Recent Posts

226

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Windows 10 a trojan?

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 16, 2015, 12:30 AM »

That may be true, but Delivery Optimization probably should be opt-in (like torrents are). For a corporate network, some sort of group policy should allow it to be easily configured.

Actually, most of the things Auerbach discussed should have been opt-in.

I haven't paid much attention to the Windows 10 release - is there anything compelling in Win 10 that might make me want to move off of Win7?

227

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone running Firefox 40.0 stable release?

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 12, 2015, 06:44 PM »

If I check for update in FF 39.03 it says FF is up to date.  Mozilla.org shows no FF 40.0 stable.  But Snapfiles and Softpedia do.  It gets weirder all the time.

Edit:  Just checked Mozilla again.  Now it has 40.0 for download.  How can they get beat at their own game?  Seems pretty strange.  Check for update is still 40.0 unaware.

-MilesAhead (August 12, 2015, 06:22 AM)

Since they have more than 100 million users, I would expect some staging of updates to occur.

228

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for whiteboard photo cleanup software

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 10, 2015, 07:38 PM »

Did you ever try Kyle Burton's method?

-Curt (August 10, 2015, 12:51 PM)

I had seen that before, but my whiteboard photos are from work, and I don't feel comfortable sending them out to an email service for processing.  However, your post prompted me to test with with my example whiteboard photo and it did very well with it:



Kyle Burton has posted a link to the Gimp script that the email service uses (or at least used - I supposed it may have been tweeked since).  So I can try installing Gimp and running the script myself.  Since I know nothing about Gimp or Gimp scripting, this is a higher barrier to entry than I'd like (basically, install-and-run).  But it seems like something I should be able to get going, and once I do it should be as easy as anything else and possibly produce better results.

229

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for whiteboard photo cleanup software

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 10, 2015, 11:53 AM »

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but I came across a one-liner script that uses the ImageMagick library to clean up whiteboard photos:

  - https://gist.github..../lelandbatey/8677901

It's a bash script that uses the ImageMagick library and a straightforward conversion to a DOS batch file works on windows just fine.

[Select]

@rem here is the DOS/Windows version:
convert "%1" -morphology Convolve DoG:15,100,0 -negate -normalize -channel RBG -level 60%%,91%%,0.1 "%2"

It doesn't work nearly as well as the PhotoNote software, but it's free and PhotoNote is apparently no longer available (I'm really sorry that I didn't shell out the $50 when I could).

Here's how the ImageMagick script handled my example jpg:



It's done a better job with some other whiteboard photos I've used it on.

230

Best Text Editor / Re: EmEditor Professional v13 New Features - EmEditor Free is back!

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 07, 2015, 01:24 PM »

I could set it to free mode only after searching out this set of instructions on EmEditor's website:

-mwb1100 (August 05, 2015, 02:31 PM)

Or from the top most post here   

-AbteriX (August 07, 2015, 10:59 AM)

Too much work... 

I would be fine if my post were deleted since it was sparked by a spammer.

231

Best Text Editor / Re: EmEditor Professional v13 New Features - EmEditor Free is back!

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 05, 2015, 02:31 PM »

It seems there is no more free version now

-peterpamn (August 05, 2015, 10:27 AM)

According to EmEditor's website:

Starting with v13, EmEditor Free and EmEditor Professional use the same binary program. Running a single command switches Professional to Free, and vice versa. However, the Free version is available only for personal use.

-https://www.emeditor.com/text-editor-features/history/emeditor-free/

I haven't tried this, so I'm not 100% sure it is still working, but I have no reason to believe the capability has been removed.

I have successfully set EmEditor 15.2.1 to Free mode. I must say the procedure was not easy to find in the program itself. I could set it to free mode only after searching out this set of instructions on EmEditor's website:

Download the normal EmEditor Professional/Free installer, install, and select All Commands on the Tools menu, select Help, and select Downgrade. (Alternatively, select Quick Launch (CTRL+Q) on the Tools menu, type “downgrade”, and press Enter twice.)

-https://www.emeditor.com/text-editor-features/history/emeditor-free/

232

Living Room / Re: Security: Stagefright Vulnerability (Android)

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 31, 2015, 02:20 PM »

People still use MMS?
Why?

-Tuxman (July 30, 2015, 04:13 AM)

I'll admit that I have no idea.  I just press a icon when I want to send someone a message, type a few words in and press send.

I have no idea what technology might be used behind the scenes, and I don't really care to know. All I care about is that the message I send arrives on the phone of the user I sent it to.

233

General Software Discussion / Re: AV testing: Is your antivirus app doing its job?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 23, 2015, 10:31 PM »

I have/use Webroot and I like it.  It hasn't caused many as many problems as other AVs I've used in the past.  I wish it were part of the survey, but it's not. Webroot has blocked some "potentially unwanted programs" from being stealth-installed. And that makes me happy.

Webroot also claims that it can rollback changes that malware might have made; I haven't had a chance or reason to use this feature so I'm not sure how well it works.  They claim it can bail you out of a Cryptolocker-style ransomware attack. I hope I never have reason to need that.

I also use MBAM.  Now that MBAM has fixed their upgrade method so it doesn't require me to do it manually, it's essentially invisible except when I click on a link to a webpage it doesn't think is safe (which happens once every few months - not too often).  Or maybe it's Webroot that nicely blocks potentially malicious websites.

I also have AdGuard installed, and while it's not technically anti-malware, I believe that ads have become a significant attack vector for malware. So I think AdGuard is doubly nice: fewer annoying ads and probably helping avoid some malware.

All of these are lifetime licenses except Webroot, which I re-up every year by finding a coupon that lets me get a 1 year license for 5 machines for $30.

I have a lifetime license for Outpost Security Suite, and I believe that it's a very competent bit of software, but it seems geared to people who want fine-grained control and want to know everything that's coming in and out of the network.  I've grown to want my anti-malware to be more hands-off, so I don't have Outpost installed right now. But I'm not sorry I bought it; I got a lot of use out of the license already, and  I'll periodically check back with Outpost when I hear about major upgrades that might impact the user interface.

234

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: WinToFlash Pro Sale 7USD

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 20, 2015, 07:40 PM »

No free updates or support though.

-MilesAhead (July 20, 2015, 06:51 PM)

Another limitation is that the license expires:

The Giveaway license is only good up to December 31, 2015.

I would assume that bootable USB devices created would not expire though. You just won't be able to create new ones (or maybe the software reverts to the free version with ads?).

235

General Software Discussion / Re: Is robocopy faster than Windows GUI to "Move" files between drives

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 05, 2015, 10:08 PM »

Maybe there's something I don't understand: why are you using the "move" command then using "robocopy /move"?

Robocopy works on directories by default, so instead of using the batch "for" command I think you can do what you want with a single robocopy command:

    robocopy /move /e "%from%" "%to%"

Also, I have heard good things about tools like teracopy, but I don't use such a program myself (I do use XYplorer, which works well enough for my needs).

236

Living Room / Re: Webassembly: Big four to develop binary format for the web

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 20, 2015, 04:49 AM »

So... they're reinventing Java?

237

Living Room / Re: Matchstick - A streaming stick using Firefox OS [Kickstarter]

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 12, 2015, 08:56 AM »

I'm not following the project - more importantly I didn't pay any money - but I don't get the sense that they're scamming. However, if they don't deliver because they found themselves in over their heads, then the end result to supporters is more or less the same.

Hopefully the product will be delivered, just later than promised.

238

Living Room / Re: Matchstick - A streaming stick using Firefox OS [Kickstarter]

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 12, 2015, 12:46 AM »

I see some comments in the KickStarter mention something about August, but I don't see any of the recent updates say anything about updates/shipments happening in August.

-Deozaan (June 01, 2015, 09:36 PM)

We’ll cut to the chase; Matchstick is not going to ship in February.

It’s been a very busy couple of months and we’ve had to make some hard decisions about how to move forward. We’ve decided to release the product when it is ready, and anticipate that to be in August 2015. Let us explain more.

...

-https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matchstick/matchstick-the-streaming-stick-built-on-firefox-os/posts/1128155

239

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: AdGuard: the better Ad Muncher?

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 10, 2015, 08:12 PM »

Thanks for link. Not sure how I feel about trusting an "unknown" company to be a man-in-the-middle for ssl... seems a bit risky(?)

-Cloq (June 10, 2015, 07:54 PM)

That is a concern that many people have.  However, to be able to strip ads, the unencrypted HTTP data needs to be examined.  The choices seem to be:

  - live with ads in https sessions
  - use a man-in-the-middle solution such as AdGuard
  - use an ad blocker that is a browser plug-in so that it can filter the data after the browser has decrypted it

I'm not sure of the relative security risks/benefits between the second and third options, but they seem to be somewhat similar to me (a decidedly non-expert in this area).  Maybe the third option has a smaller 'attack surface'? And I'm not sure that the trust level for a typical browser plug-in author/provider would necessarily be any higher than AdGuard's.

240

General Software Discussion / Re: Newer password keepers/form-fillers - anyone using Dashlane or 1Password?

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 04, 2015, 06:49 PM »

I use SafeInCloud as a password keeper, but I have no idea how well it works as a form-filler since I don't use that capability.

What I like about it is that it has Windows and Android clients (as well as iOS and Chrome) and uses DropBox, Google Drive or OneDrive for synchronization so I don't have to rely on the SafeInCloud vendor for sync services.  I wish it supported SFTP so I could host the sync point myself, but having a choice among the supported offerings isn't too bad.

241

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: PowerISO 6.0 (100% Discount) - CD/DVD image file processing tool

« Last post by mwb1100 on June 01, 2015, 05:58 PM »

I should have posted earlier, but I didn't have notes, just a vague memory of badness with PowerISO...

Then I should have Googled (but was too lazy).  Now that I have, I remember: PowerISO is bundled with Conduit, which is some rather nasty adware/pup/malware/whatever: https://twitter.com/...s/435049045224992768

My brief encounter with Conduit makes me say it's plain and simply malware rather than just a "potentially unwanted program" (PUP).  That stuff messed up my wife's machine pretty good (though she got Conduit from something other than PowerISO).  MBAM was able to deal with cleaning up Conduit pretty well, and after some testing I found that Webroot was able to prevent it from getting on the machine in the first place. That's the main reason I switched to Webroot (from MSE on my wife's machine).

MSE didn't do squat to prevent or clean up Conduit.

242

General Software Discussion / Re: dream phone

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 31, 2015, 05:24 PM »

As Ath said, GPS has nothing to do with the SIMs or the cell radios.  

What happens with a dual SIM that supports stand-by is that when you're not actively using the cell radio (is., you're not in a phone call), the phone is 'multiplexing' between the two SIMs.  It'll activate one SIM to allow a connection on that phone number, and if nothing's going on, it'll switch the connection to the other SIM.  It does this automatically, without you having to manually choose which SIM is active.

I don't know how often the switch is done, but it's fast/often enough that any incoming calls on either SIM just ring the phone.  Dual active SIM phones actually have two sets of cell radios, so using one SIM doesn't affect the connectivity of the other at all.

However, when you are actively in a phone call with a stand-by dual SIM, the other SIM is never activated.  I think that for most people this isn't really an issue - incoming calls on the other SIM will go to voicemail. Just like if you had a single SIM.  

It might be a problem if you want to conference calls across the SIMs.

The other area that I think where stand-by could be a problem is if you're like me and use one SIM for voice/text and the other for data.  In that situation you won't be able to use data while you are actively in a phone call.  Personally, this hasn't been a problem at all.  The only time I noticed that I didn't have data access during a phone call was when I tried doing it just to see if it worked or not.

243

General Software Discussion / Re: dream phone

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 31, 2015, 01:16 PM »

Full active is pretty uncommon among dual-SIM phones, at least in my limited experience.  Are you sure you need full active?  My dual-SIM phone is standby, and I have had zero problems.  But then again, I'm not much of a yakker.

I also believe that 3GB of RAM is pretty uncommon in general for phones today.  I'd guess that a combination of 3GB with dual-SIM - whether standby or active - would be a rare bird.

244

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Contraption Maker is FREE this weekend! (23rd May 2015)

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 23, 2015, 03:53 PM »

They tell me 2 rules, tell me my password matches 2 of 3 rules, then tells me 4 rules must be met.

-Deozaan (May 23, 2015, 01:01 AM)

It said 2 of 3 character rules were met. The 4th is probably not a character rule.

Very likely these are the 4 rules:

• at least 1 uppercase letter
• at least 1 lowercase letter
• at least 1 number
• length (not sure what the requirement for this is)

While a password like Y0u would satisfy the first 3, it likely would not satisfy the 4th.

-app103 (May 23, 2015, 03:12 PM)

It looks like creating a password is a mini-game.

245

General Software Discussion / Re: uBlock ad blocker and unwanted behavior

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 12, 2015, 05:45 PM »

it was taken over by a young guy

-tomos (May 12, 2015, 05:27 PM)

The thread I read indicates that it was more or less dumped on that guy with no notice - gorhill (the original developer) posted a comment to some commit thread saying essentially, "I'm done with this, can you take over the repo?".  Also, it seems like the new maintainer has been very willing to rectify any mistakes or issues that have been pointed out.

246

General Software Discussion / Re: uBlock ad blocker and unwanted behavior

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 09, 2015, 01:14 AM »

I'm still confused, however.  I never installed ublock origin from what I remember.

-wraith808 (May 08, 2015, 01:09 PM)

The original developer of uBlock (gorhill) transferred control of the uBlock repo to the new project maintainer, but did not transfer the Chrome store version. See https://github.com/c...mmitcomment-10530255

As mentioned in that comment thread, gorhill intended from the start to fork uBlock, creating his own version which he would only work on for the few features he wanted.  Since he kept the Chrome store version, I assume that if that's where you installed your Chrome extension from, any updates gorhill made to it based on the uBlock Origin 'fork' would be installed into your browser whenever Chrome decided to pull the update from the store.

In other words:

• gorhill published uBlock on the Chrome store
• you installed uBlock from there
• gorhill changed the software at that Chrome store extension site to be uBlock origin
• your chrome browser updated your extension to uBlock origin

247

Living Room / Re: Kickstarter Highlight: Onion Omega

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 05, 2015, 01:00 PM »

My personal take on it was that they had more than enough Kickstarter support without me, and they promised to open-source their hardware designs.  I figure if it turns into something successful, there will be plenty of opportunities to buy Onion Omega devices and add-ons.

248

General Software Discussion / Re: Fax Software

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 05, 2015, 12:01 PM »

You might want to consider an email-to-FAX service.  I haven't used one myself (the last time I needed to FAX something, I was able to use the machine they still had at work, and the last time I bought/sold a home, we were able to do all document exchange via email or the web), but it seems like it might be a reasonable option to look into.

249

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: AdGuard Premium Lifetime on sale at StackSocial.com

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 05, 2015, 11:29 AM »

Thing about these lifetime licenses is lifetime is how long the company will be in business and the length of time the product will be updated.  Look at AdMuncher, for instance. 

-Midnight Rambler (May 05, 2015, 09:34 AM)

Yes that is true; that means when you purchase one of these you have to take into consideration the possibility that the company will cease to operate, renege on the deal, or even that you might decide to move on to some other software in the future.  $40 was small enough that I felt the risk was acceptable.

I did get some lifetime licenses on AdMuncher (on sale).  I'm not exactly sure if I got my 'money's worth', but I wouldn't say I'm upset.  I would be upset if they were still selling licenses, but devised some loophole such that my license wasn't eligible for updates.

On the whole, I'd say that across the set of lifetime licenses I've purchased, I'm happy with the value I've gotten.

250

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: AdGuard Premium Lifetime on sale at StackSocial.com

« Last post by mwb1100 on May 03, 2015, 03:54 PM »

I just bit and bought in.

-Innuendo (May 03, 2015, 01:30 PM)

I pulled the trigger as well. Uninstalled AdMuncher, installed AdGuard and my first few youtube tests were ad free.  My browser feels a bit snappier, too, but I'm thinking that might just be my imagination.