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2301

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on April 27, 2015, 11:12 AM »

^ You lost me.
Can you tl;dr what Ahamkara is? The page there just blathers on and makes it sound like nonsense. Does it just mean "delusion"?

-Renegade (April 27, 2015, 09:09 AM)

No, it doesn't "just mean 'delusion' ".
There's a definition in that knol. You do need to make the investment of time and cognitive surplus to read/understand what ahamkara is. I can't explain it any better than I do in that knol, which is already much condensed from the philosophy lecture notes and texts that I drew it from, with added examples.

It's actually a simple concept - a tool for understanding - but very profound and useful when one does understand it. I personally was slow to understand it. When the penny eventually dropped, it literally changed my life, my paradigms, and my way of thinking.
In a way, it's like learning TM - dead simple but it could take a while for one to get a grip on it.
Someone else on this forum got it in a flash - even thanked me for introducing them to it. We're each in a different state of receptivity to things like this. A Hindu friend of mine saw it pretty quickly too - he hadn't come across it before.
If you can't understand it or see what potential use it has, then maybe you are not "ready" for it yet. It's for "them as has eyes to see". I don't know. I'm no expert. I'm still learning.

2302

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on April 27, 2015, 08:32 AM »

Silly. Made me smile.

2303

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on April 27, 2015, 02:33 AM »

Will keep you informed, but not on a blow-by-blow basis.
After my having done 1 initial Beta test report, Berry sent me an updated Beta, which looks quite different to the first one, so I am using that latest version and shall redo the tests I did initially and do some more tests as well, which I had planned.

2304

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release 2.221.01 BETA - April 22, 2015

« Last post by IainB on April 27, 2015, 02:25 AM »

icons in large or small size seem to be OK on my setup - Win8.1-64 Pro - though I am assuming that the God Mode icons (per screenshot above) are being displayed correctly as rectangular documents.

IanB/phitsc: have you tried fiddling with the font (size) override settings as a way to make text less tiny when using a high dpi screen?

-Nod5 (April 25, 2015, 05:09 PM)

I already successfully use font (size) override settings to increase the display of the FARR output panels/lists. However, fiddling with those settings further doesn't seem to have any observable effect on the size of the characters in the Options panels - still very difficult to read.

2305

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on April 27, 2015, 01:51 AM »

If one had read the 1986 Cell paper (Baltimore), then one could have regarded homoeopathy as being scientifically founded - proven. With such proof, one would not have needed to "believe" in it.
However, if, after the debunking, one actually believed in it (absent the proof), then that would arguably be typical of a "religious" belief (irrational). Likewise, if, after the debunking, one still practiced homoeopathy, then that could be irrational too, but perhaps understandable if (say) practicing homoeopathy had been one's primary source of income and one could not afford to dump it, and so one cynically rode the bucking bronco. Arguably not much different to a soothsayer or snake-oil salesman, really.

The irrational twisting and turning of those who would persist in believing as true that which was clearly falsifiable or not able to be substantiated (not true). I find that twisting and turning, when their religio-political beliefs are challenged or threatened by reality, to be embarrassing and cringeworthy in the extreme - e.g., whether it's Climate Change™ (this thread), or religious faith (refer the Faith v. Science thread).
It seems to be classic Ahamkara, and we are all potentially susceptible to it.

The thing that puzzles me is - why do we have to make ourselves believe in A versus B in the first place, if A and B are things that we don't have any observable and conclusive evidence of that either of them is true, or more true than the other?
Instead of just preferring which one we would like to be true (like in the book "The Life of Pi"), why can't we just hold belief in abeyance? If one does that, then one can usually look at things with a more open mind and a much less cluttered paradigm.
Whereas Pi had a very good reason for believing in an imagined story rather than the brutal and agonising reality, most people don't usually have to believe in anything. Pi's irrational belief probably saved his sanity - it enabled him to escape reality yet still be able to function as part of this world - whereas we are not usually put in such a predicament.

So why do we seem to persist in living in an illusion - in Ahamkara?

2306

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process - High Dilution + Homeopathy

« Last post by IainB on April 26, 2015, 08:10 PM »

Just read in my feed-reader an article in Remedia that seems to be a highly informative piece of work, where the medical and scientific history of some intensively peer-reviewed and audited research is brought into the context of the present day, for further review/discussion. It is relevant today.
Posted as:
High Dilution, Homeopathy, and the Purpose of the Scientific Journal | REMEDIA
(Some clips extracted an copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

April 24, 2015
By Melinda Baldwin

On June 30, 1988, readers of the British scientific journal Nature opened their issues to find a lead editorial titled, “When to believe the unbelievable.” The editorial’s sub-headline was even more provocative: “An article in this week’s issue describes observations for which there is no present physical basis.”

• *1 The article in question was “Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE,” from a team led by the immunologist Jacques Benveniste at Paris’s Institut national de la santé et de la recherché médicale (INSERM) laboratory.
• *2 And the story quickly became even stranger: a month later, Nature printed a report by a three-man investigative team—including editor John Maddox—that declared INSERM’s results a “delusion.”

So why would Nature print this piece if the editorial staff found its claims “unbelievable”—and perhaps more puzzling still, why would the editor of a scientific journal personally undertake a critical evaluation of results his journal had published? ...
...
(Read the rest at the link.)

An aspect of it that interests me is that it adds to my previous understanding that homeopathy had been thoroughly debunked in 1988 (following a government investigation into a 1986 Cell paper on the subject, co-authored by the Nobel Prize-winning immunologist David Baltimore).
One thing I could never understand was that, even after being exposed as a fraud, homeopathy continued for some years to be practiced as an apparently relatively respectable branch of pseudo-alternative medicine. (Still is practiced by "believers" in some benighted quarters.)
The Remedia article offers some explanation as to how that irrational situation could have come about. It seems to be about latent irrational/unscientific "belief" (and probably about whether one can make a buck at it).

2307

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release 2.221.01 BETA - April 22, 2015

« Last post by IainB on April 25, 2015, 07:36 AM »

That file installed v2.222.02 Beta, which started up with:

"Warning: Init common.com controls failed to initiate"

- or something.
A screenshot of the whole screen and showing FARR->Options tab shows Options to be of much the same miniscule variety as in v2.221.01 Beta. There is a difference, but it is not any better.

This screenshot is per v2.222.02:




This screenshot is per v2.221.01:




The miniscule size of the Options panel is not apparent in the screenshot as viewed on this page, since it enlarges the image.
If the Options panel were actually the size/scale of that image, then it would not be difficult to read.
However, the screenshots do enable one to compare the (very) minor differences between the panels.

I reverted to v2.221.01 Beta after doing this comparison.

2308

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release 2.221.01 BETA - April 22, 2015

« Last post by IainB on April 25, 2015, 04:32 AM »

Any idea how to fix the DPI problem? The current FARR version is unusable like this on my 4k laptop.

-phitsc (April 25, 2015, 03:57 AM)

The FARR->Options screen is almost unusable on my laptop now as well. Very small text. I was thinking it was my eyes that were the problem, but no.

2309

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release 2.221.01 BETA - April 22, 2015

« Last post by IainB on April 24, 2015, 11:04 PM »

I just made a correction, and added an image as an example, to my post above.
Sorry. I should have given an example when I made the post.

However, the "blank" icons all seem to be God Mode functions or non-applications related, so maybe they are correct (i.e., displayed as they should be).   

2310

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR slow searching/pauses - tips

« Last post by IainB on April 24, 2015, 10:40 PM »

I had not been experiencing any annoying slow-downs in FARR, but after reading this, it reminded me to go and add FARR (and a couple of other applications) to the Exclusions list in Windows Defender, just to see if it made a difference.
Though it didn't seem to make any noticeable difference at all to FARR, I reckon it is probably a good idea to experiment with this in Defender to find out what applications might be being hampered by Windows Defender.
The other applications I experimentally added to the exclusions list were CHS and InfoSelect. I don't know the cause, but CHS is always annoyingly "laggy" when scrolling the list of clips, and InfoSelect has become often painfully slow to refresh its pane display and usually gets stuck waiting to refresh the display.
Adding them to the exclusions list in Defender didn't seem to make any difference at all, which at least eliminates one potential cause.

2311

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release 2.221.01 BETA - April 22, 2015

« Last post by IainB on April 24, 2015, 09:08 AM »

Running FARR v2.221.01 Beta in Win8.1-64 PRO, on a laptop.
I just noticed the correct icons were missing too. I don't usually look for the icons, so had not realised they were blank squares document rectangles.

EDIT: 2015-04-25 1559hrs:
Here's an example.

2312

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Feature request : Shortcut key to re-establish clipboard chain

« Last post by IainB on April 24, 2015, 06:32 AM »

I think I'll find this useful. CHS has been losing the clipboard chain quite a lot lately. I think it's after various changes I made.

2313

Living Room / Re: Interested in doing my own car maintenance.. Advice?

« Last post by IainB on April 24, 2015, 06:28 AM »

Don't forget hand-cleaner.
________________________

Thanks for the reminder.
________________________

-mouser (April 23, 2015, 07:26 AM)

The main one I used to use in the UK was something called Swarfega. It was very good = got rid of grease/oil and cleaned up the hands very well. Also cleaned out the oils from your skin. So after some experimenting, I started using a barrier cream. Quite useful stuff.

2314

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on April 23, 2015, 05:09 PM »

I am now doing Beta testing for NoteFrog, currently on v3.x Beta (2015-04-21).

2315

Mini-Reviews by Members / GS-Base on BDJ again today, priced @ US$9.95

« Last post by IainB on April 22, 2015, 07:28 PM »

Heads up: This is on BDJ again today, priced @ US$9.95 (usually $19.95).
About 7 hours left (might be extended?).
Go to: http://www.bitsdujou...m/software/gs-base-2

I decided to buy it for trial, after reading the BDJ notes and this review.
I wondered whether it could be a useful PIM for my purposes, so shall suck-it-and-see.

2316

Living Room / Re: USB 3.0 problems with Windows; general discussion

« Last post by IainB on April 22, 2015, 04:50 PM »

Just on the basis that this could be useful/helpful in this discussion:
I have tried to anticipate problems with USB 3.0 port spec., but have found it to be very resilient so far and I have not experienced any real "problems" per se with USB 3.0. It has, for example, shown itself to be properly backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices - something which I had been skeptical about, at first.

I have not checked, but I assume that the USB 3.0 port spec. means that it really does give a faster throughput (data transfer) rate using USB 3.0 hard drives than was the case with USB 2.0.

However, where I had been using USB 3.0 ports for connecting to portable external USB 2.0/3.0 hard drives (e.g., for backup/recovery), I had been religiously selecting the Safely Remove Media and Eject Hardware control in the Systray, prior to disconnecting the drives. This was because of my previous cautionary experience with USB 2.0 ports/drives, where the port control did not seem to be always happy with liberal use of Plug N'Play, and sometimes one could upset the system assignment of a USB 2.0 port simply by abruptly unplugging a drive (even when it would not have been active), with the sometimes result that the unplugging disabled the port for that drive's use, thus making it necessary to go through a tedious and arcane ritual to get the port to even acknowledge that that drive existed when you reconnected it to that same port.

The only apparent problem I have had with USB 3.0 ports is consistently recurrent: selecting the Safely Remove Media and Eject Hardware control in the Systray, prior to disconnecting a drive seems to inevitably result in a rejection (not safe to unplug) on the basis that the device is still being used by some undefined process, even when I know it would have completed any writing process.
I suspect that some system process - e.g., (say) Hard Disk Sentinel or Everything - might still have open handles on the device for read access.

However, after doing some DucklGoing, I discovered that this was a common issue for concern, and the general impression seemed to be that USB 3.0 ports are not so intolerant of abrupt unplugging like that, and that the only precautions one needed to take before abruptly unplugging a drive were:

• (a) ensure that it had completed whatever write activity/process it would have been performing;
• (b) ensure that it was already set to Quick removal (default) in Properties->Device Properties.

Also, I guess it would be prudent to untick a drive's settings in Properties->General for compression and indexing.

2317

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by IainB on April 22, 2015, 06:25 AM »

Met Police Condemn Snapchat
People: Mark Rowley
April 22, 2015 at 11:43 am

police snap

The Met Police’s Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley has condemned tech companies that don’t make it really easy for him to do his job. Speaking at the London Counter Terror Expo, Rawley accused makers of encrypted communication apps of developing software that is “friendly to terrorists.”

Rowley begged technology firms to leave back doors in their products so the police can waltz into our private communications at will:

   “Technology] can be set up in a way which is friendly to terrorists and helps them and provides all sorts of opportunities for them, ways for them to work and creates challenges for law enforcement intelligence agencies or it can be set up in a way which doesn’t do that and maintains the ability of law enforcement intelligence agencies in different ways to defend their communities.”

Would you be happy with Rowley going through your snap chats?

Of course we would.

2318

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on April 20, 2015, 09:21 PM »

After my bombing all the email addresses I had for Berry, he has just sent me an email.
I replied that I would be interested - and possibly others on DCF - in Beta testing, but left it very much up to him to make a choice and suggested he might make a post here about it.
A relief to know that apparently all is well with him anyway.

2319

Living Room / Re: 2014-2015: Best tablet specs for ebook reading

« Last post by IainB on April 20, 2015, 10:28 AM »

Sony has been selling the Digital Paper directly to consumers in the U.S. since last summer through their online store, but I'm not sure they are still making the device.  It's currently listed as "back-ordered" on the site.
Sony pulled out of the e-book market late last year and said they would not be making readers any more.  Whether that includes the Digital Paper is an open question.

-xtabber (March 15, 2015, 04:20 PM)

That's an interesting find, thanks. This is kind of what I have been looking for for some time.

I seem to recall that someone (I don't recall it being me) did a post on DCF a while back about some research on something similar to this sort of device, but I can't find the post in a site-wide search. I think it was just research though. There wasn't anything actually produced and on the market at the time.

2320

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release 2.220.01 BETA - April 12, 2015

« Last post by IainB on April 19, 2015, 06:22 PM »

@mouser: Thanks! I downloaded latest FARR v2.220.01 Beta from the link here in the opening post.
It installed and seems to run fine under Win8.1-64 PRO, but I noticed on DCupdater that it thinks this is v2.219.01.
Is that actually the correct version number for the latest Beta or have I downloaded a slightly older version?

2321

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff" - Google/Android Handwriting Input

« Last post by IainB on April 18, 2015, 01:01 PM »

Google Handwriting Input Writes Text in Android the Old Fashioned Way

"Not bad."

2322

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR as bookmark manager?

« Last post by IainB on April 18, 2015, 04:37 AM »

Apropos of tags, from this post: Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

Some points I would make:
Berry (NoteFrog author) stated that the NF software is intended to be an Information Manager, rather than a Clipboard Manager. I think the original prototype for it was ClipGuru - a clipboard manager. I thus class it as a PIM (Personal Information Manager). (By comparison, CHS is apparently a Clipboard Manager that started out life as being intended as a PIM.)
NF is a WIP, and will be slowly getting there with each successive release. ...
...
Searches/hyperlinks:

• NF searches can be saved for re-use. (Similar to CHS, which uses saved SQL searches as "Favorites".) The effect in NF and CHS can be rather akin to "tagging" if you use special strings in text as tags - e.g., "#this is a tag", but you have to set each and every tag, which would be tedious in the extreme. Both NF and CHS could benefit significantly from automatic bulk text insertion/removal of the same text string into/from many clips.
• NF uses "Stacks", and I discovered that it had the ability to hyperlink content within an individual stack and between different stacks. This was apparently not intended as a design feature, and has been disabled. Still, it would be great to have. For example, OneNote has hyperlinking, and it works a treat - is very useful. You can hyperlink within a single OneNote Notebook, across multiple Notebooks, and externally - e.g., to a file on a local or network drive, or a Cloud drive, or a URL on the Internet.

2323

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on April 17, 2015, 04:16 PM »

2015-04-18 0742hrs:
I'm not sure what is happening with NoteFrog. Has anyone heard from them?

1. The blog NoteFrogBlog.com and its 2014-06-02 post referred to in this thread, above - NoteFrog version 2.7 released - seems to have been completely rewritten and links have been removed. I had a copy of the original post in Scrapbook, but it now just leads to broken links (404) - e.g., at http://notefrog.com/...s/setup_NoteFrog.exe

2. The post of 2014-10-18 re NoteFrog 2.7.4 (a minor release with changes that I did not need, so I didn't download it) has had the links removed.

3. The post of 2015-03-26 re Pre release version 3 does not give any links bust just says:

...If you’re interested in being a Version 3 “early adopter” (pun intended), please contact [email protected]

So on 2015-03-28 I emailed him there saying "I would like to be an "early adopter" for v3, please." and have so far had no response.
So on2015-04-13 I posted a comment on the blog:

http://notefrogblog....;cpage=1#comment-416
I did email you on 2015-04-28, after reading your post, and tried updating via NoteFrog, but to no avail so far. Is something broken with the website? Several pages seem to be 404.
I look forward to the opportunity to be an "early adopter" of v3 of the excellent NoteFrog.

4. Furthermore, when I click in my copy of NoteFrog to go to check for an update (I have a paid lifetime licence) it says there is a newer version 2.7.3 (it should presumably now say it is a version 3.something), and it gets a 404 result when it goes to fetch the update.

I hope all is well with Berry.
This looks eerily like the sort of thing that happened with NoteFrog's predecessor ClipGuru - which I had casually trialled and which I thought was rather good. However, their website just disappeared and no explanations. I eventually tracked it down to Berry Taylor at HT Consulting and was happy to become a Beta tester for ClipGuru's replacement, NoteFrog.
I found NoteFrog to be a great piece of software, though it probably needed a few wrinkles ironing out - which I had thought v3 would be addressing.

2324

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR as bookmark manager?

« Last post by IainB on April 17, 2015, 02:25 PM »

...One thing I find handy with separate .url files is that if you have a project folder on the harddrive with some files (txt, pdf, doc and so on) you can also put some important links as .url in the same folder and get a visible overview of all components as you browse the folder.

-Nod5 (April 17, 2015, 06:43 AM)

After thinking about what you say in that quote, I can see why you might have that as a requirement for improving (say) project file/folder categorisation and management on the hard drive, but it's apparently not relevant to the requirements as stated in the opening post by@gezley - which merely refers to the possibility of using FARR as some kind of a bookmarks manager.

One of the points I was making (perhaps not very well) in my comments above is that CHS looks like it could be a potential/de facto bookmarks manager already.
CHS offers up to 3 information view panes:

• Tree:  (Can be set to auto-hide.) This enables the construction of a relatively sophisticated relationship/categorisation hierarchy tree, with embedded SQL search logic. It is very flexible, though the SQL implementation seems to have been constrained somewhat and does not enable "condition-action" - i.e., action on certain logical conditions being met - such as (say) setting a Flag if a certain condition is met.
  
  
• Grid: - displays up to 24 user-selectable metadata columns (attributes/fields): These can be displayed in the CHS grid (of metadata) and can be selected and moved about in changed order, via a nifty little drop-down selector. Great thought seems to have gone into making this rather complex selection feature as simple and flexible to use as possible.
  
  
• Memo: (Can be set to auto-hide.) This shows the Title column as a heading, and below that the Clip Text.
  

So, for example, if, in Firefox I take a clip into CHS of your quote above, the data/metadata that ends up in CHS columns/panes includes:

• The quoted text (per above), in the Memo pane.
• The page/window title: "FARR as bookmark manager? - DonationCoder.com - Mozilla Firefox" in the WindowTitle column.
• The URL (in the Notes column. This is, however, apparently not editable/copyable by the user.
• The date/time of capture.
• The application name "Firefox" in the Application column.

Thus:

• Keywords/Tags: There is arguably no need for "keywords" or "tags" as the salient references are likely already captured. However, if one insisted in having separate "keywords" or "tags", then one could insert them in the Keyword or Flag or Type columns - which seem to be user-editable. In any event, these could be superfluous and it might be more efficient to append any extra keywords/tags to the body of the clip text, preceded by (say) a special character such as a "#" or something. For example, this is a practice recommended in the clipboard info.manager NoteFrog - as a manual edit - and it was automated in the PIM Lotus Agenda. There's also a predefined Ratings column (with a user-selectable ratings dropdown menu) in CHS, which could be put to some use.
  
  
• Finding bookmarks: Since the bookmarks would already be in a database in CHS, with search and SQL enquiry capability, then one could rapidly find the bookmarks using CHS search/SQL. I'm not sure whether the SQL search capability necessarily extends to all the fields/columns though. It may be that FARR could play a role here, by "injecting" the search enquiry into CHS and displaying the result in FARR.
  

There's probably more that could be said about this, but I think this now should better convey the general idea of what I was attempting to suggest in my earlier comments.

2325

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: SysExporter - (Screen-scraping) Export data from Windows controls - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on April 16, 2015, 06:58 PM »

I had occasion to use this proggy again today and thought I should update the review  with the latest version number - v1.72
This is such an incredibly useful tool when you need it.   
NirSoft's software is a veritable mine of generally useful Swiss Army Knife-type applications.