Recent Posts

2251

ProcessTamer / Re: UAC still requires permission...

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2017, 11:10 PM »

^ I don't think that answers the question at hand? 

2252

Living Room / Re: Android virus

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2017, 05:01 PM »

Hm, reset to factory defaults?

-Ath (July 10, 2017, 03:05 PM)

That's what I thought also, but figured that I'd let someone that knows android better reply. 

2253

ProcessTamer / Re: UAC still requires permission...

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2017, 02:31 PM »

Which shortcut are you altering?  The one in the startup folder on the start menu?  The others won't help if you're starting up the program at startup.

2254

Living Room / Re: external hard drive backups

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2017, 01:11 PM »

Depends on whose computer you're storing them on.

-wraith808 (July 10, 2017, 08:08 AM)

Do you only entrust your personal files to people whose lies are not too obvious?

-Tuxman (July 10, 2017, 08:11 AM)

You love reductionist absurdist arguments, instead of engaging, don't you?  So that people waste time constructing meaningful arguments that you have no defense for right?  Not falling for that this time, but I will give a similar time to you in my argument against yours.

Encryption Keys.

I forgot wasn't being backed up.

-mouser (July 10, 2017, 08:19 AM)

This is the issue, I think.  Backup plans should be thought through.  And the ability to just backup your whole machine (especially for non critical uses) makes you lazy in my experience.  Yes, I agree for servers and such that it is critical to keep up.  But for my development and such (which is my only critical use) I have my source in a non-local VCS, and my environment duplicated on my other machines (instead of trying to make my machine a standing and sitting desk, I have two stations that I work on- in addition to my remote machines that have the same), so it's really not necessary for me to waste the space to back up 5 different machines totally.  Just had this happen on one of my work machines, and I was able to keep working on another machine, and after I got my primary back up and running, I was able to get it functional in the time it took me to install dropbox and sync it, onedrive and sync it, and visual studio, and my other utilities I use by using a script that I keep on my dropbox to pull and install everything else that I don't have portable on dropbox from Chocolatey. 

I guess it really depends on your workflow rather than doing what works well for someone else.

Depends on whose computer you're storing them on.  This is a spurious argument facilitated by people as it distills it down to anyone's computer with any security in place, and it's just wrong.

-wraith808 (July 10, 2017, 08:08 AM)

It is not completely wrong. Besides, what type of data are you backing up and is it possible to get into legal trouble? For example: you work from home and store by accident or as an ad-hoc transfer solution, store your work on your cloud account. In my case, I would get into serious legal trouble, even for the briefest of time that work would be on any server other my own or at the customer. You better make sure something similar doesn't apply to your personal situation when you (accidentally) mix work/private stuff using any cloud solution.

-Shades (July 10, 2017, 09:16 AM)

It might not be completely wrong for your use, but as I stated above, having it fully encrypted with you being the only holder of the keys makes it spurious, other than as you say, legal ramifications.  But that argument argues against any use of cloud storage, which is misguided and wrong, IMO.

2255

Living Room / DayAgainstDRM

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2017, 01:08 PM »

Yesterday was apparently the #DayAgainstDRM sponsored by https://www.defectivebydesign.org/.

I understand it, and would like it better if DRM was not included, but not prepared to cancel Netflix in an attempt to get it removed, in all honesty.  Books, to me, are a different thing.  O'Reilly was a publisher that I used for my development books, along with Packtpublishing and the Pragmatic bookshelf, Manning, and Apress.  In fact, they even published a blog post on it back in 2012: http://toc.oreilly.c...ree-day-forever.html.

Now, they're going against it- all books on their site are DRMd by default, as they've changed to being a platform, rather than selling their books.  When confronted with this, they said that you can purchase their books from other storefronts, but in all honesty, that's a dodge, rather than an absolute.  It might be understandable - except for the fact that PacktPub also has a platform, and still sells their books directly DRM free.

There's also on that defective by design a list of publishers that are supporting the day and discounts- got two really good books off of Pragmatic for 40% off.  Not sure when the codes expire.

Any thoughts?

2256

Living Room / Re: external hard drive backups

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2017, 08:08 AM »

The most important thing is to back up your data...

But the pain and hassle and stress that you can avoid by having a full drive image backup is immense.

If you have a recent full drive image and you encounter a complete hd crash or infection, you can be back up and running within 15 minutes of buying a new hard drive.

Without it you are looking at days of reinstalling windows and your apps and then dealing with discovering all the settings and files you forgot to back up.

I think drive images are an essential part of saving your sanity when things go wrong.

-mouser (July 09, 2017, 09:28 PM)

I used to think that.  Then when it happened, there was a lot of work, because I took the opportunity to do an upgrade and at the time you couldn't restore to a different sized partition (not sure if it's still the same).  And it didn't take me that long to get back up and running, and I got rid of a lot of dross I'd accumulated over the years.  Then I mounted my old image- and realized I didn't really need anything.  I looked through, sure that I hadn't been keeping a backup of the drive for nothing, and realized I had.

Now I keep my programs (for the most part) on a different drive than my data.  And I just back up my data drive.  And you have a lot more options with just your data to back up.

Is cloud storage safe to use?

-techidave (July 09, 2017, 09:44 AM)

Is storing your files on other people's computers safe to use?

-Tuxman (July 10, 2017, 05:46 AM)

Depends on whose computer you're storing them on.  This is a spurious argument facilitated by people as it distills it down to anyone's computer with any security in place, and it's just wrong.

2257

Living Room / Re: external hard drive backups

« Last post by wraith808 on July 09, 2017, 09:24 PM »

I find it useless and wasteful to back up everything, personally.  I only back up data.  I keep the data localized, and the actual live files are in a onedrive folder, as I get 1TB free.  I also on a schedule, compress the same data to an archive that is moved to my NAS.  I used to back up everything and image it, but when I did need it, I noticed that for the most part it was copying files rather than trying to restore it wholesale- a crash can be a good opportunity for housekeeping.  I will say that I think that even though I get my 1TB per user free through O365 (which I only switched to using when Cubby ceased services), I'm going to pay for something separate.  OneDrive doesn't version, I found out, other than for Office files.

2258

Living Room / Re: Batch downloading

« Last post by wraith808 on July 09, 2017, 10:08 AM »

thanks, but that stackoverflow thread is a mess
it is not clear if I need CURL to make wget work with POST authentication

-kalos (July 09, 2017, 09:14 AM)

curl and wget are two ways of doing the same thing.  Your answers are in the links 4wd gave on that other DC thread.

2259

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: An Idea: Providing some small funding for a yearly (or 6 month) regular coder

« Last post by wraith808 on July 08, 2017, 12:28 PM »

I've been ruminating on this idea and I think that I've come to a conclusion that there is an easier, smarter, fairer, and overall better way to do this, and that is to do the following:

At the end of each year (or every 6 months) , we will round up the money dedicated to this purpose (aiming for $1k per year; possibly getting some from our fundraiser or other pledges), and then divide it between the coders who have created Coding Snacks and NANY programs in the previous year (I am exempting myself from being eligible).

There may be some minor weighting of contributions in different ways, but the objective will simply be to divide up the funds each year based on the efforts put in my coders in creating software on the dc forum.

I think this approach is the cleanest, simplest, fairest system and it has the real benefit of showing thanks from DC funders to those who are making this site better.

-mouser (July 08, 2017, 12:12 PM)

Agreed.  If someone wants to fund a project, there are better ways in my opinion.  But putting this into a pot and rewarding someone- that seems like a good idea.

I'd also add this suggestion- as a part of NANY, have a nomination process, where people nominate things from the prior year, and prior year's NANY, and then vote on them, and give the project that wins a special reward.

2260

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: WinPatrol Ultimate Bundle up to 85% off--July 8th & 9th

« Last post by wraith808 on July 08, 2017, 12:12 PM »

I've installed all of them (was confused at the renaming of AntiRansom and Firewall), and only have WinPatrol Plus installed now.  After 6 months of usage, the others didn't seem worth the added resource usage, and never caught anything, and the UIs were very top heavy and not user friendly.  That might have changed - that was early last year for AntiRansom, and the year before that for Firewall, though I still have that installed on my laptop - more out of I forgot about it rather than having any actual utility.

WinPatrol can get annoying with some of the popups- I wish it had a memory so that once you blocked something it would continue to block. It has the never notify of this again checkbox, so not sure why there's not the other way around.  But the utility of the software is well worth the annoyance.

2261

Post New Requests Here / Re: Folder Sorter by IMDB genre / ratings

« Last post by wraith808 on July 08, 2017, 11:48 AM »

^ That's cute!

2262

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 05, 2017, 08:20 AM »

-panzer (June 28, 2017, 11:00 AM)

The Long Walk is one of my favorite Steven King books.  I had it in an anthology called The Bachman Books (a lot of his stories written under the Richard Bachman pseudonym), and to tell you what it's about would be to ruin the pathos of dawning horror.  But it is very good and recommended.  Also in that anthology are Roadwork (arguably- at least by me- Falling Down is based on that) and the Running Man (nothing like the tepid Schwartzenegger flick)

-wraith808 (June 28, 2017, 12:30 PM)

Only problem with it is that King had no clue how fast a human can walk. Hundred of miles with speed over 4 miles per hour (6-9) is just not realistic. Not for a bunch of teenagers ... I can do almost 7 km in one hour (average speed of 7,5 km/h on a distance of 500 meters and 8,4 km/h on same distance on uphill road with small elevation) but after several hours I would surely drop below minimum speed ... And they walked that fast while eating, smoking and speaking with each other ... I feel he should do some more research on the matter ... Otherwise it is a good book, a little bit too long, but good ...

-panzer (June 29, 2017, 02:19 AM)

I didn't find it unrealistic.  Especially with the other factors considered that I don't really want to go into for concern at spoiling the novel.  But we can agree to disagree on that.

-wraith808 (June 29, 2017, 09:54 AM)

This would only be possible only if King meant professional walking like you see on competitions like WC or Olympics (funny leg, arm and hip movement) and not the ordinary one. In ordinary walking, at six miles/hour you are not walking anymore - you are running. But even if we assume that, walking at the speed of 10 miles/hour means that some of those teenagers (amateurs) for some time walked faster than the average speed of the current world record on 50 kilometers.

<snip discussion>

-panzer (July 05, 2017, 02:56 AM)

I'd suggest that if you're going to continue to discuss, you do it in spoilers, as some have not read the book, and might want to.

Spoiler

There is currently a walking challenge to do just this- to walk trails at a minimum of 4 mph, and the walker that walks the furthest wins. I walk 4 mph for my normal walk, and I am nowhere near running.  Also, the difference in speed wasn't a couple of miles per hour, but less than one mile per hour.

As far as your ideas, Stebbins did do exactly that.  And almost won.  But in the end, he lost.  No matter what you prepare for, the fact that there are other factors (weather, your body, etc) means that you can't prepare for all of them.  His final weakness was mental. 

And remember that the object wasn't to make it fair, nor even possible.  It was to make it entertaining, and get down to the winner in an entertaining manner.  And with the penalty for losing, that drives them.  And you're forgetting that they have multiple warnings, and they fall off per hour. 

You seem to be thinking that this was about the race.  It's about bread and circuses- akin to reality tv, but in a multi-day event, and that was made abundantly clear in the beginning of the short story.

2263

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 04, 2017, 09:44 AM »

@IainB -- we are largely in agreement,
you appear to have misunderstood my point though - I do not "want him to be perceived as speaking as a proponent of QE". FWIW I have no vested interests in seeing him in any particular way -- I have no reason to project here.

I was simply pointing out his seeing it as pragmatic when things get that bad. That was it.

-tomos (July 04, 2017, 03:45 AM)

Look up a few Tomos.  He just misquoted- it was Deo.

2264

Living Room / Re: Anti-procrastination Hacks: Dynamic Unordered Todo List

« Last post by wraith808 on July 02, 2017, 08:49 AM »

P.S. Actually I tried to create software versions of OnTask in the past, by combining Samurize and Desktop Coral to create a strip on the top of my screen with the todo tasks, as well as a list that shows up as my wallpaper. But it was too tedious to keep them updated, and they either cut into the screen real estate or got covered up by other windows, so eventually my eyes just glossed over them.

-dr_andus (July 02, 2017, 05:36 AM)

I think there's a problem intrinsic to trying to make OnTask digital.  Some things need to be touched, and felt, and simple in order to succeed. What I've found using OnTask is that I'm bad at prioritizing large amounts of anything, and estimating how long something does take or should take, and easily distracted.  Backlogs, after working with Agile for 4+ years don't really work, as you're never really trying to clear them, so they become built up with a lot of detritus that distract.  There's a whole lot of that on our backlog at work, and we're never going to prioritize them, even if we have nothing to do.  They just don't matter.  And so the stack rank becomes meaningless. 

Distraction is the human condition now, I think, to our detriment.  And I think the best weapon against distraction is simplification.  I was skeptical about OnTask when I got into the kickstarter.  I'd tried several different ways to keep up with a todo list, and in the end they all fail.  Too much stuff in too many buckets.  Too much information, which instead of informing, lead to distraction.  Now I wish that I'd gotten another so I'd have one for home and one for work, because it works.  I've always thought that people were wrong when they said multitasking didn't work.  But it's true - there's a cost to switching tasks, and it's not always evident.  One task at a time and my full attention to that is my new work philosophy.

2265

Living Room / Re: Anti-procrastination Hacks: Dynamic Unordered Todo List

« Last post by wraith808 on June 30, 2017, 11:11 PM »

Sounds like a basic Trello board to me. Which I believe is based on the scrum agile development philosophy's taskboard.

-Deozaan (June 30, 2017, 08:26 PM)

No, it's a bit different than agile- we use that at work (and have tried trello) and those are for different concerns. The purpose of an agile board (and trello) is not in the implementation, but the backlog.  You groom stories in order to have a backlog of things to work on.  So you always keep the backlog full ideally, and groom continuously to have quality stories to bring in during the next sprint.  There is also the iterative nature of the sprint that is not there with ontask, and the concept of increasing velocity as you sprint along.  You also don't necessarily work on one thing- switching stories is a very real thing to do in Agile.  Kanban is a bit closer, but then again, you have the ability to shift priorities in Kanban also.

With OnTask (at least the way that I use it) I consider my day, and just put down the three things I want to get accomplished, whatever they might be. And I work on one at a time.  I don't have to think about priorities or competing concerns once I put down my three things to complete.  They might not even be the highest priorities - just stuff I want to get off my plate.  And I just work the one thing until it's done.

2266

Living Room / Re: Anti-procrastination Hacks: Dynamic Unordered Todo List

« Last post by wraith808 on June 30, 2017, 09:01 AM »

I got in on a kickstarter for OnTask.  It's a very simple concept, but it works.  It's a three sided white board basically.  Every day I put the three tasks I want to get done, and sit it in front of me.  I work on the first until it's done, then erase it.  Then the second and do the same.  Then the third.  If my day isn't over, I do it again.  It keeps me from multi-tasking, which in turn, stops me from procrastinating, since I think that my major reason for procrastinating is multi-tasking.

2267

General Software Discussion / Re: want hear / extract clear voice from recording of lecture/discussion

« Last post by wraith808 on June 30, 2017, 07:46 AM »

Adobe Audition.  But it's an adobe product, so you pay for the privilege.

http://www.adobe.com...oducts/audition.html

https://helpx.adobe....ise-audio-files.html


If you want free, there's Audacity.

https://sourceforge....t/projects/audacity/

http://www.makeuseof...udio-files-audacity/

Free means in this case a lot more work, and a lot worse (IMO) interface.

There are other options out there (Sound Forge Pro, and GoldWave for starters.), so not sure why you didn't find anything.

I use GoldWave myself, but more out of familiarity as I've been using it for over 10 years for a one-time payment of $45 - I think closer to 12 years.  It's good software.

2268

Screenshot Captor / Re: Grab selected region

« Last post by wraith808 on June 29, 2017, 06:49 PM »

I only have the problem when I have a monitor connected to my laptop and they're both the same resolution, but different screen sizes.

Do the two monitors have different text magnifications? I have 4 monitors and SC works fine and it's designed to work well with multiple monitors, but like I said if the monitors have different text scaling, that can cause the problem.

-mouser (June 29, 2017, 02:06 PM)

Nope.  Checked that after you told me before.  They are both set to 100%.

2269

Screenshot Captor / Re: Grab selected region

« Last post by wraith808 on June 29, 2017, 01:05 PM »

It still happens like this for me.  It's hard to get a screenshot or explain, so I just gave up as it doesn't affect me very much, as I only have the problem when I have a monitor connected to my laptop and they're both the same resolution, but different screen sizes.

2270

General Software Discussion / Re: Modern forum software: Discourse

« Last post by wraith808 on June 29, 2017, 12:48 PM »

If Discourse would be applied into Donationcoder.com, would that also not be to gut the whole forum section and surrender it completely to the organization/company behind the Discourse software?

-Shades (June 29, 2017, 12:04 AM)

Discourse is open source, just like SMF.

https://github.com/discourse/discourse

You can grab it from there and install it if you want.  Same thing with most of the modern hosting solutions, i.e. Vanilla for a start.

From https://payments.discourse.org/pricing

Good news! Discourse is, and will always be, 100% free and open source software. You can install it yourself on your own server, or for a flat one-time fee of $99, the community can install Discourse in the cloud for you. Please note that a $10/month hosting fee is still payable to the cloud provider (Digital Ocean), and that this option is completely self-support after the initial install. Click here to purchase a self-supported community install.

2271

Site/Forum Features / New Forum Feature request

« Last post by wraith808 on June 29, 2017, 09:59 AM »

So, after participating in the thread on new forums, and then seeing a separate conversation starter injected into the thread that was tangentially related, I did think of a Discourse feature that I wondered about the feasibility of - reply as a new topic.  I envision having some kind of form at the bottom of the quick reply box that allowed for you to tick something (make a new thread from reply) and a space for the new topic's subject that would default to something that let you know that this was a reply to that topic ("re: topic name" as a suggestion).  And perhaps a picker for the area, but by default, I think that the location of the original topic would be fine.

Thoughts?

2272

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 29, 2017, 09:54 AM »

-panzer (June 28, 2017, 11:00 AM)

The Long Walk is one of my favorite Steven King books.  I had it in an anthology called The Bachman Books (a lot of his stories written under the Richard Bachman pseudonym), and to tell you what it's about would be to ruin the pathos of dawning horror.  But it is very good and recommended.  Also in that anthology are Roadwork (arguably- at least by me- Falling Down is based on that) and the Running Man (nothing like the tepid Schwartzenegger flick)

-wraith808 (June 28, 2017, 12:30 PM)

Only problem with it is that King had no clue how fast a human can walk. Hundred of miles with speed over 4 miles per hour (6-9) is just not realistic. Not for a bunch of teenagers ... I can do almost 7 km in one hour (average speed of 7,5 km/h on a distance of 500 meters and 8,4 km/h on same distance on uphill road with small elevation) but after several hours I would surely drop below minimum speed ... And they walked that fast while eating, smoking and speaking with each other ... I feel he should do some more research on the matter ... Otherwise it is a good book, a little bit too long, but good ...

-panzer (June 29, 2017, 02:19 AM)

I didn't find it unrealistic.  Especially with the other factors considered that I don't really want to go into for concern at spoiling the novel.  But we can agree to disagree on that.

2273

General Software Discussion / Re: Modern forum software: Discourse

« Last post by wraith808 on June 28, 2017, 12:41 PM »

I thought there was not a single human in the universe that thought that the 'old guard forums' were better than Discourse.

-urlwolf (June 28, 2017, 05:48 AM)

For what it's worth, I think I'd prefer Discourse over SMF.

I say think because DC is pretty much the only place on the internet that I regularly participate in the forums, so I have very little, if any, actual experience with Discourse. But it looks nice and useful to me.

-Deozaan (June 28, 2017, 12:15 PM)

It looks cool, and is very tempting.
 
But once you get involved (at least, once I got involved), I realized that change for the sake of change is not necessarily for the best, no matter what kind of cover they put on it.  First of all, its ruby on rails, which is only a consideration for the admin, but from someone that tried to implement it, unless your server already support RoR, you're in for a hard row to hoe.  It has some really compelling features- but I think most of them are build into this iteration of SMF on DC, in some shape.  One of the things that people tout is the inline conversations, but I think with DC's ability to highlight and quote, and no infinite scrolling, it's not really needed.  I do like the look at feel of the front page a bit more, but it gets overwhelming with the infinite scroll.  To me, the delineation between boards and such are a lot more nebulous- it's made a lot more to be a flat forum, which I personally dislike.

The biggest thing to me, is that when you ask people why these new forums are better, it's not about the features, it's the glitz.  Because when you look at it, a forum is meant to be a place to facilitate discussion, and none of those features are standouts that would make them truly a different paradigm.

2274

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by wraith808 on June 28, 2017, 12:30 PM »

-panzer (June 28, 2017, 11:00 AM)

The Long Walk is one of my favorite Steven King books.  I had it in an anthology called The Bachman Books (a lot of his stories written under the Richard Bachman pseudonym), and to tell you what it's about would be to ruin the pathos of dawning horror.  But it is very good and recommended.  Also in that anthology are Roadwork (arguably- at least by me- Falling Down is based on that) and the Running Man (nothing like the tepid Schwartzenegger flick)

2275

General Software Discussion / Re: Modern forum software: Discourse

« Last post by wraith808 on June 28, 2017, 08:20 AM »

That's yet another problem: You can't have a "web app" in your toolbox. If it's gone, it's gone. No shiny USB thumbdrive will catch it for you.

-Tuxman (June 28, 2017, 08:02 AM)

When I said toolbox, I meant the developer's toolbox, i.e. options when deciding what the format of the project will be.  And as far as your actual statement, that's generally true, but not universally correct.  I run a couple of my web apps from a USB drive currently.