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2301

General Software Discussion / Re: Most Pirated Software?

« Last post by app103 on February 24, 2011, 01:10 PM »

Perceive? I have always had the experience that absolute worst offenders in this area are people working within IT. With practically no exception, safe assumption to make though unfair if not offensive to a few of course. And here on DC with programmers and all? Perceive away but what do you pirate? would be a better question I think

-Bamse (February 24, 2011, 08:52 AM)

• Autodesk Autocad (don't have it, no use for it)
• Microsoft Office (don't have it, use open office which is free)
• Anti-virus software (I use MSE, which is free)
• Adobe Photoshop (don't have it, use old paid for copy of Paintshop Pro 7, even though I have newer free & legal versions of it)
• Microsoft Windows (Main PC came with both Vista & XP, no need to pirate it. Other PC came with XP)
• Nero Burning (Came with my burner, but I don't have it installed...use Oront Burning Kit instead, free from GiveAwayOfTheDay)

I am not going to say I never pirated any software. But a chain of events took place some years back to end my piracy days for good...

• My main PC died and I was forced back to using an old slow pc with an outdated OS (this happened again in 2008). It's very difficult...near impossible... to pirate modern software capable of running on an antique. I gained a great appreciation for small single purpose tools, which were either freeware or very cheap. Using an outdated OS made me more security conscious, unwilling to use most outdated software or take a risk on cracks.
• I started resetting old slow PC's for the other poor people in my neighborhood, for free, including a hand picked software bundle suitable for their machines. Installing pirated software on other people's machines? Not something I'd ever do, and those machines were a whole lot like my antique which meant they couldn't run the latest & greatest payware any way. My hand picked bundle were all those small freeware apps I was running myself. The first one I did belonged to a cop's mother...then her friends and people from her church.
• I started coding...through which I gained a greater respect for software developers, enough to end my pirating days for good.
• I discovered this site, it's good people, mouser (you can't deny his influence being very strong), the wealth of knowledge on freeware, it's generosity which enabled me to afford to pay for a few things I really wanted, won a few other things, and was gifted something very expensive that I could never afford.

I don't want or need to pirate software any more. 

2302

Living Room / Re: Show us your desktop

« Last post by app103 on February 24, 2011, 12:58 AM »

Even though we already have an old thread for this, I think a new one might encourage some updated screenshots from everyone, so here's mine...

Main PC (hasn't changed much)



with taskbar showing:



This dual boots with Ubuntu, but for some reason it is not cooperating today and won't let me make a screenshot, and I can't be bothered to figure out what its problem is right now.

But this is what it looked like the last time I made a screenshot:



And my other PC which has been annexed by my daughter for the last 6 months. This one replaces the old snail, which has been permanently retired (I hope).



And with taskbar showing:

2303

Living Room / Re: Should I be concerned that my wife opened a Facebook account?

« Last post by app103 on February 23, 2011, 09:55 PM »

Also never posting anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of cnn.com is a good idea too.

2304

Living Room / Re: The Lost Thing (Video)

« Last post by app103 on February 23, 2011, 06:03 PM »

Unfortunately, the video was taken down by a DMCA complaint.

2305

Living Room / Re: Should I be concerned that my wife opened a Facebook account?

« Last post by app103 on February 23, 2011, 04:15 PM »

No, I'm just talking about how employers are now using Facebook against workers. For example, if the employer is a god-believer, then he/she won't hire someone with atheist on their Facebook page. (But wait, Facebook doesn't even offer "atheist" as an option does it?) Same goes for any other personal info shared is what I'm afraid of. I trust the wife, not the corporation.

-zridling (February 23, 2011, 02:11 PM)

If you lock your privacy down really tight, they can't see your photos, info, or anything else on your profile unless you add them as a friend. All they can see is your name and current profile pic (if you have one). And they don't have options to check for religious beliefs. It's a blank box in which you can type in anything you want. I have seen some crazy snarky stuff that people have typed in there. I didn't type anything in there...it's still blank. I don't have any religious views so that box is irrelevant.

So, if she locks down her privacy, doesn't friend people she doesn't really know (limit it to real friends and family), and doesn't use a scarlet A as her profile photo, it's not likely any stranger would know.

2306

Coding Snacks / Re: IDEA: Plain text checklist manager

« Last post by app103 on February 23, 2011, 09:42 AM »

Is there a software out there that only does styling?  Like, if certain programs spit out text files in a certain way, you can use another program to stylize it based on rules?  For example, when it sees the string "@done" in front of a line, make the font 16, background color, etc.?  Is there something that can do that?
It would be like a css styler that you setup one time and use automatically to print things from then on.

-superboyac (February 23, 2011, 09:36 AM)

I don't know of anything like that but it sure sounds like a fantastic idea for an app.

2307

Coding Snacks / Re: IDEA: Plain text checklist manager

« Last post by app103 on February 23, 2011, 09:29 AM »

One thing that ALL of the listmakers I've tried are not very good at is printing. 

-superboyac (February 23, 2011, 09:16 AM)

Oh, that was something I failed to mention about mine...

When you print out the ToDo side, it gives you little check boxes next to everything.

Also, being plain text files, you can just open it in the text editor of your choice and print it from there, changing the font & size, margins, etc. if you want more control over the appearance of the printed document. (you just won't get the nice little check boxes if you do). This was one of the reasons why I chose to use 2 text files for it, one for ToDo and the other for Done, instead of combining it into a single file.

2308

Living Room / Re: Should I be concerned that my wife opened a Facebook account?

« Last post by app103 on February 23, 2011, 07:20 AM »

You can change the settings so it doesn't spam your wall or leave "spam" comments on other people's spam/scam/malware posts if you want.

It doesn't just check your privacy settings...it also scans the posts from your friends in your news feed and checks them for malware, scam,  and spam links. The optional setting that may seem like spam in its description is to post a warning comment on anything bad it finds, warning both you and others not to click the link in the post, and alerting your friend about the bad post so they can remove it and track down the source of the bad autopost.

2309

Living Room / Re: Should I be concerned that my wife opened a Facebook account?

« Last post by app103 on February 23, 2011, 04:52 AM »

Have her add this app from Bit Defender and pay special attention to the Privacy section. It will scan her profile and tell her what settings need adjusting. She should make sure she checks it periodically.

Also, she doesn't have to fill in any of the optional boxes on her profile. I certainly do not have anything filled in on the Philosophy section, where religious and political views are listed.

2310

General Software Discussion / Re: Software to share To-Do lists?

« Last post by app103 on February 22, 2011, 12:39 PM »

Dropbox plus my little todo list app?

http://appsapps.info/todolist.php

Small, lightweight, portable, so simple it really needs no instructions.
It saves in 2 plain text files, one for todo and one for done. It autosorts all entries alphabetically, so if you want to group or sort them by priority, just add a prefix of category or rank number to the entry.

2311

Living Room / Re: The Plot Thickens...

« Last post by app103 on February 22, 2011, 01:25 AM »

Wait a minute...

They had men stare at women's chests and it made the women feel uncomfortable enough to have a negative effect on the women's ability to do math?

And when they had women stare at the men's chests the men did not feel uncomfortable and had no problem with doing math?

Maybe they need to have the women stare at the men's crotches to have the same effect. 

2312

Developer's Corner / Re: Oh God... I've Forgotten ASP.NET Entirely...

« Last post by app103 on February 21, 2011, 06:08 AM »

Microsoft has a free Introduction to ASP.NET, and the follow-up with ASP.NET in C#.

2313

General Software Discussion / Re: Google set to steal Opera's thunder yet again, decides to eliminate url bar

« Last post by app103 on February 21, 2011, 12:00 AM »

I think the more appropriate thing to do is remove the rss feed icon in the bar.  Who uses that so much that it needs to be there for EVERY address?

-superboyac (February 20, 2011, 11:48 PM)

I use it often enough that it would bug me if it wasn't there.

I think the most irritating "removal" in Chrome is how if I stop moving my mouse, it hides my cursor. I have not yet figured out how to disable it from doing that.

2314

Living Room / Re: SEO funny businees I'm involved in. Thoughts?

« Last post by app103 on February 19, 2011, 12:03 AM »

Since you have an account on the member server, and mouser plans on setting up a blog for us, I think you could easily start writing for that, if you want....the same stuff you are doing now.

2315

Living Room / Re: Borders Goes Bankrupt - The Death of Print at Retail?

« Last post by app103 on February 18, 2011, 12:21 PM »

Mark Evans worked for Borders from 2001 to 2009 as Director of Merchandise Planning & Analysis and Director of Merchandising Strategy & Analytics.

Here is his answer on Quora as to what happened: http://www.quora.com.../answer/Mark-Evans-9

2316

Living Room / Re: SEO funny businees I'm involved in. Thoughts?

« Last post by app103 on February 18, 2011, 05:16 AM »

Are they going to take my articles and make hundreds of articles out of them?

-superboyac (February 17, 2011, 10:26 PM)

Yes. I see job listings on oDesk all the time for article re-writers, paying $0.10 per article. Yeah, only people that live in 3rd world countries would apply, but they are applying in droves.

2317

Living Room / Re: [FOR FUN] Stupid Questions

« Last post by app103 on February 15, 2011, 09:56 AM »

App I think you missed that this was a joke -- the joke was the idea that the ipad would get heavier the more books you add. 

-mouser (February 15, 2011, 09:49 AM)

And here I thought the joke was Renegade was seriously considering buying another Apple product. 

I was just trying to talk him down off the roof.

2318

Living Room / Re: [FOR FUN] Stupid Questions

« Last post by app103 on February 15, 2011, 09:48 AM »

I've been thinking about getting an iPad for an ebook reader because it can hold thousands of books. How heavy would that be?

-Renegade (February 15, 2011, 07:38 AM)

How many books can you read at once?
How many books do you really need to carry around with you?
Why would you want to carry around something larger than your average paperback?

2319

Developer's Corner / Re: Registrations on Websites: User Chosen Password vs. Assigned Password?

« Last post by app103 on February 15, 2011, 09:30 AM »

If they are going to end up changing their password once they first log in with the one you assign them, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of it all. You will still have all the negative aspects of allowing users to choose their own passwords.

2320

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Do Visions and Missions work for you?

« Last post by app103 on February 14, 2011, 09:43 AM »

Oh, sorry: Alien death-wish religion

-IainB (February 14, 2011, 09:32 AM)

Or this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia....28religious_group%29

2321

Living Room / Can This Journalist Be Replaced by Software and Mechanical Turk?

« Last post by app103 on February 13, 2011, 01:28 PM »

An experiment being conducted by an alliance of journalists and computer scientists aims to combine the distributed human brainpower of Amazon's small-task outsourcing engine, Mechanical Turk, with a software boss pre-programmed with all the logic required to stitch myriad discrete human-accomplished tasks into something resembling the work of a single person.

The project is called My Boss is a Robot, and the boffins involved include the team of Niki Kittur, a Carnegie Mellon assistant professor of Human Computer Interaction, as well as freelance science and technology writers Jim Giles and MacGregor Campbell.

The idea is simple: computer scientists have already used Mechanical Turk to create a simple encyclopedia entry about New York City. The entire process was overseen by software, not humans, and included everything from asking Turkers (as the distributed workers on Mechanical Turk are called) to come up with the topic areas the entry should cover to having them fact-check the writing of previous workers to whom those topics had been assigned.

Based on this success, it seems logical that Turkers might be able to transform a research paper into a 500 word piece of original science journalism. There are a million reasons this might not work, admit Giles and Campbell, but the exercise is meant to generate insight and discussion, whether or not it succeeds.

http://www.technolog...mssbits/26354/?p1=A4

2322

Living Room / Re: Borders Goes Bankrupt - The Death of Print at Retail?

« Last post by app103 on February 12, 2011, 08:48 AM »

It was a heady experience shopping at Borders in the early days.  I didn't accidentally walk into Borders by mistake, I deliberately went to the mall so I could shop at Borders.  I never found the same depth of holdings at B&N.

It was clear early on, though, even before e-books, that any physical bookstore, even one as mammoth as Borders, would have a hard time competing with Amazon.

-cyberdiva (February 12, 2011, 04:25 AM)

Go back before Amazon...go back to the 80's. Nearly every shopping mall around here had both a Borders and  B&N, with Borders being the smaller store with less stuff. At quick glance both stores looked the same from the outside, easy to mistaken one for the other if you didn't read the name on the sign overhead. The difference was when you went inside.

Borders was good for magazines...they seemed to have a lot of those. But they didn't take the same approach to stocking their books as B&N did.

They would stock a ton of a few popular titles in each category, where B&N only stocked a ton of the most popular titles and a few of plenty of less popular stuff. Because of this, B&N had a better chance of carrying what you were looking for if what you wanted wasn't on the best sellers list.

Now I am not sure if their stand alone stores were different, because I have only seen them in the malls around here. Maybe the stand alone stores were very different, due to the larger space.

2323

Living Room / Re: Borders Goes Bankrupt - The Death of Print at Retail?

« Last post by app103 on February 12, 2011, 02:30 AM »

Borders was always that bookstore in the mall that you went in by mistake because you didn't read the sign overhead to see it wasn't B&N. This was the problem long before ebooks came along.

2324

Living Room / Re: All Hail...!

« Last post by app103 on February 11, 2011, 10:14 AM »

Apparently there's "one for the ladies" been uploaded 

Same link, please refresh.

-timns (February 10, 2011, 08:56 PM)

Ok, how did he know I spent a large chunk of my donation credits on a very comfy desk chair?

2325

General Software Discussion / Re: Axialis License Key Frustrations

« Last post by app103 on February 11, 2011, 08:16 AM »

THANK YOU TO AXIALIS for being so generous to donate copies of IconWorkshop, which is a fantastic program  :Thmbsup

-mouser (February 10, 2011, 06:17 AM)

ABSOLUTELY! I consider myself very lucky to have won, and I truly appreciate their generosity for giving away any free licenses, and I appreciate the work that went into making such a wonderful application.

(and we should consider that maybe one of the reasons that the giveaway of copies might have been a bit confusing is just because giving away copies is a bit unusual, compared to mailing out a customer their info once they purchase it.)

-mouser (February 10, 2011, 06:17 AM)

You have a point there. I am just not used to applications that require reinstalling to enter in your license key and I don't recall having this problem when I purchased their Screensaver Producer (which you know is my favorite of all screensaver makers). Perhaps it's the terminology they used which caused some of the confusion. I always think "trial" as being a time limited version that can be unlocked once you purchase it, and "demo" as requiring installing the full version once you purchase it.

English doesn't seem to be the first language there so maybe a bit of miscommunication?

-y0himba (February 10, 2011, 05:13 AM)

That could be a valid explanation for the terminology they used, calling the one version of their setup file a trial and not a demo.