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26

General Software Discussion / Re: Farewell, Dr. Dobbs

« Last post by peter.s on December 18, 2014, 01:34 PM »

"Ah, Dr. Dobb's. While I - as a German - never actually got my hands on even one of those magazines, I surely know its reputation. A tragic loss for everyone."

Many U.S. publications are either not available on the Continent, or then, at outrageous(ly inflated) prices only, 5 times the U.S. price is quite common. So many of these publications have to rely on their "native" readers only, i.e. for 300 U.S. readers, there is perhaps Continental reader, and as I said in a previous post, these last years, there is an additional problem by Universities' tendency to not buy paper publications anymore whenever possible, but to "make available" expensive publications by electronic means only, which means, for everybody really interested but not belongig to the university anymore, that there will be awful reading on screen at best, most of the time without copying even of short citations, and without any printing-out, which means you will only read what's absolutely necessary to your immediate, current work, at best, and not any line else, and even for a student or prof, it makes a big difference if he can browse some paper in his spare time, for leisure, or if he must read on a screen in the university (bad 17" one of their installations, or his own, often tiny, notebook screen, by WAN) - as before, the latter alternative cause exclusive reading of some specifically needed article only, no more browsing of anything else whatsoever. (Time plays another role here, cf. changed univ curriculae by "Bologna": either it's on the list of mandatory readings, or it doesn't exist anymore.)

The outrageously overpriced dollar does not help in any way, so most people on the Continent who traditionally would have been very interested in "enlarging their horizon" are simply cut off of most of possibly horizon-enlarging stuff now, whilst many of those publications are quite readily available for U.S. readers, even if they need to buy them.

Most of these high-brow publications are written in English, but then, we all know most Americans do not have any interest in benefiting from such stuff that would be available though, free or cheap to them, in their native language; whilst it is generally assumed that the Continental (not: power) elites who are eager to read such stuff, and without problems in what's the new lingua franca for, are also eager to first pay 5 times the natural price.* (Oh yes, it's all the intermediates' fault, isn't it? Well, I call this a general, reproachable organizational fault instead.)

Most people in this forum refuse to discuss general ideas; that gives them room to endlessly chat about time and time again new symptoms of denied fundamentals.**

* and ** = Some people have to learn it the hard way. Good riddance to just some other of innumerable examples, and tendency to disappear will accelerate.

27

General Software Discussion / Re: Dopus file names are cut

« Last post by peter.s on December 12, 2014, 09:55 AM »

I love bombs, and this is one.

Spiz, 1 post, obviously didn't get the help he asked for over there, so asks here. Is probably another Swiss, since French and German (beyond his seemingly English OS) is to be found in his screenshot (in Switzerland, even scavengers do get more than 10,000 bucks net each month (no, that's not a joke), so buying DO is not evident, hm?

Btw, rather soon, DO will be on bits again, since then, rather soon, new paid upgrade will be published. Very seriously, I think any developer can learn lots of things, marketing-wise, both from the Australian doctor and from German Mr. Bartels. (DO is the only venture that makes real money from their bits experience, and that's quite a treat; differenciating between paying customers and onlookers also is smart at first sight, the inherent problem residing in this deliberate discrimination being of course that overt rudeness to the latter group (and even vàv paying customers, in their forum) will cause many legitimate prospects to back off from buying.

Then, you will remember that I've been very critical on DO in the past, and for good reasons all upheld, but when people say it's the very best file manager out there... well, there are not lying: not by DO being really good, but because all other current file managers are even worse: I can freely mention this all-relative superiority here since DO's development is as unsatisfactory as is theirs, so my post will not change anything on this: Everywhere, it's coders doing the work of system analysts, some Warnier, Carr or Wang ain't born that often.

This being said, it's evident, by DO's relative superiority (which btw is not sufficiently communicated: by numbers, yes (i.e. lotsa people saying, it's so good, it's worth its price!), by detailing core features and their respective implementation, in order to make available expectable work flows in DO which ain't accessible in its competitors (incl. XY which strives hard), by lesser-qualified implementations of similar core functionality), not: laziness on either side causing this, the doctor plus Leo not sufficiently being motivated, neither the high-paying users, especially here on DC, perhaps by wanting to share their satisfaction, but not their workflow secrets?

As said before, whenever I have been wrong, I rectify as soon as I see my mistake(s), so here, yes, their competition is so bad (X2 again on bits, currently, OMG!) that in direct comparison, DO's prices are "justified" - IF then you can work it all out (and no, this ain't another hint at their countless "options").

Of course, some well-thought-out file manager would have been the better alternative.


P.S.: I also considered to have deliberate bugs popping up in the face of non-paying users only: This being tightrope walking though, in many countries it's illegal (and thus subject to financial liability) to delete user data... even illegal users' data that is, so there's a limit to what you could sensibly invent to push further along this line (e.g. overheating the board?).

28

General Software Discussion / Re: Extremely simple and minimal sticky notes for windows

« Last post by peter.s on December 11, 2014, 11:32 AM »

Sticky notes sw is skeuomorph pc crap par excellence; 3 M ("Post-it") should had have it banned world-wide in time; of course now it's too late.

Since it's (too) demanding to find ways to glue the stickies to divisions, pages, paragraphs, Excel cells and so on (cf. my discussion with Mr. Jaim over at outlinerblahblah.com), for most developers, in order to justify their prices (Jaim, TurboNote et al.), they spice their crap up instead with needless goodies the user (cf. the current thread's starting post) will then have difficulty to avoid, visually and/or by functionality, and most of the offerings do not even "follow" their original file when that's moved or renamed.

For the time being, users should have a look into metadata matters, mentioned again by me over at blahbah just some weeks ago: AHK both can read and write ADS, to give just one example, and SearchMyFile (another freeware from the incredible generous NirSoft venture) will find them. Thus, with just some lines of macro code, you would be able to get some quite satisfying metadata functionality on the file level at least, for free, and the way you prefer. OL mails being accessible, too, one by one, with some more lines of scripting, you'll be able to have stickies for mails, too, and with some more few lines, the stickies would pop up for any mail in question, or the mail would be displayed from your choosing from the sticies' list; all this is as basic as it gets.

Or then, continue to buy lovely-colored skeu-o-crap any lovely 3-year-old would rave of. Back around 1984, pc's were meant for grown-ups, you know, it happened only some time later anybody now's a comp expert. Well, such unwanted democratization at least holds prices down, as long as all those unqualified, retarded laymen more or less frenetically buy (this latter nexus not being evident in connection with cooked apple stuff yet).

29

General Software Discussion / Re: Can anyone advise this developer on commercial licensing?

« Last post by peter.s on November 21, 2014, 03:53 PM »

Mike, you're right on all accounts. Let's gather some elements:

- You're speaking of Durchgriffshaftung, i.e. first of all, a German GmbH is 25.000 euro (about 30- or 31.000 bucks), which is way higher than corporations in other countries.

- Then, you can of course establish a Ltd., on cheap, in G.B., but both your revenu and that of the Ltd. will be subject to German taxes, if you then create a Ltd. & Co. KG with it or just have an official establishment in Germany with it, or even if you don't declare it to German authorities, which would be illegal.

- From the above, you see that the problem is not the form of incorporation, but the residence (here: Germany) of the managing director.

- The same applies to that Durchgriffshaftung (as you correctly state yourself): Wherever you incorporate your legal entity, and in whatever form, you are liable both by German law, and especially by German jurisdiction, which is the real problem here, since by German law (and contrary to the taxation issues), you would NOT be subjected to boundless, personal liability for non-German entities, but German judges like to hand over their non-State-paid compatriots to crooks worldwide on a silver platter, i.e. without legal foundations in the official texts, they illegally apply any text which pleases them anywhere by extension.

- This situation will certainly not improve by the imminent - and classified! - E.U.-U.S. commercial treaty: U.S. lawyers will specialize in pursuing European inventors (!) for alleged violations of U.S. "patents", the quotes being for the fact that in the U.S., you can file "patents" for anything, incl. both insignificancies and things that ain't even new - and European, especially German, judges will be eager to serve those U.S. vipers fully.

- The fact that there are almost no one-man developing shows inWestern Europe, and especially in Germany, is NOT due to the (inexistant) fact that European ain't as good in software as people from other countries, but at some time in their thinking process, they all face this same legal problem, and refrain from losing their very existence (and without their house, their wife, and their children, taken away by their wives).

- On the other hand, there are lots of one-man sw shows both in East Europe and in Russia, and also in the Far East, not by any "programming superiority" over there, but simply because Chinese judges will not eat the asses of U.S. crooks, as German judges would happily do, but laugh upon them, and the same would be true in Russia, whilst I'm not so sure anymore, for the future, for any E.U. country in Europe's east.

- Very often, you don't even will get the address of these Eastern developers, and they are right in withholding it.

- It's just SOME European developers who take the risks, and yes, they are taking big risks.

- You also will observe that a surprisingly share of (even rather tiny) German software venues are incorporated in (high-cost) Aktiengesellschaften (public holding companies), which in Germany is the only (and very expensive) way for avoiding total personal liability when being sued.

- The utmost obscenity in all this being the fact that your state of residence takes an incredible part of all your income, even for your sales in Nigeria, whilst then ruining you when some crook (even from Nigeria) comes and sues you in your own country.

- In my (West European) country, normal people pay 80 p.c. of their income to the state, whilst the real rich pay nothing, or then, 2 p.c. to the state of Luxemburg instead, as do some "international" corporations doing BIG business in Europe and especially Germany - when politicians are U.S. whores, that's what it all ends up to. Thus, the underlying problem is the fact that Europe is finished, with Germany being finished thrice, by the psychology of state-paid Germans. Well, it had been state-paid Germans who ran the camps, no? (Western) European governments systematically govern against their own people, and as for Germany, you see that phenomenon of the State, tenfold.

- In other words, incorporate your Ltd. or whatever in any exotic country of your choice: As long as you reside in a country that feeds its population to the wolves, both the taxman and any crook worldwide will tear you down where you live.

- Thus, some, very rare, West European software developers deploy other, exotic stratagems in order to avoid both liability, and taxes, but that means you shouldn't be enrolled any more in the population registry of some Western European shit country:

http://www.just-grea...are.com/aboutjg.html :

"Jan Goyvaerts was born and raised in a town called Heist-op-den-Berg in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. Just Great Software was originally established there. Nowadays, Jan lives with his wife in Phuket in southern Thailand. Just Great Software's street address has moved with him. Still, Jan spends the larger part of his day in the global virtual world of the Internet, where his business thrives."

In other words, since getting a pen pal in some exotic country as your nominee / cover would be both insane and illegal, emigrate (perhaps, for a start, to Czechia (which is unknown to the spellchecker of this forum, which you can take as a good sign for getting away with "it": Or then, some day, pay with your life for YOUR OWN INVENTIONS and hand it all over to crooks, legally entitled by your own shit authorities which will have ransacked you all those fearful years before.

And beware, in this forum, there are unfortunately some people who happily take the side of governments - of governments of ANY mindset.

30

General Software Discussion / Re: Everything Search Engine: tips, tricks, ideas and code for poweruse

« Last post by peter.s on November 03, 2014, 02:25 PM »

"A pity it won't work in Linux." - well, it doesn't even work in Windows as you would expect; this puts into perspective any try to automate it with AHK, of course. (Don't be too sure the problems discussed over there are limited to defunct Win versions.)

http://www.voidtools...7&p=11212#p11212

31

General Software Discussion / Re: Beyond Compare v4 Open Beta

« Last post by peter.s on October 04, 2014, 07:17 AM »

Whilst I'm just smiling about the innumerable mistakes hard core posters here make - it's not by posting 11,000 posts of which 10,950 are just narcissistic rubbish that you accelerate "progress" in this world, and in general, "opinions" are worthless anywhere if not backed up by (valid) arguments, but go and explain this to 90 p.c. or more of this world's population, and my intervening in third partys' affairs would never ever be but for substantial fees -, I'm unable to leave behind loose ends of my own - it's rare that I'm entirely wrong, but even omissions of alternative aspects really torture me as if I had deliberately lied. Hence my urge to put some of these things into perspective.

As we have seen above, the "programmer" having asked me about hints for HOW to amend text comparing, presumably had just asked me to "prove" my alleged incompetence, by showing I had been asking for routines I would not be able to code myself; well the Germans have a verbal expression for that: Get up earlier for... nice try, anyway: I read this post, had you spontaneously participating in my thinking about it (I call this "public thinking", or "thinking in public" if you prefer), and within some 2 hours and a half, had come up with valid advice - no "thank you" whatsoever, albeit previous pretending to need such advice in order to design the adequate sw - I always said it, there is a blatant lack in sw designers today, even 30 (or is it 35?) years after the "invention" of the so-called pc, whilst coding is for anyone it seems, myriads of tools and full-grown applications lacking the strict minimum of sw design proving my assertion every day.

This being said, I would like to develop two aspects of BC and of compare tools in general.

I

First of all, Beyond Compare (BC) quite successfully hide their real strong feature, which is file-and-folder-compare. In fact, these last weeks, I had delved a little bit into their help file (always in version 3, cf. above), and from then on, I have extensively used their folder/file compare (ffc) routines.

I had always said it, here and elsewhere: Their ffc display is outstanding (and remember, I said I had trialled every synch tool up to about 200 bucks). One day, I spoke of their lack to develop BC into a grown-up synch tool, and even in their (kind) answer, the fact was left out that even BC-of-today/yesterday (v. 3) is as good as ANY dedicated synch tool out there, except for Syncovery (cf. my thread on that's behalf), and with BC having the superior display, far superior to anything else I've ever seen in that competition (and even far superior to Vice Versa's, which is a joy to use in its own respect).

a)

I really became interested in BC's ffc capabilities by needing a useful ftp tool; I construct my sites not by "Wordpress" as everyone else (incl. prof. developers, it seems) appears to do now, but within some 2-pane outliner, with heavy scripting (in AHK, of course, cf. my musings about that script tool on this site): Some coding within the outliner, then export to html, then an extensive script runs on the compound html file in order to create both the respective site content elements (which are necessarily different for every page of your site... and be it the bolded entries in otherwise identical trees/lists), and multiple simili-clones*, both of pages and of whole substructures/chapters.

* = Of interest here: Outliners which allow for "live clones" (e.g. Ultra Recall; MyInfo e.g. on the other hand does not update cloned parent items, which would exclude it from any such "automate cloning in my sites" idea anyway... and no, RightNote did not do anything about their ridiculous referring to thru items in their items' history...) surprisingly do not have a conceptual advantage here, since, in light of the above (= different site content elements for each individual page of that site), their "total (!) cloning paradigm" is counterproductive to say the least; in other words, your outliner supporting cloning or not, you will have to find other means in order to replicate both individual pages and entire substructures in other parts of your site(s).

Now I urgently invite you to read BC's help file's "Folder Compare" chapter thoroughly, and especially the page named "Folder Sync", and then try to use BC as an ftp tool: You'll be delighted to a degree that will you felicitate yourself to have bought BC in the first place*, even if you have discarded it as your text compare tool in the meantime (cf. my posts above): BC** is a first-rate ftp tool***, as you will quickly discover.

*= It's trial version's 30 days are non-consecutive, so you will have plenty of time before deciding about buying.

**= "BC" means "BC Prof" in my musings; never bothered about the standard version, so cannot say if / to what degree it will do the work, too

***= There are some dedicated ftp tools, but "reviews" out there being as bad as they are, I had not been able to decide which one(s) is/are able to synch between your local folder and your site-sided folder correctly, without trialling them one by one, which I did not do; on the other hand, the usual file managers are quite underwhelming, and if some of them both offers "folder synch" and "ftp", that not necessarily means that it offers them combined, too.

b)

Also, some other both quite hidden and in special cases tremendously (and what do I say: spectacularly!) useful ffc capabilities of BCC lies in the option "Ignore folder structure"; you will see similar functionality in X2's "flatten out subfolders" function (or whatever they call it), but here in BC you will have got it within a real synch environment, which will bring outstanding results, in special cases where no other means applies anymore. (Just imagine your backup image is faulty, and you try to save what it gets, or some chaos you will have created by working on files on two different devices at the same time...) In this context, don't overlook the right-click command(s) "Copy to..." (or "Move to...", of course).

Of course, for traditional synch jobs, an excellent tool like Syncovery arguably remains preferable, since it's able to

In summary, BC is a substandard text comparer, very unfortunately, but you will never regret your 50 bucks / soon 100 euro (incl. VAT) if you thoroughly use it for ffc and ftp.

II

As for differs detecting moved "lines", just some useful links (in disorder); as some almost-11,000-mostly-unuseful-poster said, you're expected to look them up by yourself, and to make up your mind on them without my guiding hand, or in other words, I'm too lazy to develop on them here and today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff-Text
http://www.diff-text.com/ (online)
http://stackoverflow...d-multiple-revisions
http://superuser.com...oved-lines-in-a-diff
http://www.grigsoft.com/wincmp3.htm
https://en.wikipedia...ki/User:Cacycle/diff

http://www.scooterso...t-on-File-comparsion and
http://www.scooterso...b_externalconversion (just compare, this is outrageous, especially in the light of my post above, "lines" vs. blocks)
http://stackoverflow...oving-block-of-lines

http://www.semanticd...ts/SmartDifferencer/ (very interesting approach, commercially, and otherwise quite revolting: they differenciate what I said above, for every possible coding language (I would not call them "programming languages" anymore, programming being the compound of sw design AND sw coding), and then sell the spliced-up sub-routines to their customers, instead of providing those alternatives by options/settings, even in combination, and especially, instead of doing some smart thinking about non-coding texts (of all kinds, btw: legal, textbook, or, even, why not, stage or screenplays, and let alone user-specific settings, independently of, and additionaly to, some such standard text TYPE "format"))

http://blog.bartdeme...merge-tested-on-svn/ and finally (April 4th, 1978!):
http://dl.acm.org/ci...m?doid=359460.359467 :
http://documents.scr...9oowpo1h81pgh1as.pdf : enjoy!

EDIT: I'm sorry I left out one important link from this list: Walter F. Tichy 1983 (!):
http://docs.lib.purd...7&context=cstech

P.S. The intellectual level of this site really went down these last weeks; I very much hope my reading experience here will improve by remaining posters striving to amend their argumentation... and if they don't have got any, by their refraining from posting to begin with. Thank you so very much.

32

General Software Discussion / Re: Beyond Compare v4 Open Beta

« Last post by peter.s on September 08, 2014, 12:33 PM »

we convene that lines are "paragraphs", i.e. separated by line feed or other characters or character combinations; the differ should identify these, and/or the user should be able to identify these by option; it's understood that we don't speak of displayed screen "lines"

regular comparison:
text A - text B
compare line A1 to line B1 and so on
if beyond line Bx there are y non corresponding lines, compare line Ax+1 with every line Bx+y+1+z within a reasonable scope, or perhaps shift to B after some tries and try to find lines in A, corresponding to lines in B
i.e. I did not really delve into regular comparison

problem 1 above, by option, do this additional comparison, interwoven with regular comparison:
compare Ax with Bx, but also with compound of (Bx and Bx+1), the control-n or control-n plus control-r in B being considered null, a space, a space and a special character and a space, or any other "replacement" string the user will make the differ consider "equal", just as in regular comparison presets for text IN line (cf. the various and otherwise very satisfying possibilities for in-line comparison in BC)
if by this "joined lines" comparison, Bx and Bx+1 are considered equal to Ax,
then next don't compare Ax+1 with Bx+2, but with Bx+2, and, according to our optional rule here, to Bx+3, etc.
do respectively for comparing Bx to Ax and (Ax plus Ax+1); the option would be simpler to program if the user had to decide on which "side" the possible "1 line split up into 2 lines" could occur, but it's evident it would be more "elegant" for the differ to detect such splits on both sides (I do not treat the additional problem brought up by 3-way comparisons)
maintain additional buffers in order to store these intermediate results and do again regular compare from these

problem 2 above, by option
first, the underlying idea:
do the regular comparison
identify (i.e. put into an additional buffer A2) all lines in A for which the differ doesn't find corresponding lines in B by the regular comparison (which could include comparison according to problem 1 and other options)
compare these lines in A2, one by one, with every line in an additional buffer B2 which will contain every line of B for which the differ has NOT identified, by the above "rich regular" comparison, a corresponding line in A
if A2x is present in B2, replace the line "not found" in original buffer B (and which corresponds to the corresponding line in original buffer A), by a line "REL" for "relocated" or such (and mark the line in A2 als "resolved")
idem for the "not found" line in A, which corresponds to the corresponding line in B (and which contains the respective line of B2): "REL" here in A's otherwise empty line which does not correspond to B's line (but which corresponds, as seen, to some OTHER line within A)
(it's evident that you will need ID numbers for every original line in A and B, and which follows them into the additional buffers, since line numbers in the intermediate buffers will not correspond to original line numbers in A and B)
remaining "unsolved" buffer A2 lines will correspond to those lines in A which do not corresponding lines in B, and ditto for orphan lines in B2, without corresponding lines in A, for lines in B
it's understood that the differ, by the above script, will consider every FIRST occurrence of a relocated line as the relocation, possible copies of that line further being considered as additional copies; in most real-life scenarios (expecially textbooks and programming with shuffling around of text passages or code bits), we all could live with such an assumption (see below)

and now for the real-life solution of problem 2 since identifying displaced lines is devoid of sense, in 99 p.c. of possible scenarios (you will notice that in my post above, I did NOT list "line 1/2/3" but "para 1/2/3"):
in fact, authors/programmers do not displace single lines, but compounds of lines, i.e. paragraph suites, or if you prefer, "real" paragraphs, comprising perhaps 3 or 15 "paragraphs" = technically, lines, and even some blank lines for grouping, within
this means, in order to resolve problem 2, in a realistic i.e. useful way, we must allow the user to identify "real paragraphs", e.g. by 2 blank lines (whilst 1 blank line would be identified as a regular blank line within such a "compound paragraph"), or a ^n^r (in this scenario, the author or programmer would "hold together" "real" paragraphs by just typing ^n and even, for blank lines, ^n^n, within them, but "close" them with a ^n^r); similar means of differenciating "real" paragraphs from "just new lines within a paragraph" would be conceivable
then, complication of my explanation above, this "identify replaced paras" routine would of course not do the above-explained work for lines, but first of all, it would unite all lines in A and in B, respectively, into "real para" compounds, and it would then do the above-described work for those paras instead (cf. 1 blank line in A vs. 20 blank lines in B, at the same position, and which do not cause any problem to traditional differs)

the only remaining weakness in this (albeit quite satisfactory yet) real-life solution would be the non-identification of relocated "real" paras in which additionally you will have done some minor changes: in such cases, the above routine would only identify two non-correspondences, one in A, one in B, and without telling you, neither for the A para nor for the B one (which, remember, has been relocated), that in fact, there is a corresponding piece of code or of text elsewhere, just slightly changed/amended
therefore, we spice up the above routine by a sub-routine which checks, for these paras in A2, all paras in B2 for "slight variation", similarly to a pic differ, and which, according to the preferences of the user, would allow for some changed or added or replaced or deleted single lines if the replaced code/text otherwise was clearly "identifiable" as a variant/amendment*
and finally, it's not really practical (i.e. especially in the case of not-100-p.c.-tally) that you would necessarily have just "REL" lines, on both sides, for these single occurrences at that given location in A resp. in B: by option, it should be possible to replicate the "text/code over there, HERE", instead, i.e. replaced "real paras" would be cloned in the corresponding B display, for their A occurence, even though they have been relocated in B, and another clone would be shown in A, at the corresponding position for their new position in B; these replications would be in a pre-determined color of course

*= the same could apply, by option, to NOT-relocated, but slightly changed text/code: here, too, an optional sub-routine could identify the whole "real para", and then display it in whole, on both sides, in a predefined color, instead of the usual display which would only display the non-changed lines within those text or code blocks, without their context; an even more useful variant of this would be a dedicated command/toggle "show full blocks on both sides" if the mouse cursor is, on either side, within a line identified as "not identical"

in a deluxe version, you then could even implement a similar routine which both would show indications to other (identical or near-) duplicates, and show ALL those, i.e. all occurences of them, of one or the other or both sides, alternatively to the regular display

it's all about the multiplication of intermediate / supporting buffers and concordance tables in arrays for lines and blocks

EDIT:

you also could identify the length of a block, and the fact if it's (to be considered and to be treated as) a block or not, by "following"  the first relocated line of a possible block and then check, "over there", how much "meat" it comprises, i.e. you identify the first relocated occurence of its first line, then compare "backwards", i.e. identify if the lines following there (new location in B) are identical / similar to what follows the original line in A (but not on the location in B corresponding to that location in A); this would be much more elegant, especially if you allow for possible new content interwoven into that relocated block, i.e. do NOT stop the comparison after just some (new) lines in the B flavour of the block, but continue to search for content identical / similar to what follows in A, even (reasonably) further down there in B

at this time, e.g. in BC, "identical vs. non-identical" is either-or, i.e. you can define SPECIFIC inconsistencies to be regarded as "equal"; it's evident that you could introduce a "fuzzy" approach ("similar in spite of up to x differences of this kind AND/OR y differences of that other kind"), alternatively and in general, or specifically for within (possible) blocks

33

General Software Discussion / Re: Good bye. (originally About buying books, etc., especially at amazon's)

« Last post by peter.s on June 20, 2014, 08:37 AM »

mouser, you didn't get my point.

I think sw/computering is a lesser science, an auxiliary science: It's always been about HOW to do things, and not about WHAT things should we do?

So, in the light of being aware of the relative value of my contributions, I've taken the liberty to do "something additional", too, and in a form that could not have harmed anybody, and which was easy to span if really somebody abhorred that part of what I had to say.

You know, over there in that outlinersw forum (and I'm certainly one expert on outliners questions, world wide), some 2 people who had been there from day 1 I turned up there, had been a little bit jealous, since up to then, their descriptive-only "expert" style had assured them "expert status" over there, which they weren't eager to give up, notwithstanding the fact that constructive collaboration is NOT about who's the commander-in-chief in some place.

From that unnecessary original clash, some adversities emerged, and whilst my original contributions over there were not affected, my comments on third parties' interests clearly were, rather often, i.e. I became somewhat aggressive against said "third parties" because I had been aggressed, without the slightest reason, re my original thinkings re outliners and which are, as to their published character, unparalleded world-wide, which means that it is perfectly possibly that without sharing their respective thinkings, there may be quite some superior outliner thinkers than I am out there but who don't share their ideas; this being said, I've never been censored over there, nor here in this forum, with those thinkings: I've just been ignored, so I don't have the slightest reason to complain.

Also, some fellow posters over there, and here, have made me rethink my communication "skills", and my postings, for some time, clearly showed that I don't see no further reason to aggress "third parties" for sheer absence of their being perfect, or, worse even, for sheer frustration that my own original efforts do not encounter the attention I would originally hoped for, and from my purely subjective pov, I had thought that the constructive value of my contributions had been enhanced accordingly.

This being said, ANY constructive effort in the IM, or more broadly, in the pc matter, lack of the above-mentioned prob, which is that ANY IT "answer" could never overcome the fact that IT is "organizational matters", without any additional value to humanity (and the day AI will take over, that'll be a whole other thing: we'll speak of additional probs there, not of some "solution" to humankind's current probs); some fellow poster over in the Ultra Recall forum once said, "We're discussing first-world probs here", and except for the fact that there is no such dichotomy "third vs. first world" to begin with, he was so right: There's a definive world between organisational sciences, and those which really could hopefully some day lessen this tiny world's probs, and we should acknowledge the philosophical difference between the two. You know, some German politician some day, some years ago, reproached to some fellow politician, that the alleged qualities that other had had, were qualities that "would enable you to run a concentration camp" - of course, this was more than inappropriate style-wise, but it was not wrong for that, since, indeed, the qualities the public saw in that man, were in that second line of reliability, determination, and so on, but NOT in the line of helping Germany (for instance, and for a start) to become better in any way: there a conceptual difference between some Montesquieu, e.g., and some German (or any other) politician who even tries to be helpful, and any "organizational science", btw., is eager to help anybody, any which way it can, and the treatment the Snowden-Obaba affair got within this forum, says a lot about this aspect of what I'm trying to express.

This being said, I'm perfectly aware that from a technical pov, auxiliary sciences are far from "inferior", intellectually: I'm perfectly aware that for real good coding, a superior IQ is more than helpful.

But then, wholeheartedly accepting that within the framework of such a "technical" forum like this one, some "speech standards" should be upheld, I had thought to be able to "counterweight" some (very limited and very easy to ignore for not-interested parties) "personal touch" paragraphs by some thinking which, as stated above, is perhaps really original, but then, which is original in its being shared; I'm very sorry my assumption was erroneous, and of course, I accept the owner of this forum not sharing my illusions.

This being said, mouser, don't be mistaken: Your manners are polite, as have been mine, these last times, but when somebody asks for thoughts about stardard parts within standard file formats, and muses about the safety of standard encryption sw being weakened by those, and then you recommend a standard book on encryption (which does not treat that specific prob): Prepare yourself to get off with such a polite way of saying of, "don't bother us here with this specific prob", but don't assume we don't see what's going on.

I respect IQ; I respect not having been censored; I thank you very warmly for being treated well, and it's with no hard feeling whatsoever I'm leaving this forum, after having left that other one, also without no hard feelings.

And I will NOT repeat those harsh words with which Prof. Manfred Kühn once left that other one for good, "I don't need this.": The point is different:

In order to think freely, you need to be felt entirely accepted within the frame of expression you will have set for yourself, and this frame, for me, here and lately, had been decidedly constructive to the max, with suppression of any possible, and totally unnecessary, aggression, and with just a NOTE of (pleasant, I had hoped) "individual OT plus" -

the owner of this forum having decided that this is not an acceptable deal for him, I humbly accept his pov. Goodbye, no hard feeling on my side: Obviously, what I had to offer, under my little bunch of different "noms de plume", simply was not good enough to counterweight my idiosyncrasies: Wholeheartedly accepted.

34

General Software Discussion / Re: How to do the dirty on google, or almost? Could we learn something here?

« Last post by peter.s on June 20, 2014, 07:29 AM »

Prince1458, you're icon spontaneously reminded me of Turandot, don't know why, but anyway, there's some of the best music of all time in there...

You imply your post somewhat OT, well... MY point (and you've not been the very first poster to not get that point) was, why is it that site is SUCCESSFUL with what they are doing? ;-) (Or is google corrupt to THAT point?)

35

General Software Discussion / Focus by view?

« Last post by peter.s on June 20, 2014, 06:23 AM »

As you know, I'm into outliners, the (available) 2-pane kind, and doing it simili-3-pane, by an additional file manager pane being my "project pane", far to the left of my screens. As you also know (since I bothered you with the descriptions of this setup more than you would have asked for), I got a second screen for the respective "input", i.e. internet browser (FF), Excel, pdf's, and so on, and you know I do the interaction between all this by AHK.

Now where I've got real probs, and which cannot be resolved by AHK means or any other such tool, is, I bought some additional keypads and such, in order to set focus, and/or to have DIFFERENT pgup/pgdown/etc. buttons for those several frames...

I've said this before, just tiny additional keypads/keyboards are realistic in any way (Cherry 4700 being something "great" since really cheap, in comparison), and then, sacrifying the original keypad, outside Excel/TenKey/etc.

This being said, I never discovered a realistic/"ready-for-prime-time" way of switching between my "multiple" frames, i.e. PM frame (by it by AHK, btw. I'll share such a thing in some time; be it by a tiny-sized file manager window; frame 1), your "main applic" (with, speaking of traditional outliners, 2 main frames, tree (frame 2) and content (frame 3)); be it your "source frame" (whatever its current content may be; frame 4).

I've tried them all, F keys for selecting focus, then the dedicated pgup/pgdn/etc. keys; additional keyboards with dedicated keys (Cherry 4700, original keypad, and also a Preh 128 keys-kb); also, lately, my "best solution" had been to do some toggles/set-ups by which, AHK switched focus automatically, depending on inactivity-by-seconds-and-frame--having-had-focus-previously (and setup/toggle in question).

Ok, there are touch-screens now, but, let's be realistic: You always need your kb, on your table, and any screen beyond that primal set-up; there is no space to lay down a touch-screen in front of you. Then, you might place a touch-screen nearer to your body/eyes/hands than you would place a traditional screen, but is that a real good idea for your neck, after all? And anyway, reaching out, with your finger, to anything beyond your kb is not that realistic for 14-hours work days, right?

Thus, there is no doubt whatsoever that we need (sorry for the "we" here, but I assume we've, more or less, similar probs, and even if you've just got 2 regular frames, not 4, as I've got, and if you've got 1 big screen, not 2 minor ones, like I do: Every "switching frames" from within your keyboard will get into your way, i.e. will constitute an hindrance to your "work flow": It will have nothing to do with any "intuitive computering". (I even considered "foot pedals" for this... OMG!)

That's why ALL OF US need the very simplest of things there could be: A camera above our screen(s), and which will monitor our eye movements (and which is NOT connected to the net, btw), and by which's perceptions (i.e. you look at some frame for more than x ms, and ideally, this time lag should be individual to every frame!!!!!) some sw will switch focus to that frame, in order for THAT FRAME to respond to your kb, incl. any navigation keys and all.

Fellow DC's, any ideas? ;-)

(I'd write it myself and share it happily with you, wasn't it for the camera's eye movements' monitoring part of such sw...)



EDIT: Not only the time frame, for each frame, should be individual, but also, the camera sw should differenciate if, within a frame, you look straight at a precise point (= then, the sw should switch focus quite quickly), or if your're "searching"/"reading" something within that frame, in which case focus switch should NOT be made as soon as that or not at all, except if your're looking at the end of the visible text/list there, in which case it should even scroll... You see, I'm delusionally dreaming...)

36

General Software Discussion / Re: About buying books, etc., especially at amazon's

« Last post by peter.s on June 20, 2014, 05:39 AM »

I

From the original subject, "buying from amazon", this thread stretched a little bit to "selling on amazon", too, which is not a bad thing, I think.

In fact, I own lots of books I never ever look into anymore, and I see that many amazon sellers sell books for 1 cent or 1€, plus 3€ package and postage, including amazon fees and real postage around 1 to 2€, and I think you better give them to your municipal library instead, in bulk, than waste your time with individual selling efforts in these cases.

For a buyer, almost every other book selling platform is of far more interest, since prices there are significantly lower than on amazon (cf. amazon's fees, and especially conditions); for a seller, in light of the prices you can get, amazon is far more interesting than any alternative selling platform, and probably in spite of the difference in conditions:

That difference being, regular (but "minor", by comparison) selling platforms treat profs. like profs. and individuals like individuals, meaning, they don't interfere with the separate LEGAL conditions applying to both groups of sellers: In Germany / the European Union, e.g., buying from a prof. means the buyer has a right to 14 days of reflection, and can return the goods/book to the prof. seller, AND (which is the real risk here), it's up to the seller to prove in which state the goods had been when he sent them, AND there is an additional prof./commercial sellers' risk: It's him to bear the risk of any vanishing of the goods-in-its-travel: TO the buyer, and even BACK FROM the buyer (thus you see the immense risks any prof. seller bears under such legislation).

Now, all this is different, under the law, for sales emanating from an individual seller to an individual buyer, in which that individual seller just resells his stuff he doesn't need anymore, to some other individual: Here, both the transportation risks and the question "in what state was the good when the seller sent it out" remains at the "biz between individuals" level, and there is no automatic "buyer's claims are deemed to be true" assumption: Whoever wants something from some other guy, has to prove the conditions for his claim, which means the buyer both cannot damage the goods, then pretend that was their original condition, nor is loss of the goods automatically imputed to the seller.

Now what makes the difference between any other such platform, and amazon, is the fact that amazon's conditions state that ANY seller on their platform is considered a prof. seller, not an individual one, with the above conclusions applying.

In other words, selling your unwanted books on amazon means, you'll get the very highest possible price in your situation, but you incur risks that you would not elsewhere.

II

Well, at the end of the day, it's NOT necessary to take off your regularly-priced book from amazon whenever there is some real cheap alternative offer; yours will simply not be taken into consideration while that alternative offer remains on offer there.

There are some sw products for amazon available, you'll find them by googling "amazon (selling,seller) (software,tool)". Some seller use sw that indeed follows other sellers' prices, mechanically, which is ridiculous, but here and there, could make a real benefit to the potential buyer: 29,99, 29,98, 29,97...1,34...

It's evident that for somebody like myself, who simply wants to sell let's say, 3,000 of his 10,000 or so books, some OTHER kind of sw would be most helpful: Getting the ISBN into the sw, then have the sw set up some reasonable offering price for any such book, which means if there are 10 offerings between 1 cent and 2€, FORGET IT, but if there are some 3 offerings between 25$ and 38$, LIST THEM, in order for yourself making a decision at which price you should offer the book in question... and then, of course, automatically entering your books, at the price you will have decided upon, into the amazon system (and hoping for the best, re the above legal/contractual considerations). ( The same would apply to "long-playing records"; I've got some 1,300 of them in mint condition which I would like to get rid of... ;-) )

THAT would be some real useful amazon sw for many of us I suppose... ( I'm searching... ;-) )

III

And don't miss pic 3 referred-to above: Despite fatal underexposure of mommy's face, it's a masterpiece since it's the apotheosis of the idea of motherhood, cubs implicitly trusting mommy to get for them what's needed; it's the perfect "mirror view" (have a better term for it? let us know!) to this short vid:

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=GzgpeLFf4z4

37

General Software Discussion / Re: About buying books, etc., especially at amazon's

« Last post by peter.s on June 19, 2014, 05:58 PM »

I

mouser, thank you so much for the link, seems very interesting in theory, must look if it works with amazon.de/.fr, too.

For textbooks, there's a difficulty, since you've got some project, then you'll need some books around it, and it's not realistic then to wait many months for those books to gather. Second problem, and that's where you seem to be much better off than are Curt and myself, you seem to be located in the U.S., where all the "real important stuff" is so much cheaper than around here, and for me, it's exactly as Curt says:

Even if the book is cheap, shipping is incredibly expensive, and most of the time, you don't even find a second item to buy with it, in order to bring shipping costs in some more reasonable relation to "the price of the item itself".

As for used textbook prices in Europe, a typical example is, new 49€, used 47,50 plus 3 postage = 50,50€ - that's totally nuts, but I insist it's a typical example.

On the other hand, your sw seems to be of the highest interest for getting photographic monographies and such books which are simply too expensive (original price 120€ (but "you" were too short-sighted to buy it, now 800€, but sometimes 180€...), so your sw is of the highest interest, as said, thank you so much!

Btw, it would be of interest to know if in the U.S., it's possible to get to out-of-print books in such an inter-libraries lending system, as in Germany. I am asking because often, some out-of-print books text books (which originally were perhaps 30, 60 or 80€) on amazon.de are at 400, 600 or 800€, but invariably from U.S. sellers; whilst Europeans would get such a book  from the inter-library lending system and then (legally) photocopy it in full, instead of paying several hundred euro for it. (Of course, this doesn't apply to art and photo books and to literary first editions and such.) Thus my question being, is it impossible to get to such out-of-print books in the U.S., hence those exaggerated prices, or are such sellers simply out for "dumb", i.e. uninformed readers who don't know better? Also, university library access might not be as easily possible for "post-graduates", but here in Germany, that inter-library lending system does include almost any public library, i.e. from any public library of your town, you'll get ANY such book, from any university library in Germany (but it's 2,50€ instead of 1,50€ then), and even Europe-wide (but that would be 35€ after all).

II

In general, there must be some other amazon sw's, for adjusting your OWN prices there whenever some other offering there enters the market with a lower price than yours. If somebody knows about such sw, please let us know.

On the other hand, it's NOT a good idea to reset the price from 35$ to 29,87 whenever there is a new offer for 29,88, but that's what people do with such sw.

Rather, the item should be withheld, for a while, waiting the 29,88 item is off the market, and then you enter your item anew, again for 35$ - that's what smart realtors do with houses when the seller has got the time to wait.

But for 35$ items such a strategy should indeed be automated...

III

The black bear cubs story of the week, in 21 pics (number 4 is very cute, 5 is overcute, don't miss 7 to 9 and 13/14 either, but number 3 is uber cute!):

http://www.adn.com/2...-east-anchorage.html

38

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommend less known macro apps and text expanders

« Last post by peter.s on June 16, 2014, 07:21 AM »

1. I very much hope that despite of your artificial cut-out into 3 different functional categories, you're aware of the fact that for practical use, they must be re-integrated again? ;-) (In other words, be it correction, be it vocabulary-it-comes-with, be it your-own-abbrevs: they must not interfere, and thus, one expander is more complete as another one, but all of them are expanders, and then they integrate additional functionaly. Sorry for being really nit-pick.)

2. It's always a good idea to not just copy link lists from somewhere, I just tried the Jon Knowles links at the end of the list (remembering the site I once looked into), and boom, between yesterday and today! ;-)

39

General Software Discussion / Re: About buying books, etc., especially at amazon's

« Last post by peter.s on June 16, 2014, 07:10 AM »

Curt, you're right, googling for book titles is old style, thank you for the hint; I use FF, and there should be some other add-in for the "amazon button".

Also, thank you for completing my list with your remarks about shipping costs from amazon.com = U.S. to Europe, and which is another reason I'm so fond of the German inter-university-library lending system (cost per book: 1,50€, about 2,15$: I'm sure this is the best such system in Europe).

Of course, there would be the question to WHICH amazon those buttons would take you, and if then the amazon search line would be focussed. In fact, in my macro system,  I have direct "buttons" (menus with shortcuts) to amazon.com/co.uk/de/fr, but the problem is, I have been too lazy to then script a mouse click into the search line (direct focus to website elements is a big flaw in AHK), so I must click manually, whilst in google and almost anywhere else, the search line is focussed automatically; of course, I don't go over the google page, but by direct one-key to the browser search line, but I acknowledge my current system, for amazon, isn't ideal, especially since after that (very quick) first amazon page, I then have to "surf" to other amazon pages anyway.

This being said, there is that above-described risk of getting, by google, to "bad" amazon pages, and I'm not sure using "buy from amazon buttons" will overcome that problem; as said, even from within amazon, you sometimes get "bad" pages...

"Nächstenliebe", well, I find wrong translations, too, from altruism to charity, but there is a problem. I know exactly what you mean, i.e. a minimum of loyalty, of "deliberate thrustworthyness beyond what the law imposes on you", of "deliberate interest in the real interest of the customer" (vs. alleged interest which at the end of the day is the interest of the seller/marketplace), of "solidarity with the other party's interests", but "Nächstenliebe" is rarely used these times, in German, and exclusively with regards to real and wrong charity, i.e. with regards to voluntary work with homeless people or elderly in institutions and such, and also, wrongly, with regards to charity "galas" where rich people give to charity - hence the problems of today's dictionaries: Their lack of applying translations just mirror the fact that this term has almost vanished from the German language, except for this receded use, and most of the time you'll hear this word, it'll be with respect to "Mother Teresa" anyway (i.e. improper use if you know about the background and details of her work...)

This being said, 90 p.c. of the time, I use the different amazon sites for my bibliography needs, before then searching the inter-library system anyway, and not for buying; I have to say that without to that exceptionally good system, i.e. in (most?) other countries, this would probably be quite different.


I missed another aspect of the amazon world: E-books and their prices.

sideline: The German book market in general.

In Germany, both book and e-book prices are bound by law, which means that the respective publisher sets the price, then everybody, for "new" books/e-books at least (see above for "new" vs. "really used" vs. "allegedly used"), must neither call for higher (! see the pdf, and the alleged "used" state in there), nor for lower prices. This means, for the German book market, that the big players, i.e. amazon, but also the big "chains" (which also sell by internet, but which mainly are present in the best parts of the big cities) will make tremendous benefits, on the detriment of the "nice little bookstore", which today are gone for the most of them: In those German cities I know, more than 80 p.c. of them have closed.

Why is this so? There's a very precise reason to it: The big players, amazon et al, get about 60 to 65 p.c. off that "bound" price from the respective publishers, whilst the "little bookstore" just gets 30 to 35 p.c. off that same price (and most of the time, it's not more like 29 p.c. instead of 32 or more), either from the publisher or from some intermediate which in turn gets the full 65 p.c. from the publisher...

So why are there intermediates, to begin with? Those, which are called "Barsortiment(er)" (()=plural), store any book from big publishers, and deliver them, to the bookstore, the next day, whilst from the publisher (= same price for the bookstore), that would take anything from some days to 6 weeks (= publishers kicking away bookstores this way, in spite of the fact it would have been in the publisher's interest to deliver directly!) - of course, the "customer experience" is quite different between "next day" and "somewhere in the future".

The attentive reader will have become aware of my saying, "store any book from big publishers": bingo! And this means many bookstore will tell you, "this book doesn't exist", whenever you ask them for a book from some little publisher, since they do not want to command it from them, and the intermediates refuse to stock them for immediate delivery (notwithstanding the fact the little publisher is "willing" to give them their 65 p.c. off final price).

Of course, the German government tells people lots of rubbish about this (as for any subject there is), in the line of "the bound price preserve the little bookstore", which is a big lie in light of the above: It would HAVE been true if not just the end/customer price was bound, but if the purchase price was identical for every reseller was identical, too, and so, as with many other things, German legislation is just bound to play the play of the big players, little bookstores being the victims of this policy as well as every reader in Germany... ;-)

Now for those e-book prices:

From the U.S., you know that a book might cost 30$, with the e-book costing about 9$, this price difference being much smaller for textbooks, though, but then, it's perhaps 30$ vs. 18$. As said above, amazon.com e-books are not available for European customers.

Now in Germany (similar in France), when the book is 30.95€, the e-book is 28.95 euro, or 29.45€, and that applies to almost any e-book sold in Germany, being it a translation, or be it written in German (so there are no "hidden costs" to be "covered", it's just plain greed).

And this means that in Europe, you should always have a look at amazon.co.uk, and search for the English version of the e-book, the latter often being available on Continental amazon sites, too, perhaps at slightly higher prices but which in any case are not as cheap as on amazon.com (the TVA on books in Germany is currently 7 p.c., on e-books it's been 19 p.c., but I think they changed that, or are willing to do so? Anyway, that doesn't explain a price difference of merely 5 or 7 p.c. to the bound book).

Which arises an additional question: Are there alternative U.S. e-book sources, priced as amazon.com, but from thich the e-books are available to European customers? (Of course, we then don't speak of the Kindle format here, but who cares? With all due respect, I looked at Kindle's, and was far from delighted!) But this alternative availability to Europe could be prevented for legal reasons, i.e. U.S. publishers sell the "Oversea's right" to their Irish-tax-free subsidiary, and which then is the sole proprietor of those European rights, incl. e-book rights, and they are free to sell at some price they deem suitable for European "customers". (Just compare Adobe sw prices in Europe with their respective U.S. counterparts.)

I spoke about "importing goods" in some other thread, some weeks ago, and there's a base problem, but which seems to be connected to such "rights for different territories" considerations:

There currently is no U.S. reseller who's got a daily (or, in the beginning, weekly) container shipped to Europe, and with prices 10 p.c. above the U.S. price plus taxes (neither there is for electronics goods and such, so we pay twice the price here, sometimes thrice the price).

And, to say it all, even sharing transportations costs from the U.S. to Europe, once a month, for some fellow customer group, would only be realistic within a big country like Germany, since even within Europe, from one country to the next, D to DK, B to F, A to CH, will cost another fortune in additional transportation costs: The whole "European Union" is just there in order to ripp off hundreds of millions of "innocent" people not seeing that once in while, they could stop this never-ending outrage from which citizens don't have but big disadvantages... DK at least having been smart enough to preserve its money... and they don't exclusively vote for perverted cynics up there neither: kudos to DK for preserving your common sense! (Whilst German electorate is an abomination.)

Ok, this thread was meant to be about hints to better buy pc books, sw and electronics... but from the above, you will have understood why I so much praise the German inter-university book lending system: Any book I get from there is a book I wasn't totally ripped off for. (And btw, in the Scandinavian countries, book prices are even more obscene than on the Continent.)

40

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... functional software kvm

« Last post by peter.s on June 16, 2014, 05:46 AM »

And beyond that, when sw a costs 40$, and sw b (ShareMouse) not even 10, it'd be a good idea - I've said this before, re some other poster who just said "I prefer a over b", without giving reasons - to explain why buying sw a should be preferable. I acknowledge, though, that for once, I did similarly, with ShareMouse; it's just that my trial has been some time ago, and ShareMouse was very smooth, whilst I had (minor and major) problems with some free offerings, must have overlooked Multiplicity then.

Well, Stardock seems to be another of those "games"; that would not count for a real advantage over ShareMouse, would it? ;-)

EDIT:

Sorry, my fault: Edgerunner = the dedicated subsidiary of Stardock who do "Fences" et al.

Multiplicity seems to be a very interesting program, btw, 3 different versions, so thank you a lot for mentioning it here.

41

General Software Discussion / Good bye. (originally About buying books, etc., especially at amazon's)

« Last post by peter.s on June 15, 2014, 03:21 PM »

This is probably no news for most fellow posters here, but perhaps it's worthwile to remember, before buying the wrong edition or at the wrong price.

I

Look at the attached pdf please; you see a common phenomenon at amazon's, which is some crooks trying to sell books which are NOT out of print, to "idiots", i.e. customers not searching deeply enough, at two times the original price, be it for really used book, or for brand-new books declared as "used", in order to sidestep national book price binding legislation.

I did the search in amazon, with full title, in order to make a concise screenshot of just these two offerings one after the other, so you will not "fall" for this scheme here.

But ordinarily, you search otherwise, and amazon will present you with lists of books, and then those offerings, official price for new book, and some deluded offer for the same book, will NOT necessarily follow each other, but other books often will be in-between.

(The example is from the German amazon site, but I have seen this phenomenon on the USA/GB/F amazon sites, too.) (And see below point V.)

II

When the book really is out of print, there are two alternatives: Too few buyers, or many buyers. In the latter case, why would you pay twice or thrice the price for the former edition, when the new edition is highly probably imminent? In the former case, well, it might be cheap, then buy, but if some sellers think they can make a big benefit, why not photocopy the book from your library (if really you need it in full and permanently), which is perfectly legal in such cases. (Of course, this doesn't apply to "photographic monographies" and other coffee table books.)

III

amazon itself is not really honest in its prices: They often say, you will safe x p.c. from original price, when in fact that price is only slightly higher than their price, or in other words, they invent some "original" price which even the original source does not ask for. This being said, in spite of their lying about the original price and your savings percentage, often amazon.com has got highly interesting prices, but not for European customers (and downloads "to" Europe are forbidden, i.e. not available without U.S. credit cards, street addresses, and so on), whilst amazon in Europe, most of the time, is not of real interest, since some dealer or another will send it out for less, often for much less than what amazon.de or .fr ask for it.

IV

This (III) is particularly true with offerings from both dealers and individuals on the amazon platform: The same out-of-print book on amazon will often be several times more expensive on amazon, than on "competing" marketplaces, the quotation marks being the explanation for this phenomenon, or in simpler words, other marketplaces ain't quite real competitors for amazon anymore, and thus... This being said, never buy on amazon too quickly: First, try individual sellers, by a regular google search, or, for books, alternative platforms.

V

Speaking of google, there is another, big disadvantage related to point I above: When you don't search from within amazon, but when you search for a book in google, and then are redirected to amazon (which you will invariably be, as if other booksellers didn't even exist anymore), in many instance, this "amazon hit by google" will be the alternative, totally overpriced offering, and without any indication of, let alone a link, to the "real" one, the one for the new book at a regular price; in fact, my google search for the book in the pdf went straight to the overpriced "used" book offering (alone), and this not having been the first time, I thought it was time I shared some advice to not fall into frequent amazon traps.

VI

Similar with ancient editions. In 99 p.c. of all cases somebody wants to buy some book, he's after the current, most recent edition, some very rare exceptions proving this rule. Now, these google links to amazon will NOT cater for this need, but in many instances, they showed me the amazon page for some ancient edition of that book, and whilst in theory, such amazon pages would have a line, near the top, saying, "from this book, there is a more recent edition available; would you like to go the relevant page?" or something like that, I can confirm I've seen this line in some cases, but in the majority of such cases I did NOT see that line, so when in amazon, you'll have to search again for that same book, and look at the hits with a sharp eye, and you never know for sure:

When it says, it's from 2012: For a monography, that's quite recent, and in most cases, that's the (unique) edition you're looking for; but for a textbook, in 2014, that might even be TWO editions too old, not just one, an intermediary edition having been published in 2013, and the current one being from April, 2014. Similar for monographies: If what google shows you in amazon, is from 2004, there could be very well be some "revised and enlarged" edition from 2009, so be careful in amazon, and especially "coming" from google.

VII

Similar to the previous problem: Many alternative sellers in the amazon marketplace hide the fact they are selling outdated editions. It's ok they present previous or even ancient editions on the page of the current edition, but then, in the short description text you'll seen when you click their offer, only some honest sellers indicate their offer is for such an outdated edition, whilst the majority of them simply don't fee obliged to mention this very important fact, and that's why, by buying books from amazon marketplace, you'll get into lots of trouble, on many occasions, especially since the two biggest booksellers on that marketplace on amazon.de both give a dime for informing their customers about these flaws of their offerings, and they both have been doing this this perfectly illegal way systematically and for years now, without amazon (which is in perfect knowledge of these ongoings) doing anything about this abuse of its customer base, just as in ancient times ebay allowed crook sellers to administer retaliation evaluations on buyers who dared giving those crooks a bad evaluation for having had them.

VIII

ebay learned from the negative effects of this on turnover, and even on amazon, with their refund-no-questions-asked system, it's the buyers who today treat (especially individual) sellers not well: If ever you're sufficiently criminally-minded, it's up to you to "buy" some coffee table book on amazon, tear out the pages you're after, then send it back as "defective", and amazon will refund you, the seller being ripped-off at 100 p.c. (and there are very expensive coffee table books on amazon...) Thus, my last point is about the risks of SELLING on amazon, and it's even worse for the seller: Many books are just between 10 and 20$, so registered mail is not justified, and what to do if the buyer just pretends he didn't get the book? And of course, amazon is much too expensive for the seller... but then, e.g. priceminister.com, in France, is even more expensive, but that's another matter.



Anyway, in one sentence: On amazon, don't ever be sure that price and edition are the correct ones before having checked and re-checked (especially elsewhere).


EDIT: As you can see in the screenshot, it's the same book, but with the title slightly changed/rearranged, and that's how many of such "double entries" in the amazon db are created, notwithstanding the identical ISBN (!), but you've got such double entries even with identical title lines, and then with some irrelevant add-ons there, which seem to have been added on purpose, in order to create the "twin", to which google will then mislead buyers... (And yes, the ISBN thing should prevent all this...) (And of course, "neu" = "new" and "gebraucht" = "used".)

42

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... functional software kvm

« Last post by peter.s on June 15, 2014, 02:21 PM »

You are right, I didn't mention this third kind, had not even been aware of:

When I bought mine, then sent it back (b/c it was from the "cheap" kind in which I didn't trust, hearing it clicking), I did some "research", and all I got was the traditional relay kind which does not rely on a network (which is the big advantage of them, from the data safety pov), and then the sw offerings; ShareMouse trialling was quite nitemarish since my setup was judged "prof.", so the sw said good-bye every 10 minutes, but except for this, it seemed very good (in the traditional setup, i.e. for just sharing kb and mouse, but NOT for sharing the monitor, too, and I had forgotten my needs had evolved over time).

If I understand your post well, those ethernet kvm switches even work remotely, which is their primal advantage, but it seems they rely on traditional relays (click, click) nethertheless? For the moment, I do not know yet if the traditional kind I know would be able to share ONE OF TWO monitors (setup 1: pc 1, screens 1 plus 2, common kb and mouse; setup 2: pc 2, screen 1 (or 2, or just one window in screen 1 or 2), and again shared kb/mouse), which is a little bit special.

Problem is, as a non-professional, you have the right, in Europe, to send back the stuff within 14 days, but you don't make friends that way, and if you ask them beforehand for special features, you never get correct answers, even from the so-called specialists (which are higher-priced); so at the end of the day I fear what I need cannot be done with "boxes", but should be possible with proper sw.


This being said, I thank you very warmly for the hint to this third kind of switching means; perhaps with some search in the relevant factory pdf's, I'll get valuable info about what's possible with some of them.

43

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... functional software kvm

« Last post by peter.s on June 15, 2014, 06:35 AM »

ShareMouse will be on bits very soon, and above, I spoke of "30-40$ devices" - well, I checked my records (I had once bought such a "mechanical" device, but then had it sent back, for its relay being so "loud" that with every click, I feared the device would conk out).

In fact, those "cheap" mechanical/electrical vs. electronic devices do NOT cost 30-40$ in Europe, but, as "mechanically cheap" as they are, they cost over 60€, i.e. over 80$ (TVA and postage included), this being from the very cheapest source over here; (hopefully) "good" mechanical devices starting at over 120€, i.e. some 160$ (always for just 2 pc's; for more, costs rise sharply).

As said above, the problem is, for the sw solutions, you'll need to have your pc's connected within a "home net", which makes available ALL your data to the NSA and the Chinese...

Well, I've got THREE comps, not just two, and I have (as most of us will have) serious space probs re additional monitors/keyboards, so I probably buy ShareMouse, finally, now, in spite of my security considerations, at least for my pc number 2 to become available from shared mouse and kb, and to my screens; I'll have to shift private data to pc 3, then...

I trialled the sw solutions, and ShareMouse is the best one, no doubt about that.

And no, most people will not have it for free, since the sheer presence of some (?) Adobe sw will make you a "prof. user" from the pov of this sw.

Of course, I/we would prefer some sw which does not rely on network connection, and in which's set up some of our data would be safe from spies, even if comp 1 is connected to the internet... ;-)


EDIT:

Well, I might have been wrong here: From my memory, ShareMouse (in spite of its name) shared mouse, kb, and monitor, too, but from the description, I see your pc 2 always needs its own monitor, and so on for further pc's in such a setup.

I've got 2 monitors, both for pc 1, and my idea had been to share 1 of the 2 with pc 2, as well as my kb and mouse, but from my current understanding I either would have to place a 3rd monitor (for which I scarcely will have the space), or to sacrify 1 of my 2 monitors for pc 2 (which is out of the question).

Thus, the usefulness of such sw solutions is far from evident, I'm afraid to say.


EDIT 2

It's not my intention to denigrate current sw. But let's be realistic. I think it's a very viable set-up to have 2 screens (which for most people is a realistic maximum in their respective working environments - we're not speaking of network admins here, but of people who either work alone on their desktop, or who even have customers sitting in front of them), OR even just ONE screen, but which is very broad, and with a high resolution (see below).

Then, you do your work on pc 1, with screens 1 and 2, or with the (better, and higher-priced) screen mentioned above.

Also, you do some work on pc 2, or rather, pc 2 does some work on its own, but which has to be monitored here and then: Does all goes well? Are there some info screens there which ask for your intervention? Etc.

It's NOT realistic for this pc 2 "doings", to have your own screen, your own kb, your own mouse: Once in a while, perhaps once per hour, you'll have to check: for some data mining, for web scraping... whatever.

Thus, by all means, pc 2 should be available from your regular kb, from your regular mouse (which ShareMouse and its competitors do)... AND from your regular screen setup:

- either from 1 of your 2 screens, in my setup, described, above,

OR, even better and much more elegant:

- from a frame within your regular screen (or screen setup; be that devided into two lesser screens, as for me, or be that represented by some state-of-the-art super screen (Sideline: Those very modern, and expensive screens all share one missing feature: They are flat, instead of being slightly curved, as the screens are in sophisticated cinema houses: That's why for the time being, I prefer my two minor, 1280x1024 screens to some "really good one", for the time being, my 2 screens being positioned at some 160 or 150 angle, instead of being aligned straight, at 180 degrees).

Thus, there is certainly room for some sw (and please make it independant from "networking"), from Bartels Media or from other sources, for realizing what I've described above:

A setup from which, for some seconds or minutes, by some "toggle" or such, you see comp 2 in a frame on your screen(s) relied to comp 1, and to which (comp 2) then both your kb and your mouse, technically relied to comp 1, are connected, and it should even be possible to have this frame, "minimized" to perhaps 200x300 pixels, and then without responding to kb/mouse input, on your screen permanently, just like for some television frames and such, within your normal pc/screen setup ("frame in frame" and such).

I kindly invite Mr. Bartels to comment on this issue, all the more so since I'm afraid such a feature will not come from some of the "amateurs" out there.

If, by chance, such sw even exists today, please let us know.

44

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommend less known macro apps and text expanders

« Last post by peter.s on June 15, 2014, 05:10 AM »

I think that except for mentioning Instant Text, rjbull's post blurred more of the subject than it explained.

Some time ago, I trialled every available expander, and believe me there are big quality differences, with any cheap offer not being really helpful beyond 2 or 3 days; PhraseExpress is deemed free for not-commercial use as you state, but then, I suppose that everybody who believed that, AND then tried to really use for some time, will have experienced that Express' notion of "commercial" is different from the users': Avoid writing letters to your landlord or to your employer, you will never know WHERE Express makes the cut... ;-) Btw, they insist on the fact that the tool doesn't phone home for them making the decision you overdid, but that the application has its decision-making inbuilt, but the effect is similar: You'll have to buy or to leave (or perhaps reinstall, or refrain from doing any such letter anymore, I don't remember).

So perhaps this is the perfect, free program for a novelist...

As for text expansion vs. completion vs. correction, this pseudo-distinction is ridiculous; you just have to compare Expander and Express (both Prof.), and you'll see the big difference in their respective approach, and they both are expanders.

But your remark brings up an aspect we did not mention yet: pre-installed vocabularies.

Of course, there is the problem with language, and even with "country versioning" for these, but it's evident that a 500$ medical expander should come with a broad set of special medical/latin/pseudo-latin vocabulary, and a 500$ legal expander should do the same for your country's legal terminology, and indeed, some expanders offer to sell you additional vocabularies.

And of course, some of the expanders come with some English, or even German, French, Spanish general vocabulary, resp. with a vocabulary of typical (or what they think is "typical") mistypings for these languages, thus generating those expanders to be "correcting devices", too, to some degree.

Of course, there is a big problem with the former functionality: Those pre-installed vocabularies come for the profession as a whole, and (hopefully) try to be as complete as possible, and necessarily come with pre-installed abbreviations, whilst most users of such programs will only need a very tiny subset of such vocabularies, and with largely differing frequency demands, i.e. some user needs short abbrevs for some terminology, whilst for other words, longer abbrevs will be ok, and vice versa, and especially, any "suggestion" (cf. Expander's drop-down lists, but which are of the "learning" kind, which makes them quite interesting!) for a broader range of terminology will be a nuisance in your typing - I do not know of any medical or legal vocabulary that would have been cut into (necessarily overlapping) sub-sets, for administrative law, criminal law, commercial law, etc., let alone for several countries... (Perhaps there is such a thing for medics, though.)

So in any case, even with (necessarily expensive) special vocabularies, there is a plethora of tweaking to be done, from the users' side, and that's another very strong argument for Dragon Naturally Speaking, or the other way round, even with very big efforts, expander sw does not become really useful out-of-the-box, hence the absence of such big efforts for most of those applications. (And most of "correction" vocabularies offered are ridiculous: They offer plenty of mistypings nobody would ever type.)

I don't want to sound negative here. ;-)

So let me give you another hint how really "to do it", with expanders, if for some reason you're "into" them, instead of DNS:

Have some set of typical text files (Word, etc.) typed by yourself or by your staff. Then run them in some concordancer sw (depending on the conc. sw, you will have to put those different files into some big file, first, other conc. sw will run different files in some folder one after the other).

This will give you precise frequencies, and you'll import those list(s) into your expander, then devise the right abbrevs to the terms you really need to type again and again, and cf. what I say above: Of course, when needed, you can (for Express, for AHK, and for some others, but as we have learnt, not for Expander in its version 4 yet), instead of mixing up different such original files of different kind, run the conc. sw on just similar files, and then do subsets for "general vocabulary", plus for special vocabularies, and then COMBINE those, within your expander.

Of course, in order to retrieve the "general vocabulary", you would need some special text processing, i.e. some programmable text editor would be needed for processing the conc. sw files, i.e. for moving those text lines/entries from their different output files, into the "general terminology file" which list entries present in several particular output files, or which are present there above a certain frequency level, i.e. if some law court is mentioned more than 2 or 3 times in every subset, it should be transferred to the general set: in Germany, this would be the BGH, whilst the BSG would only be accessible, by abbrev, from the particular "social law" abbrevs subset.

Here, it will hit you in the eye again that Expander's actually missing combining feature for different vocabularies doesn't make it the ideal deal, for the time being, if you're looking out for a good expander.

And finally, folks, try to deliver some practical info, like I do, blathering less. I particularly appreciated
Renegade's current post in the Tizen thread, which could serve as a brilliant example of a good post for anyone who's not enclined to appreciate my posts as a valid example.

45

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommend less known macro apps and text expanders

« Last post by peter.s on June 09, 2014, 09:51 AM »

I

Hi Andrea,
I'm not speaking of different vocabularies in different applications, since I don't see a real interest in that; of course, AHK would do that as well if ever anybody needed that.

I'm speaking of different vocabularies, and of combinations of them, a real-life example for the first alternative would be, you write in several languages, and the second alternative would be needed then, e.g. you write in Spanish (not English), but not some general text either for now, but some legal text: Hence the need for a (very basic) combination of "general Spanish" and "legal Spanish", for the special vocabulary, and you will need them both. Then, you also would have some use for a third vocabulary, which would contain the proper names of some "case", even if this third vocabulary included perhaps only 3, 5 or 10 such terms.

All this is definitely possible in AHK (since I use such set-ups every day), and also in Express (since the developer says so, and I don't have any reason to doubt his word on this), whilst in fact, those 30$ expanders I know of, do not offer such a feature.

Btw and from my real-life experience, I should add that the "several languages" part is not that handy for later remembrance (and which must be really quick and "intuitive", in order for an expander to be useful) (and Expander Prof's special drop-down list feature would not be of help but for longer words), but combination of several vocabularies within ONE language is perfectly realizable (and you can even envision different "legal" (or whatever) vocabularies, ditto in the medical world, i.e. for several sub-species within these matters).

To be frank, I'd been afraid this feature had not been introduced between 3 and 4, and that's why I verbalized this matter here, instead of over at bits: Not that my question would have been censored over there, but it would have harmed your business. ;-)

II

"I've always been perplexed as to why text expanders are usually so expensive. Maybe it's because they are used so frequently in the medical and legal professions where people don't blink an eye at high software prices."

"I think it's less that, and more that a 'phrase expander' is a niche product with a relatively small market. So the average pricing is higher."

First explanation being true, second one much less so. If it were only for "niche", outliner prices should skyrock, for an example, but even quite sophisticated outliners (= your main application, in case) are available for much less than each of these 2 leader-of-the-pack expanders (= "just" a tool, a secondary thing in order to optimize what you're doing within your main applic) would cost you.

I once even wanted to trial some other expander, priced at 500$, but was unable to download it, even after giving full credentials incl. tel. number, since I gave them a wrong one, and they insisted on phoning me first, THEN send me a link to download the trial - and I even tried on some Easter week-end, in the faint hope they'd send the link without checking, instead of having wait their prospects a full 5 days... no chance. (And yes, their advertizing was directed to the medical professions.

Similar for the legal profession, and Innuendo gave the right examples, since both professions have constraint and repetitive (in a word: standardized) terminologies, whilst in other, equally high-paid professions, vocabularies usually do not offer those 2 qualities, or rather, the part the respective standardized sub-vocabulary takes in their global writings, is much lesser.

For the information of some: Doctors never typed in big numbers, even with the help of these expanders (whilst laywers often did), but even in the Fifties (and perhaps even earlier in the U.S.), they dictated (first, to sort of gramophone records, just enter "assmann dictation" into the google IMAGE search), and there was a big typists' market around them, in universities, to put those into typewritten pages, and yes, pay counted by these pages.

That's why these now-pc-typists were willing to pay almost any price to speed up not their typing, but filling up those pages with the product of their typing, with the additional benefit of getting those crazy simili-latin terms right, finally, on first try, where before they had bought "Tipp-Ex" in corporate quantities (legal terms being quite easy to type, by comparison).

Of course, dictation-right-into-the-pc (MS Word) has taken over to a very large extent, at least for the legal professions (and yes, the sw is about 800$ or more, instead of about 150$ for the general public), so I'd assume expanders are a receding market, all the more so since flections of words in the non-English world (i.e. way beyond just plural-s's) are really difficult to cope with in expanders, whilst being of no particular difficulty for a good dictation system - of course, it does not really help that there is only ONE such system worldwide being left.

On the other hand, that "niche" isn't that tiny after all, and that remark works for many kinds of "tools". Just remember that whilst "everybody" uses MS Word or some free alternative, the market for paid, alternative text processors has become very tiny indeed (ditto Excel and other MS sw's), but tools in general, anybody can use them, whatever his main applications might be otherwise, and we see a similar phenomenon with paid macro tools.

Btw, there are some expanders which are very good and do cost about 30$, but Expander and Express above are those which are the "big players", so their respective (list) price is in consequence.

"As long as the support is there - and problems get resolved rapidly - the initial cost of software isn't a significant concern." - This is very true, and vice versa, too, and even for individuals, I always preached that they shouldn't look too much onto the price tag on bits or elsewhere: Savings of 15, 30 or 60$ there are negligeable, whist the possible fact you didn't get the very best sw in your price RANGE, will perhaps cost you a little fortune over time (= tco).

III

This is cute:

http://takingnotenow.blogspot.be/ (June 7th, 2014)

"Growing up in Germany, wirebound notebooks weren't very common, if they existed at all. I think they offer no advantages over composition books.

No further comment!" - Whilst I consider Prof. Kühn's Germanese "No further comment!" almost unbearable, I'm very pleased to be informed notebooks grew up on trees in ancient times, over there, and I'm sorry for this method of upbringing being not that successful, though.

IV

And finally, since this thread does not have its proper "Pets are like people, only better yet!" link of the week yet, here it is:

http://www.stuff.co....-make-emergency-call

where Stella and Stuart, hilarious French bulldogs (see their photo, such adorable creatures!), first devour dozens of potentially dangerous-for-them drugs, then activate the panic button a dozen of times to get help.

46

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommend less known macro apps and text expanders

« Last post by peter.s on June 07, 2014, 05:59 PM »

"SUGGESTION: The last post on this page is over 360 days old. It's sometimes better to start a new topic than to revive an old one." Yes, and in some cases it's the other way round! ;-)

No, there have been lotsa special offers for PhraseExpander (not PhraseExpress) around these last months, and Prof. version 4 will be on bits very soon.

A fellow poster of this forum touts Expander with brio, and I understand that whenever you don't want to use AHK for text expansion, both programs mentioned are very strong contenders.

I just wanted to remind you that Expander 3 did not have different vocabularies for different purposes (contexts/subjects/matters, languages), all the less so them being freely combinable, whilst Express is deemed to come with these features (i.e. even with the combination possibility), and has had those for a quite long time now.

I don't know if Expander 4 finally got it, too, to perhaps our Expander expert here could enlighten prospects about it?

Without that feature, it would simply not be worth the money, not even on bits... and vice versa: If it got it, and if you really abhorr AHK, 60$ could come as a handy offering.

( So you see, if I had started a new thread, with so little knowledge about my subject, that would have been preposterous! ;-) )

47

General Software Discussion / Re: How to do the dirty on google, or almost? Could we learn something here?

« Last post by peter.s on June 07, 2014, 05:42 PM »

You wanna say such sites will function for some weeks, then they're detected, then some other scheme has some short-lived success? Here again, that's certainly true with numerous little tricks old and new, but that site seems to be well-established, and then its content bits are just teasers to content google links to anyway, direct; I simply cannot imagine good does not see, and for a long period of time on top of that, it's dedoubling links, real ones, and then to intermediaries where there's just, not even "summeries" (where google might even see some interest in), but just the very first 200 or so chars of the "real thing".

In other words: I'm sure such a cross-checking detection between at least the very first 20 or 50 links should be deemed to very well exist in google's sort algorithms (since they do lots of much more elaborate stuff than that, and will not overlook such really easy, and obvious things), so why don't they relegate it to position 80, and what's the business model of that site... and then, of their customers putting their money into it?

In other words again: It's AGAINST seo, and it works nevertheless, and fine, and not just for some weeks, so where's the clue, from triple pov: theirs, their customers', and google's: what's the hidden glue that holds it all together?

48

General Software Discussion / Re: How to do the dirty on google, or almost? Could we learn something here?

« Last post by peter.s on June 06, 2014, 02:45 PM »

"As Google becomes aware of loopholes, they close them."

That's common sense, and is certainly true in the normal course of things, and that's why I'm wondering since my point b) above would indicate that this is not about "becoming aware" at some point in time, but of it "being evident to google" that those cannot be valid links/hits. And that's why I say point a) above is the key to my question: If we better understood how/why that site makes money, we could perhaps grasp why google plays their game, open-eyed. ;-)


(edited for plenty of typos: sorry for the inconvenience)

49

General Software Discussion / Re: How to do the dirty on google, or almost? Could we learn something here?

« Last post by peter.s on June 06, 2014, 10:25 AM »

Let me clarify:

a) Prices on that site are very high, and whilst it could be that some corporations pay such sums, it's not evident why anybody would pay such prices for links to articles of Ms. Opris, not even her employer? Since I don't grasp the benefit he would get out of this scheme, all the less so since I didn't get her possible employer's name from the steps described above. Thus, I "understand" the business model of that site, but not the one of that site's customers. (Google direct: 8th position; the same target, thru this high-paid intermediary, 14th position: rather high, but obviously unnecessary to pay for.)

b) I don't see why google should give 14th rank to a page where's just a slug and a link, to a page which is ranked 8th anyway, for the very same google search. The very fact that google "knows", from hit 8th's content, that the "review" on hit 14 is just a slug and teaser, should "motivate" it to relegate that non-hit (which only could be considered a valid "partial, indirect hit" if (and as long as) google had not found and listed the real review ( hit 8 ) yet) to a position further down.

I did not want to imply, above, that google might have a financial interest in the proceeds of hit 14, which would explain prob. b) indeed, but that would have been an explanation that does not explain prob. a), which is the primary prob here.

Of course, there are paying/paid, in fact "press release" sites, but they are very different from what we see here, since they publish (and try to get good rankings for) "information" nobody's really interested in, whilst linked info on number 14 here is readily (and duly) available as number 8 (and similar articles over there, similarly), since we're speaking of real info, sought-for and of general interest.

Thus, this site and its treatment by google are kind of utterly mysterious.

50

General Software Discussion / How to do the dirty on google, or almost? Could we learn something here?

« Last post by peter.s on June 06, 2014, 04:49 AM »

Yesterday, I here said, it's on purpose that I title some threads "Review" (and even if my first post there isn't a full-grown "review" (yet)) since I (rightly) assumed that such titles get good coverage with google, all the more so with DC as the site it comes from (and relative hit numbers, e.g. for the RN thread, vs. others, prove me right).

Today, I've been googling for "winsnap review" (soon on bits for 15$ = 50 p.c. off, regular price 2 months ago being 25$), and quickly gathering some hits from the first 15(! i.e. I'm among those who systematically look into the second tenner, too (and further on in some instances)), I then browse those pages.

Hit number 14 (so at least it was not listed within the very first google page, but then, those first 10 links weren't all for "reviews" either...) was

"WinSnap Review - StrategyEye Digital Media
digitalmedia.strategyeye.com/.../04/.../winsnap-revie...
21 apr. 2014 - WinSnap enables users to effortlessly capture the screen in five methods, apply drawing tools to prepare them for online publishing (including ..."

and clicking on it was this:

http://digitalmedia....4/21/winsnap-review/

with this:

"WinSnap Review
21 Apr 14RecommendTweetShareEmail
WinSnap enables users to effortlessly capture the screen in five methods, apply drawing tools to prepare them for online publishing (including watermarks and filters), and export the new images to multiple types of formats. It features an appealing and...

Read full article [this line being a link of course]
Source: Softpedia News - Global [this line being in a very tiny font]
Related Companies [plus button linking to many unrelated things]
Related Categories [ditto]",

with lots of other things, and with a pop-up "Free Daily Dose of Headlines from Our Newsletter - Submit"

and the tab was "WinSnap Review".

Now, clicking on "Read full article", you'll get a full review indeed,

"April 21st, 2014, 15:01 GMT · By Elena Opris
WinSnap Review"
[full review]

but the url being,

http://www.softpedia...-Review-438309.shtml

which also had been direct google hit number 8 yet.

Now that "portal" (or how would you call it?) has a search field, so I entered the name of the author there, "Elena Opris"), and I got a bunch of similar hits, i.e. some teaser on that strategyeye site, and links to external content.



Now this arises the question if Ms. Opris is somewhat connected to that strategyeye site from where she (like fellow authors there) has them link to her own articles on various sites, which would be perfectly legitimate imo, OR if strategyeye just collect material they are interested in, for commercial reasons = for touting their own site, by generating quite high-placed google hits, then delivering links to the "real stuff" which from the users' pov are worthless, since they will have clicked on the direct link (from google) anyway. Note that I'm not insinuating strategyeye does something "illegal", in that second alternative, since they don't "embed" that external content, but (except for the teaser) just provide correct, external links.

Now the first alternative would be perfectly legitimate, as said, since authors should be entirely free to do some "link gathering" for their disparate stuff spread over the web; whilst the second one would be considered a nuisance, since this "intermediate" site would be bandwagon jumpers who, for their interest, just bother the "googler";

in BOTH cases strategyeye does something really smart, they create lots of coverage for their own site, with external content, coverage that they would never get otherwise... and google's algorithms astonishingly not being "able"/willing to detect this "fraud" ("fraud" just from a philosophical pov: as said, nothing "legally illegal" here): "astonishingly" because it would have been more than easy, if they had been willing to do so, to detect (and eliminate or put them further below, say after 60th position or so) hits that just contain teasers from and links to real content that already has been listed anyway, further up (here, as said, 14th vs. 8th position).

Any insight, both re google (and why they don't cut it) and re such sites appearing as unwanted intermediates? For current google (algorithms), that seems to be a viable business model, even though, like numerous other business models, it represents a public nuisance, too?



EDIT: I should have added this link, too, perhaps, but I didn't want to blur the above question; on the other hand, google's brilliant coverage could be related to that link, in some way: http://www.strategye...talmedia.com/pricing