 PM »

Thanks tomos. You've got some beauties there yourself! Would love to see more.

- Oshyan

2081

Living Room / Re: Watch Ahree Lee age three years before your eyes

« Last post by JavaJones on October 10, 2006, 01:30 AM »

Cool, this is the 2nd one of these I've seen. I guess a number of people just had this idea around the same time, hehe. I think increasing availability, quality and low cost of digital really enables cool stuff like this. Of course you could do it with film, but it's way easier with digital.

Edit: she did *really* well with the lighting and head positioning. Much better than the other I saw. Excellent stuff.

- Oshyan

2082

Living Room / Re: Free domain name generator

« Last post by JavaJones on October 10, 2006, 01:26 AM »

Oho! Very useful tool, thanks.

- Oshyan

2083

Developer's Corner / Re: Blog Essay: 5 Reasons Why Recent Graduates Should NOT Found Startups

« Last post by JavaJones on October 10, 2006, 01:05 AM »

Excellent commentary, highly recommended read. I think he concludes with some interesting, if slightly vague advice: get into the job market, see what it's like, give yourself some stability, and start your "thing" on the side. If it gets to the point where it becomes more clear that it may take off, then maybe you can quit your day job. But if it never gets there you still have your day job stability. It does mean most likely sacrificing your nights and weekends for a year or something, but it's worth it to maintain both stability (and possibly earn startup funds of your own) and afford yourself comfortable time (due to stability) to work on your thing. Now this does have the unwanted side effect of possibly not providing as much motivation since the startup is not your sole source of potential support. However if you invest significant portions of your day-job earnings into it that can easily be taken care of.

So, the hybrid approach. It seems to work at least as well as the "balls-to-the-wall" startup from scratch approach, and it has much less of a potential crash if it fails. Risk is good, but unnecessary risk is just stupid. There are no rewards for stupidity.

- Oshyan

2084

General Software Discussion / Re: Advantages and disadvantages of NNTP Newsreaders

« Last post by JavaJones on October 10, 2006, 12:13 AM »

I think there's a sharp division in which reader is appropriate based on whether you focus more on binary (file) downloads or conversations/text/posting. If the former then you really want a client that specializes in that. If the latter, likewise. Thunderbird is a very capable simple read and post client, likewise Outlook Express is decent. I personally don't find much need to go beyond either one unless I am wanting to download a bunch of stuff in which case the options become quite extensive and I really don't have a good recommendation there beyond the widely respected and highly reated Newsleecher ($).

- Oshyan

2085

Living Room / Re: Everyone's Photo Portfolio, Purlease!

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 11:59 PM »

Some very nice shots Redhat. I particularly liked "LonelyWood" and "From the ground up". But all so small. Is that just because I'm not logged in at flickr? If so, screw those bastards.

Here's mine, no size limits! (although I did post most at small-ish sizes for copyright and bandwidth reasons) I got my first camera (digital) about 2 years ago and have since taken about 20,000 shots. So this is a small sampling, and really only about 10% of what I consider to be my "good" work. I started going through my photos a little while ago and posting the ones I liked, after some editing when necessary. But I didn't get very far. So more to come!

Oh yes, and my equipment. After much research, and based on some extensive and fairly difficult requirements, I eventually chose an Olympus C7000 Zoom - a purchase I am quite happy with after almost 2 years now (the C7000 was not technically my first camera purchase, I bought others to "trial" first ). It has quirks and flaws to be sure, and is now showing its age (which is why I'm now looking at a Canon S3 IS), but it has served me well. I believe I'm ready to start toying with addon lenses and filters, but due to various annoyances with dSLR's (what do you mean no movie mode and no composing with the LCD!?) I will not be going that route yet. But I really want to get a polarizer and neutral density filter (graduated and normal both), which the S3 IS does allow, while still avoiding the hassle, bulk, and expense of dSLR.

Oh yes, and as you'll notice I *love* macros. The S3 IS does macro down to 0 centimeters - you can literally touch the lense with your subject.

Anyway, more people post your galleries!

P.S. Nice rainbows and spiders Allen!

- Oshyan

2086

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: screen saver that runs 24/7 regardless of user privileges?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 11:44 PM »

I believe if you find the reg identifier for the user you can use the power management keys in the Desktop folder. Something like
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Control Panel\Desktop and there you will find the power time-out settings, etc. Where "S-1-5-18" is the registry identifier for the user you're configuring. Give it a shot...

- Oshyan

2087

Living Room / Re: Blog Review: Making Comics - How to communicate visually

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 11:23 PM »

Ah yes, definitely a classic.

- Oshyan

2088

Living Room / Re: Google buys YouTube

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 08:37 PM »

Yeah, the price blows me away though. It's the bubble, new and improved. Woo! When will this one pop?

- Oshyan

2089

General Software Discussion / Re: Easy alternative to email for sending files?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 08:14 PM »

HFS kicks ass. It looks like BarracudaDrive is almost exactly the same, and also pretty cool. Not sure if it's as easy to use though - HFS is incredibly easy, which is the main reason I like it.

As far as a web server not being an option for most people, it's not because they don't have the space, it's just that it requires learning something new to use it. Sure it can be easy to maybe map a drive and use Explorer's FTP interface (which sucks btw - very poor indications of speed and time remaining), but they have to learn that. With email there is nothing to learn. Even with Pando there is hardly anything to learn - it's very familiar. Although it is not a big deal to learn how to work with your existing web space, it is nonetheless too much for most people. Or don't you think people would use it more otherwise?

Even HFS isn't that good a solution for many people with dynamic IP's, behind NAT systems, etc. Having to have someone setup port forwarding is really just too much. It's amazing how good a solution email is despite the flaws. I just wish there were a universal, email-like system that was just more efficient and functional than email. Or really something like "email 2.0", with better file encoding (yEnc?), support of download/upload resume, etc. While we're at it implement some stuff to fight spam.

- Oshyan

2090

General Software Discussion / Re: foobar...honestly...WTF?! WTF?!

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 06:47 PM »

I've never really had a problem with track gaps - there are reasonably solutions to that. Same with burning CD's. Meanwhile the 1 file/cue option makes it a lot harder to use portable devices, share with friends (oops, did I just say that? ), make mixes, etc. It really seems like the wrong answer to the problem for me, but I suppose if more apps supported cue files it might be better.

- Oshyan

2091

General Software Discussion / Re: Easy alternative to email for sending files?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 06:45 PM »

Web server is not an option for most people. I'm familiar with stuff flike Yousendit and Sendspace, but there is still the security issue. I do think those kinds of services are reasonably easy. I guess the real question for me though is would any of those services be an adequate solution for the problem in the referenced thread above. If not then they don't really address the whole problem, only a certain part of it and for certain people. The goal is to get people off of sending big files (larger than 1MB really) via email.

- Oshyan

2092

General Software Discussion / Re: Things We Could Do Without: Software Patents

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 06:42 PM »

I say make the change and let the chips fall where they may. It's no more frightening than many of the other world-threatening problems we face today, from nuclear war to running out of oil to pollution to population and hunger and on and on. I say bring it on!

- Oshyan

2093

General Software Discussion / Re: Any way to "tag" files in Windows ?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 05:39 PM »

*sob* I want my WinFS! 

- Oshyan

2094

General Software Discussion / Re: Easy alternative to email for sending files?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 05:38 PM »

Yeah, I've seen Pando, haven't tried. But it's still yet another app people have to download.

Ideally this solution would be an extension of something people already have access to. That's why HFS is so cool. Only the sender needs to have it, although it does mean they need to keep their system up until the download is finished unfortunately. Pando does solve that at least.

I don't know, Pando seems like a decent alternative, but I'm just hesitant to recommend any solution that requires *everyone* involved to get a new piece of software. If it's just the sender I think that's ok - preferable to just the recipient, and certainly preferable to *bott* sender and recipient.

A good suggestion though, and thank you.

- Oshyan

2095

General Software Discussion / Re: foobar...honestly...WTF?! WTF?!

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 05:34 PM »

Hmm, I've never understood the single-file-with-cue approach to ripping. What's the advantage of this really?

- Oshyan

2096

General Software Discussion / Re: Outlook 2003 - PST file corruption. Is it X1 ?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 05:31 PM »

Funny, my file is over 2GB and seems to be working fine. But that does make me want to trim it down more just in case.

Actually I've been planning to switch mail clients forever but I just can't find one that I like as much, lol. Quite frankly I think Thunderbird is a bit of a joke as an alternative with all its bizarre flaws. Standard advice is to not use the default profile because it can cause corruption and data loss. The default profile is broken for god's sake! Come on Mozilla, that's shoddy.

- Oshyan

2097

General Software Discussion / Re: Things We Could Do Without: Software Patents

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 05:27 PM »

What's idealistic about those opinions? In other words is it just the very idea of big patent reform that you think is idealistic, or that particular implementation? I don't see how a more limited approach to patent granting and patent lifespans is any more problematic than the current system, either in implementation or regulation. I do think concieving of widescale patent reform is a bit unrealistic, so yes perhaps idealistic, but then in Europe there is a lot going on in this area and if some of this debate and reform led to more limited patent lifespans and granting procedures they might lead by example. If benefits were notable, the US might eventually be forced to follow suit. US is becoming much less of a world-leading force these days...

- Oshyan

2098

Living Room / Re: incredible fast shutter liquid photography

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 05:20 PM »

Damn, I was going to post this like a month ago, lol. Good find.

- Oshyan

2099

General Software Discussion / Easy alternative to email for sending files?

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 05:15 PM »

Recently in this thread the subject of sending files through email came up and all the issues that entails. It got me wondering again whether there really is a good, easy solution for sending files that is comparable to email in its simplicity and ease of use. So many people use email for this purpose because the functionality is there and it's easy to use and familiar. Yet it is terribly inefficient and riddled with problems - from lack of download resume capability (in most cases) to the 30+% bloating of file size - email and the standard POP email protocol just wasn't built with file sending in mind.

This also makes me wonder why a more efficient encoding method such as yEnc hasn't been adopted for email as it has for news protocol. Of course this would take client support, but I don't think that is a big deal. The sooner the better.

Anyone know of any alternatives? I don't consider rapidshare or similar systems to really be comparable. First of all they're not direct, person-to-person, and generally not secure because of that. Sure your email data passes through several servers via email anyway, but it's transient, it doesn't usually sit there just waiting for someone to look at it. There are also more steps involved with web-based systems like that and few of them have dedicated desktop applications for streamlining. P2P systems also for the most part do not work that easily for specific individual file transfer. IM is too unreliable. Something like HFS works great IMO - even for non-tech people - but they need to be convinced to use it and when email "just works", why would they bother? Nevermind that email doesn't "just work" all that well, especially for the poor ISP's running the servers. But of course the average user doesn't really think about that.

Anyway, thoughts, ideas, alternatives?

- Oshyan

2100

General Software Discussion / Re: SPAMPAL replacement

« Last post by JavaJones on October 09, 2006, 05:09 PM »

I understand Edvard, and your reasoning makes perfect sense. I just wish there were an equally easy but more efficient email-like alternative for sending files! Does anyone know of anything? I should probably split this into its own topic. I'll go do that now, hehe.

- Oshyan