Recent Posts

226

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 27, 2008, 11:59 PM »

It's telling that several (well at least two as far as I know) of the high-ranking products in his tests doesn't even include proper firewall functionality at all.

Even more interesting. Could you elaborate? Thx.

-40hz (July 27, 2008, 11:45 PM)

ProSecurity in the Excellent category is a "HIPS that was clearly heavily influneced by Processguard."  It appears to have a yes or no check for accessing network in its rules.  No filtering that I see.  http://wiki.castlecops.com/Prosecurity

System Safety Monitor 2.3.0.612 is in the Good section.  It is a HIPS that has basic outbound internet protection.  It also lacks filtering.  http://www.syssafety.com/

FWIW, I use the paid version of System Safety Monitor on my PC.  It handles protection from termination and other HIPS duties while my firewall does firewall tasks.


C

227

Living Room / Re: Wordle: Create Beautiful Word Clouds

« Last post by cthorpe on July 27, 2008, 11:25 PM »

It would be interesting to see the results if you could feed it the entire text of the Bible. Or Anne Frank's Diary.

-Deozaan (July 27, 2008, 09:39 PM)

I tried to feed the entire text of Tale of Two Cities and it didn't do anything at all.  No errors, no crashes, nothing.

228

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Jungle Disk Mini-Review: offsite data storage

« Last post by cthorpe on July 25, 2008, 06:24 PM »

For anyone who hasn't purchased Jungle Disk yet and is thinking about it, we will be running a discount in August.  You will be able to purchase a license for $15.00 instead of $20.00.  We will also be giving away three copies in the August drawing.

229

Living Room / Re: Flash game : Fantastic contraption

« Last post by cthorpe on July 25, 2008, 06:16 PM »

Awash took me a while...

Here is my solution http://FantasticCont....com/?designId=79935

230

Living Room / Re: Gizmo's Tech Support Alert Newsletter Merges with Windows Secrets

« Last post by cthorpe on July 25, 2008, 02:49 PM »

Good Lord.  I've been a paid subscriber to WS for well over a year, and I don't see what everyone is complaining about.  Sure it has some fluff, but it also has useful info.  Hell, Langa's and Gizmo's newsletters had their share of fluff as well (even the paid content was occasionally trivial).  I find WS is a wonderful resource on MS patch Tuesday info.  I never install patches until the WS newsletter arrives on Thursday with info about incompatibilities, broken patches, and other important warning and information.  I also found Brian's coverage of the whole WGA fiasco to be well written and well researched.  He also provided alternatives to using Windows Update that were 100% legal and eliminated fears of dishonest folks mucking around in patches and infecting them.  On top of all of that, the newsletter is priced however you want.  Also, you need to keep in mind that Langa and Gizmo made the decision to join WS.  They knew what they were doing.  Nobody tricked them into signing on with WS.  So for those of you who blame WS for not getting all you Langa goodness and who fear that WS will kill Gizmo, remember to hold those writers accountable as well.  Finally, to everyone who is upset about this merger but who never spent the money on a paid subscription to Langa or Gizmo, remember that both of them listed finances among the reasons that they joined up with WS.  Perhaps if a few more people put their money where their mouth is and bought a subscription, finances wouldn't have entered into the equation.


Just my two cents...

C

231

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 25, 2008, 12:37 AM »

You can find the results of a very good firewall challenge at the following link:

-40hz (July 24, 2008, 09:32 PM)

That set of tests and the results posted are misleading.  What matousec was testing there is if the firewall program prevents termination of its processes using various methods of shutting them down.  Yes, it's important to make sure your firewall program is always running, but some would argue that its not the job of the firewall program to do that.  In my opinion, the firewalls that have branched out into HIPS functions like process termination protection can be more trouble than they are worth as they have to dig themselves so deep into the OS to provide those functions.

C

232

Living Room / Re: The Great Firewall Hunt ... frustrating ...

« Last post by cthorpe on July 24, 2008, 07:23 AM »

I am using Look 'n' Stop (http://looknstop.com).

Currently it is sitting at 0% CPU usage, 12mb ram, and 8mb pagefile usage.  I have seen no evidence that it is slowing my pc down, and it doesn't appear to slow down browsing or any other internet access.  I get a single pop up when a new program tries to make a connection to the internet.  As for initial setup, it is not easy, however, I spent $10 and purchased a pre configured rule set, and I haven't had to worry too much about it.  Licenses for Look n Stop are $29.00, however there are discounts if you order more than one copy.  I bought 2 licenses (one more my desktop, and one more my wife's laptop) for $40.00 total.

C

Disclaimer - I am a registered user of Look n Stop, and I am very satisfied with the program.  I have not been, and will not be, compensated in any way for positive comments made about the program or any sales generated by those comments.

233

Living Room / Re: Flash game : Fantastic contraption

« Last post by cthorpe on July 23, 2008, 01:36 PM »

I love that you can share links to your contraptions

http://FantasticCont....com/?designId=49065

234

Living Room / Re: Anyone Here Using a Drobo?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 22, 2008, 03:27 PM »

I wonder if the first recursive acronym is GNU (GNU's Not Unix) which Stallman came up with in the mid-eighties.  Anybody aware of an earlier one?

-mwb1100 (July 19, 2008, 04:38 PM)

From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia....ki/Recursive_acronym:

In computing, an early tradition in the hacker community (especially at MIT) was to choose acronyms and abbreviations that referred humorously to themselves or to other abbreviations. Perhaps the earliest example in this context, from about 1977 or 1978, is TINT ("TINT Is Not TECO"), an editor for MagicSix. This inspired the two MIT Lisp Machine editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). These were followed by Richard Stallman's GNU (GNU's not UNIX). Many others also include negatives, such as denials that the thing defined is or resembles something (that the thing defined is, in fact, usually similar to).

and

In Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, published 1979, Douglas Hofstadter uses the acronym GOD, 'GOD Over Djinn'. As a genie explains to Achilles, GOD stands for GOD Over Djinn, remarking that "GOD can never be fully expanded." In the German translation it is rendered as "ZEUS ewig über Dschinn", meaning "Zeus eternally over Djinn".

235

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Jungle Disk Mini-Review: offsite data storage

« Last post by cthorpe on July 22, 2008, 03:09 PM »

I just received word from the developers that they are putting together a discount on Jungle Disk for our members.


Stay tuned.

236

General Software Discussion / Re: How to prevent Win+S from sending the system to sleep?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 21, 2008, 09:25 PM »

On Vista Home Premium here and Win+S does a screen clipping in One Note 2007.

237

General Software Discussion / Put Vista to sleep and wake it up on a schedule?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 20, 2008, 01:26 AM »

I have a desktop running Vista Home Premium.  It behaves very well as far as going to sleep and waking up as needed.  I can't just let it sleep when I am not using it, however, as it has a shared printer that my wife prints to from her laptop as well as music that she streams while at home.  I would like to be able to have the computer sleep over night and during the parts of the day when neither of us are at home, but have it wake itself up so it is available for printing and media streaming when she is at home.  Any ideas on how to make this work?

Thanks,

Carl

238

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 17, 2008, 03:44 AM »

I have one master password for Roboform and unique passwords for various web services, accounts, etc.  Yes, that's the usual way to use Roboform, but before I started using it, I just had a few passwords that I used for everything.

239

Find And Run Robot / Re: Links to Review and Comments - Add yours!

« Last post by cthorpe on July 16, 2008, 07:24 PM »

2/3s of a page feature in August issue of PC World by Laura Blackwell (pg 76).  It may be the same as the write up in the newsletter that has been mentioned, but in the print form it will get more exposure.

Carl

240

General Software Discussion / Re: My favorite software! What's yours?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 16, 2008, 04:31 AM »

Current favs/must haves:

First off, we have the usual suspects: Firefox, Find and Run Robot,

Roboform - Since I got Roboform, I have actually followed the advice I always gave others and assigned unique passwords to various web services.  My Roboform password is pretty much a string of random characters that correspond somewhat to a sentence that was written on something on my desk when I first set it up, so I feel secure that it won't be easy to break.

Office 2007 - The more I use it, the more I like it.  I can't work efficiently with earlier versions now that I am used to the ribbon.

MyLife Organized on PC and PocketPC

It's the summer, so I have lots of time to play games...

Oblivion (Game of the Year Edition) http://www.elderscro...blivion_overview.htm
Audiosurf http://www.audio-surf.com/
Gish http://www.chroniclogic.com/gish.htm
Gametap games http://gametap.com

241

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by cthorpe on July 16, 2008, 03:04 AM »

Ok, here's mine...



Lots of crap... and this is on a good day.  I know some of you cleaned up before taking your pictures.  There is no way that many geeks are that clean.

242

Living Room / Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Joss Whedon fans look here)

« Last post by cthorpe on July 15, 2008, 09:45 PM »

Musical web mini-series by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, etc) staring Neal Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, an evil "supervillian."  It follows his exploits against his archnemesis Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillon who played Malcom in Firefly), and the girl he is in love with from the laundomat.

Brilliant!

A LETTER FROM JOSS WHEDON

Dear Friends,

At last the time has come to reveal to you our Master Plan. BEWARE! Those with weak hearts should log off lest they be terrified by the twisted genius of our schemes! Also pregnant women and the elderly should consider reading only certain sentences. Do not mix with other blogs. Do not operate heavy machinery while reading this blog. You must be this tall to read. ‘Kay?

It is time for us to change the face of Show Business as we know it. You know the old adage, “It’s Show Business – not Show Friends”? Well now it’s Show Friends. We did that. To Show Business. To show Show Business we mean business. (Also, there are now other businesses like it.)

http://www.drhorrible.com/index.html

Official MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/wonderflonium

243

General Software Discussion / Re: Does anyone know any temporary startup manager?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 14, 2008, 03:11 AM »

Btw, it's easy to change the script to add a program that is specific to your user account.

Just change the line:
RegWrite, REG_SZ, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\RunOnce, %programname%, %programname% %commandlp%

to
RegWrite, REG_SZ, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\RunOnce, %programname%, %programname% %commandlp%

244

General Software Discussion / Re: Does anyone know any temporary startup manager?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 14, 2008, 01:27 AM »

I made some changes to the script to allow you to enter command line parameters if needed.  The exe file attached is updated as well.

245

General Software Discussion / Re: Does anyone know any temporary startup manager?

« Last post by cthorpe on July 13, 2008, 11:59 PM »

Someone who knows AHK can probably do this better, but here's a start...

[Select]

FileSelectFile, programname

Gui, Add, Text, x22 y22 w80 h20 , Program to run:
Gui, Add, Text, x112 y22 w320 h20 , %programname%
Gui, Add, Text, x22 y62 w190 h20 , Command line parameters:
Gui, Add, Edit, x22 y82 w410 h20 vCommandlp,
Gui, Add, Button, x22 y122 w100 h20 , OK
Gui, Add, Button, x142 y122 w90 h20 , Cancel
; Generated using SmartGUI Creator 4.0
Gui, Show, h166 w440, RunOnce Control
Return

ButtonOK:
Gui, submit
RegWrite, REG_SZ, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\RunOnce, %programname%, %programname% %commandlp%

ButtonCancel:
GuiClose:
ExitApp

This new version will allow you to add command line parameters if you want after selecting the program to run.

Carl

246

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: TodoPaper

« Last post by cthorpe on July 06, 2008, 12:27 AM »

ToDoPaper is coming up on Bits du Jour on July 13th for 51% off ($14.70 instead of $29.99)

http://www.bitsdujou.../software/todopaper/


Carl

247

Found Deals and Discounts / Peggle Deluxe for $11.97 on Games Du Jour

« Last post by cthorpe on July 04, 2008, 02:44 AM »

Game du Jour is offering Peggle Deluxe for $11.97 today (July 4th).  The regular price is $19.99.  It can be had for $9.99 on Valve's Steam service, but the GdJ version doesn't lock you into Steam.



Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the developer of Peggle Deluxe, Game du Jour, or any distributor of Peggle Deluxe.  I have not received any compensation, nor any promise of future compensation, for this post or any sales generated by this post.  The following text was written by me.

Peggle Deluxe is an ADDICTIVE game that is some kind of cross between pinball, breakout, and the Plinko game on The Price is Right.  You fire balls into the field from the top in the hopes of clearing out all the orange pegs.  Scattered throughout the fields you will find blue pegs that get in the way, purple pegs that are worth more points, and green pegs that activate special powers.  These powers range from extra guiding lines to help you see where the ball will go to flippers on the sides of the screen like a pinball table.  A bucket moves back and forth along the bottom of the screen at all times, and if you ball lands in the bucket you get it back.  Otherwise, when the ball falls off the bottom of the screen you lose it.  You have to clear all the oranges before running out of balls to win the level.  There are 55 regular levels, then a bunch of extra challenge levels once you are finished.

Reviews: http://www.metacriti.../platforms/pc/peggle (rated 85 on MetaCritic)
YouTube video of gameplay: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mr2A_T0pbAQ

248

General Software Discussion / Re: Using URL-catching technology to save lives

« Last post by cthorpe on July 03, 2008, 03:06 PM »

Well, FWIW the name of the group is Underage Drinkers Against Drunk Driving, so apparently they're all for the drinking part, just not the drunk driving part.

-mwb1100 (July 02, 2008, 08:51 PM)

The organization wants teens to be able to drink but is against drunk driving.  They state over and over again on the webpage that sober teens are more responsible than drunk adults.  Big shocker there.  It also seems that they believe that drunk teens will be more reasonable than drunk adults and refrain from driving if the underage drinking laws were lifted.  I would think that drunk teenagers would be just as unreasonable, if not more, than drunk adults.  But that might just be because I work with teenagers at my job, so who I am I to claim any knowledge of how teenagers act?

Carl

249

General Software Discussion / Re: Stardock doesn't treat you like a criminal!

« Last post by cthorpe on July 03, 2008, 02:23 PM »

When WindowBlinds V.5 was in beta and right through the first full release, many users came to the forum and posted about having problems with WB.  Brad would always ask them to post what it said on a specific Settings page.  When they did, if it referred to a specific line of text as being a problem, that meant that they were using a crack to run it.

Brad would then berate them up and down.  Problem was, many legitimate users also complained about other rendering issues that they suspected were related to the crack blocking code within WB.  Brad denied that his code could do that to subscribed users, but I think they lost quite a few over this issue.

Now maybe he decided to change that policy and embrace the statements shown in the original post here.  I haven't been there much in the last year.  But if you look through their forums about 1 to 2 years back you'll see all that.  If not, I'll try to locate specific threads and post links here.

Jim

-J-Mac (July 03, 2008, 01:53 PM)

I don't see where there is a problem.  First, the interview was specifically about games and not WindowBlinds.  Furthermore, there is nothing in there that states, explicitly or implicitly, that the company is going to embrace pirates and treat them with the same respect as paying customers.  The interview never states that Stardock is completely ignoring piracy problems.  On top of that, users who had cracked versions of WindowBlinds and then were audacious enough to ask the company for technical support deserved to be berated.  Perhaps it shouldn't have been done publically on the forums, but how would you handle someone who clearly stole something from you and then asked for help with it in public?  You mention that some legitimate users suspected that it was anti-piracy features that caused then problems.  Did any users ever find that it was, in fact, the crack blocking or did they just assume that it was the problem?

250

Living Room / Re: "Network cable unplugged" - except it isn't!

« Last post by cthorpe on July 03, 2008, 11:42 AM »

I had a similar problem with one of my computers dropping connection constantly.  Eventually, after going as far as reinstalling Windows on that box, I swapped out the router with a new one and all the problems disappeared.  Oddly enough, whatever problem the router was having was only causing that one computer to drop connection.  I had another desktop, a laptop, an xbox, and a pda that all worked perfectly fine with no drops that I noticed at all.  I even tried changing ports on the router and the XP machine continued to be the only one with problems.


Carl