Recent Posts

2126

Living Room / Re: Kopimism - a newly-formalised religion

« Last post by superboyac on January 08, 2012, 09:31 PM »

Hmm...I think I'm going to go back to declaring myself a Rasta-Judeo-Presbyterian-Islamic-Taoist-Bhuddist-Wiccan. And maybe do a quick LLC filing for a new faith-based organization. Something like The First Congregation of the Divine Revelation and Celestial Harmony. (Which resonates at 40hz in the frequency spectrum - in case you hadn't already guessed. )
  Cults are soooo easy to set up...

That way I can (at my discretion) take offense at anything anybody says or does to me - and demand protection under constitutional and international law.

So...anybody interested in becoming a member of my new clergy? Reasonable rates! And, this month only, we're running a special on elevations to the rank of bishop. 50% off through January 31, 2012. 

Don't delay!

-40hz (January 08, 2012, 01:54 PM)

Ha!  Very cool!

Count me in...

2127

General Software Discussion / Re: Power Mixer: I love it!

« Last post by superboyac on January 07, 2012, 12:47 AM »

Looks intriguing & useful, but nothing I'd have a real use for....looks like the way to go would be to get the Power Mixer/Volume Lock Christmas bundle, though.

-Innuendo (January 06, 2012, 09:18 PM)

Yeah for sure.  I actually screwed up and bought Power Mixer alone not realizing the combo was just 5 bucks more.  Doh!

2128

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

« Last post by superboyac on January 06, 2012, 07:03 PM »

But...I did dig the new look.

-superboyac (January 06, 2012, 06:11 PM)

Kinda like Melanie Griffith? So many fell in love with that cute face and little girl voice. Until they found out just how wacko she was.

-40hz (January 06, 2012, 06:24 PM)

Speaking of which, what ever happened to my girl, Christina Aguilera?  I was hoping she would keep her sanity and after her pop-phase, she would use that H-bomb voice of hers to do some good ol jazz.

2129

General Software Discussion / Power Mixer: I love it!

« Last post by superboyac on January 06, 2012, 06:16 PM »

I just bought this program from here:
Power Mixer
http://www.actualsol...ion.com/power_mixer/

It's so nice!  I love this thing.  I'm a big music audio guy.  I mess around with all sorts of audio hardware and software.  I love this freaking program.  You can assign an individual volume level for each program you use.  I know, Windows 7 already allows this, but the interface of this program is far more of a joy to use.  It has cool little tricks, like using the mouse wheel to adjust the system volume, hotkeys, etc.  Very well made program.  Another example of a small developer really getting it right.  Fast, small footprint, easy to use, cheap.  This is why I love the little guys.

2130

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

« Last post by superboyac on January 06, 2012, 06:11 PM »

I just checked my event logs, and there has been nothing to note since the removal of Comodo.  Whatever they did in that last update that polished the look of the interface really screwed up my computer.  But...I did dig the new look.

2131

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by superboyac on January 06, 2012, 04:28 PM »

Thanks tranglos...that was beautiful.

Ok, here's another lovely jazz number:

2132

Living Room / Re: Found on the Web: Short Rant Against Users of Free Web Apps

« Last post by superboyac on January 06, 2012, 04:18 PM »

Damn 40.  Thanks.

So it's not just me being paranoid about it, glad to know.  I don't usually get to see the big picture so it's really good to hear the perspective of the wiser ones like you explaining the history of these things.  I've felt the restrictions over the years.  I closely follow news about cloud computing, hard drives, mobile technology specifically for this reason.  I want MY computer to be my data headquarters.  I'll use other services and methods as auxiliary tools, but in the end, I want everything with me.

But...I still think there's an opportunity still there.  I don't know what it is, if I ever figure it out I'm coming here with it to make everyone here rich.  There's a way to do this without doing anything illegal or harmful, except for pissing off some big boys who just want to sit back and collect money.

1) We don't need to do anything like Wikileaks.  Software developers shouldn't be a threat to national security.  Sure, you can use developed tools for anything, just like I can bash in someone's head with my "harmless" paperweight.  But that's no reason to ban paperweights.

2) Yes, the market for third-party windows shareware is small.  But I believe with the proper marketing and price points, there are enough people to justify making a living.  Sure, it won't employ thousands of people, but maybe a hundred?  It's all relative...small market, small number of employees making a living.

3) Quality.  I've constantly struggled with developers who insist on ugliness, inconvenience in their programs as if they are "not important" things.  So this mindset needs to be changed if you want to evolve with the industry.  People do care about ease of use and good looking things.  Does that mean you have to sacrifice quality for superficial looks?  No!!  But it does mean that when it comes to making a button for something and you're thought is "Well, it will take me 3 hours to program this...and in those 3 hours I can add 10 additional command line features.  Therefore, I'm going to go with the command line features."  This mindset needs to be changed.  You don't want to restrict the already restricted pool of customers by doing that.

4) Easy to buy, low-stress purchases.  I've talked about these before.

5) Flexible employment structure.  Do we all need to be in one building.  No!  Do we need to go to a lot of meetings?  No.  Do we need salaries with benefits?  It would be nice, but it would be better if the software was bringing in enough money for the programmers to take care of those needs themselves.  Salaries and benefits are characteristics of big companies...but they have a lot of money to pay for those things up front.  The better goal is to make products that pay for all of that.  This is obviously a very difficult area to figure out.

6) We don't need to be the bad guy to anyone!  We're making software that most people don't care about.  If they cared about it, they'd be doing it themselves.  Oracle is not going to make tools to, say, organize things in our system tray.  So they shouldn't care how someone else does it.

It can be done.  How is the question.  I'm going to try to figure it out...

2133

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

« Last post by superboyac on January 06, 2012, 01:55 PM »

I just uninstalled Comodo.  Everything's fine now.  I kinda liked Comodo, though.

-superboyac (January 05, 2012, 08:00 PM)

If it's any consolation, many of us did as you did, and walked away from Comodo.

And many of us also felt the same way about it.

-40hz (January 05, 2012, 08:11 PM)

Ha!  Yeah, that does make me feel better.  Thanks buddy!

2134

Living Room / Re: Found on the Web: Short Rant Against Users of Free Web Apps

« Last post by superboyac on January 06, 2012, 01:37 PM »

Okay, here's we go:

Freemium from the start is just fine. Freemium is different from CrippleWare. For some definitions: Crippleware is that really irritating business where they offer a trial version say of a music converter, then it pops up "sorry, the 'free' version only processes 15 seconds of your song. To process a whole song, pay $29.95". Into the trash it goes. That feels 90's to me, and remember *every* one of these widgets is 29.95 or something. Nag screens also suk.

Good Freemium (according to a book at home) is "80-20" etc. (I think the book even put it at 90-10). 80% of basic usability is there, and even some nice tweaks. The Paid version has a few complicated but powerful features aimed at power users. 80-20 also describes the user base - 80% would use it to convert 7 songs for that mix and forget about it.

Forget Google and Facebook - they're one shot deals "not likely to happen again" for years.

You can't make a living writing fun little apps. It's the same thing the media companies are whining about - they can't make money with cheap copied 200 word rehashes of AP releases, or maybe comics.

It's an educational process. It really is the Information Superthruway, which includes techniques to do things such as with software widgets. The Old Timers are sad that low hanging fruit isn't cutting it anymore. Then again, neither is door to door lint brush cases. In this educational process, it's a GOOD thing that people can do the basics now. That means in general we're not seeing those "support call jokes" about people who can't find the on switch. Society as a whole improves when the support calls change to "How do I downsample (is that the right word - I don't know) an MP3 into a MIDI format for my keyboard?"

Edit: I meant to add that you can't (easily! Hello Angry Birds!) make a *living* at writing small apps. Hoping I'm not being obvious, a good living is at least $1000 gross a month and that's assuming you're in an area with cheap rent. (After all, Apps are mostly location-agnostic.) What I do see is that someone has the "rent paying" job and then a side venture with apps brings maybe $200 a month for Entertainment.

-TaoPhoenix (January 06, 2012, 10:30 AM)

So how can people who are good at programming make a living now?  Let's say you thought you could do it by making a couple of cool shareware things, but now you realize you can't make a living doing that.  What else can these developers do?  Because the skillset is there, and it's not obsolete...so somehow they should be able to make a living with it. But what is the way?

2135

Living Room / Re: Found on the Web: Short Rant Against Users of Free Web Apps

« Last post by superboyac on January 06, 2012, 01:33 PM »

The only really "free" software out there is that which comes for "free" as in "no money" AND has a GPL-type license (or BSD or whatever -- you know what I mean there).

-Renegade link=topic=29521.msg273891#msg273891

I do, being involved with the FOSS yahoos.

But one problem is they're as guilty as the next guy with their "free as in beer" spiel. While it's a clever argument, it just causes more confusion for most people. That's why I was hoping a term like "Libre" would catch on for the FOSS world. But I'm not holding my breath.

And in all fairness, calling it "free open-source software" wouldn't have become the source of confusion it has - if pretenders and commercial interests didn't adopt the exact same terminology for things that are very different from what the FOSS movement originators meant (and almost everybody understood it to mean) - when they first started using the terms "free" and "open-source."

Of course, one of the best ways to dilute an opponent's argument is to try to "ambiguate" it by calling its opposite by the same name. That's why some of the most brutal and oppressive dictatorships took to prefixing the names of their nations with: The Democratic Republic of...
 

-40hz (January 06, 2012, 07:29 AM)

So true.

2136

Living Room / Re: Found on the Web: Short Rant Against Users of Free Web Apps

« Last post by superboyac on January 05, 2012, 08:56 PM »

Want people to stop being confused about what 'free' means? That's easy. Just stop trying to confuse them...and maybe ban the word 'free' from our marketing vocabulary as one way of accomplishing that.

-40hz (January 05, 2012, 08:34 PM)

Seriously.  I'm constantly arguing with people in my life about what this and that means.  But the thing I always try to focus on is it doesn't matter what the legal definition is, or the dictionary definition, or the wkipedia entry of something.  If a word or phrase means something intuitively to 99% of those who hear, and you knowing this, decide to use that term another way...then you are misleading them and intentionally trying to get away with something.

Sure, the word "free" can be used many different ways.  but when you see a big button on a website for software that says "free" you are thinking about money.  Nobody...not a single person in this world...is impressed by someone offering a "free trial" for software.

"Oh my gosh!!  They are letting me try this software out for two weeks...for FREE.  Quick, let me forward this to all my friends.  They HAVE to hear about this one.  Hey John!  XXX company has a free trial on their software!"

"No way!  Are you kidding me?!  Hold on...let me call in sick to work.  OK, now I have a day off.  I'm totally going to take advantage of this.  Honey!  please bring me a glass of wine and my robe.  I'm going to sit back...get my laptop...and check out this Filename Mangle and Destroy Commander Robot software."

2137

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

« Last post by superboyac on January 05, 2012, 08:00 PM »

Thanks guys.

Well good news.  I didn't have any crashes today so far.  I just uninstalled Comodo.  Everything's fine now.  I kinda liked Comodo, though.

2138

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

« Last post by superboyac on January 05, 2012, 04:58 PM »

On the (albeit unlikely) odd chance that the new duly appointed step one fails...
The .NET Removal Tool has served me well in the past. I usually strip everything with it then and start over (it hasn't failed me yet).

-Stoic Joker (January 05, 2012, 04:50 PM)

have you ever used it with Windows 7?  I've used it successfully with XP, but not vista or 7.

2139

Living Room / Re: Found on the Web: Short Rant Against Users of Free Web Apps

« Last post by superboyac on January 05, 2012, 04:50 PM »

I've done both and I basically agree. Too many "customers" of my freeware were demanding and rude. The customers of my payware are courteous, thoughtful and pleasant.

cheers,

-berry (January 05, 2012, 11:08 AM)

I know.  It's crazy, isn't it?  I've been selling these technical books last year, and little did I know that the loudest complainers was coming from people who either had their money refunded or "borrowed" the books from someone.  I learned a lot there.

2140

Living Room / Re: Found on the Web: Short Rant Against Users of Free Web Apps

« Last post by superboyac on January 05, 2012, 04:48 PM »

I think about this stuff a lot.  I've been convinced for a couple of years now that the freeware model simply doesn't work.  It only works if you REALLY don't care about money.  If you do care, but you're just being nice, it's going to fail sooner or later.

To me the key question is this: what is the best way for a software developer (small programs like FARR and stuff like that) to make a living working on these programs?

The iOS app developers seem to be able to do it, but I'm not sure if it's reasonable to expect them to make a living doing it (I think most of them do it on the side, but I have no idea).  They also are very centralized and integrated with all the devices and itunes.  So it's not only easy, but there are no competing marketplaces for iOS.  Now, how do you do the same for Windows users?  Can you do the same?  If not, how close can you get?

The other issue is the prices.  Most shareware is going to be minimum $20.  That's not much, but most people would consider it too expensive unless they were really serious about it.  The app prices ($2-5) are much more acceptable psychologically to users.  They'll buy it just to see.  That's where you want to be, even more so with Windows.

I don't know these answers.  But there's some secret there.  Windows developers should be able to make a living writing these small applications.  But I don't even know that.  Maybe those days are over.  But we still haven't seen it done like the itunes stuff.  We'll see when the windows marketplace comes out.

We can try an experiment here.  I know mouser has tried various ways over the years to get donations and money distributed to the developers here.  None of them have really worked out (there have been several threads debating all the reasons here).  But how about this?  We already have DCupdater, right?  What if DCupdater included ALL the software going around here...mouser, skwire, skrommel, etc.  everything in the list.  Then, put a suggested price in DCupdater next to each one.  Then, have a place where someone can buy a special license key or something with one click (credit card info will need to be stored).

I'd be interested how that works.  I would even go as far as not making any of it free anymore.  But before people have a fit, just put a minimum of $1.  So, skrommel can sell each of his things for $1.  mouser can sell his stuff for $5 each.  It's so cheap, customers can come in with $30 and buy a whole bunch of things, and it really wouldn't be all that stressful.

i don't know if it will work well, but I have a feeling it can.

2141

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

« Last post by superboyac on January 05, 2012, 02:57 PM »

As a rule .NET stuff tends to crash/hang/error .NET stuff (only)...I don't recall ever seeing a .NET related OS crash.

-Stoic Joker (January 05, 2012, 01:15 PM)

Beat me to it.

OTOH, I've seen a fair amount of (different) 3rd party security pieces of s*** BSOD like happy hour. Really, just go with MSE

-f0dder (January 05, 2012, 02:45 PM)

OK...so you guys are saying get rid of Comodo first and if that doesn't work, then try repairing Windows?

I can do that, it makes sense.

2142

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

« Last post by superboyac on January 05, 2012, 02:57 PM »

I'm betting on .Net, and if not that, Comodo.  It 'feels" like a software issue to me.

-superboyac (January 05, 2012, 12:11 PM)

With those two for options, you don't need a repair install. Personally if anything weird happens I tend to go after the security software first. I seldom need a step two...

For .NET issues, use the removal tool to strip out everything cleanly. Then reinstall (only) what you need.

As a rule .NET stuff tends to crash/hang/error .NET stuff (only)...I don't recall ever seeing a .NET related OS crash.

-Stoic Joker (January 05, 2012, 01:15 PM)

For Windows 7, the .net fixes are different because it comes with the OS.  A lot of articles say to really repair it, you need to do a repair reinstall:

Unfortunately, there is not an easy way of repairing the registry keys/values that are installed by Windows Vista like there is for files.  If you want to try to repair the registry keys/values that are a part of the .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0, you will need to run Windows Vista OS setup again and repair the OS.

The explanation is here:
http://www.sevenforu...-repair-install.html

The reason why i suspect .NET is because I've been looking at the events log and before every crash there is usually some errors happening with .net and comodo.  They are the two consistent items there.

2143

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

« Last post by superboyac on January 05, 2012, 12:11 PM »

Ok!  I now have a month of no side projects so I can play around with all this stuff...

I think the problem is .Net.  My .net installations are corrupt I think.  I'm going to try doing a repair installation of windows 7 to fix it first.  If that doesn't do it, I'll check the hardware.  But I haven't touched the hardware, other than moving audio cables.

I'm betting on .Net, and if not that, Comodo.  It 'feels" like a software issue to me.

2144

Living Room / Re: What's with the super-popular youtube videos that are just slideshows??

« Last post by superboyac on January 05, 2012, 11:51 AM »

Most of us probably have some kind of ad blockers, so we wouldn't see a lot of the ads.  I haven't seen a youtube ad in years.  My friends who use no ad blocking are constantly looking at ads on youtube.

2145

Best E-mail Client / Re: E-mail client recommendations

« Last post by superboyac on January 04, 2012, 05:27 PM »

To me, probably the most critical feature of an offline email client is the quality of the stored content.  That's what makes the Bat awesome: it's not likely to screw up the files holding all the emails.  The program is quirky, but you can be fairly sure those emails are going to stay with you for a long time.  I have emails in there stored since 1996, no problem.  Crashes, blues screens, all sorts of migrations, etc...everything still stays perfectly intact.
That, plus great multiple account interface makes it in a class of its own.  That's why I stick to it despite all my constant bitching about the quirks.  i won't even sniff another client without that kind of rock-solid backend or multiple account features.

2146

Living Room / Re: What's with the super-popular youtube videos that are just slideshows??

« Last post by superboyac on January 04, 2012, 05:22 PM »

47 million views for a slideshow?  Nobody likes it, nobody cares, yet there it is...

-superboyac (January 04, 2012, 02:57 PM)

I know what you mean. Of course YouTube (i.e., Google) could easily rectify that by doing one of the following:
- show the view count only to the uploader of the video
- not show the view count together with video thumbnails (show it only on the video page proper, after you've clicked through)
- show both the view count and the like/dislike counts with video thumbnails. You'd see the impressive number of views, but you'd also see that thirty five million people hated it.

But, doing any of these things would cause a drop in pageviews, so they won't do them.

-tranglos (January 04, 2012, 04:42 PM)

yup, exactly.  That doesn't bother me as much, since business is business.

Most of them I've seen are "music videos." That is, somebody wanted to put a song on YouTube but didn't have a video to go with it, so they made a slideshow that may or may not be related to the song/band so that you wouldn't be staring at a blank screen the entire time.

-Deozaan (January 04, 2012, 04:17 PM)

That's what I thought, almost exactly!  But the ones I'm talking about are not that.  The music ones are cool: you find a lot of old LP recordings that are nice.  The ones I'm talking about are the gimmicky ones; the ones that "trick" you to going there usually with a great thumbnail.

The internet is crazy.  The chaos is both impressive and overwhelming to try to understand.  It's like trying to understand 4chan in any kind of logical way.  There's no real logic.  It's just anarchy.  Chaos.  There's no beauty, no quality to it...it's basically just pure quantity.

2147

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

« Last post by superboyac on January 04, 2012, 03:53 PM »

I looked at them but there was no place to purchase one except Verizon or AT&T - and I am not going to do that. They always manage to try and control what I can do, trying to force me into buying it or subscribing to it through them. They can kiss my butt!

I have always rooted any smartphone to get around that stuff. My iPad 2 is wifi only, but I can use it at home and most anywhere else via Comcast's hotspots - they are all over this whole area; I have nt found a location where I can't log in to a Comcast hotspot.   

Jim

-J-Mac (January 04, 2012, 03:09 PM)

Interesting...I also don't use the data plan even though I have the 3g model (I needed the gps).  I was just thinking of paying time warner my ISP an additional $20 a month to carry around the mobile hotspot.  It's cheaper than a data plan and would work with all my devices.

2148

General Software Discussion / Re: movie database (offline, standalone)?

« Last post by superboyac on January 04, 2012, 03:20 PM »

This guy has an excel spreadsheet for 1000 or 9000 movies:
http://www.theyshoot...000_all1000films.htm

2149

General Software Discussion / movie database (offline, standalone)?

« Last post by superboyac on January 04, 2012, 03:12 PM »

Does anyone know of a way I can get a complete or very large movie database to manipulate on my own computer?  I don't mean something to catalog my own personal movies, I mean an actual movie database.  Like imdb, except in rows and columns on my computer.  I want to be able to sort and manipulate what I want to see.  For example, the top 100 grossing movies for 1993.

None of the websites have any good information.  It's so bad, I almost think it's intentional.  IMDB will have the top 250 movies of all time.  But what if you want the top 100 movies of a particular year?  Or a range of years?  And have it in a list that can be easily exported into Excel or something?

2150

Living Room / Re: What's with the super-popular youtube videos that are just slideshows??

« Last post by superboyac on January 04, 2012, 02:57 PM »

interesting barney.  so many meaningless numbers out there now.  we've really become about quantity and not quality.  47 million views for a slideshow?  Nobody likes it, nobody cares, yet there it is...an impressive number I suppose, but what does it mean?  It's like bebop jazz...sure, it's impressive to play an ionian mode over a diminished chord or something, but who gives a shit?  And it sounds like crap, to boot.  (sorry if I offended any jazz heads, I am one!)  Maybe that's my new slogan: quality of knowledge, not quantity.