Recent Posts

251

General Software Discussion / Re: Neowin reviews Windows 8 - Leave your pre-conceived notions at the door

« Last post by eleman on October 26, 2012, 03:29 PM »

I feel like in 10 years, most of us here on dc are going to be using some kind of linux based build your own OS type of thing.

-superboyac (October 25, 2012, 11:43 PM)

My personal opinion is that we (the generation that remembers 1980s, the rise and fall of commodore et al., the rise of PC and MS) will continue using windows 7, or 9 (which will be the last one to offer a usable desktop mode if my conspiracy theories are correct) till we die. If I am still able to make well use of XP 11 years after its release, I will definitely be able to use 7 for at least 20 years. (Just like a friend of my father who still used a typewriter till his death in 2006.)

Some of us will be claiming in 2047 that MS really f.cked up with windows 18, and that this time people will really flock to linux, which -curiously- still won't have half decent drivers for nvidia video cards or a usable replacement for X.

The ithingie-facebook generation will not care, and each year they will be buying the new ipad n (35>n>25), which still won't have a USB port; or will be forced to use OEM loaded windows 18 and all the crapware installed by the OEMs, which will not be uninstallable on windows 18 ultimate pro HD OEM version. They won't care, because all they will be doing is to watch DRM locked expensive videos of mickey mouse, which will still be under copyright thanks to retroactive extensions of copyright term, twice, legislated with the intent of providing creative incentives for Walt Disney, who is still dead for 80 years. The videos will have lots and lots of advertisement by google, and they will be published by turnermsnbcaolfoxdisneywarner.

ed.: couldn't stop myself from ranting on copyrights.

252

General Software Discussion / Re: Neowin reviews Windows 8 - Leave your pre-conceived notions at the door

« Last post by eleman on October 24, 2012, 09:31 AM »

@eleman - if you're going to continue clouding up this thread with logic and common sense it's going to end up being a very short discussion.

-40hz (October 24, 2012, 09:30 AM)

hahaha

253

General Software Discussion / Re: Neowin reviews Windows 8 - Leave your pre-conceived notions at the door

« Last post by eleman on October 24, 2012, 09:24 AM »

Why? I like my notions better than a corporate product.

-eleman (October 24, 2012, 08:52 AM)

It seems that what the reviewer is saying (after reading the review) is that if you put your preconceived notions aside and give it a chance, you'll see that it's not what everyone thinks.  Not sure about the conclusions he draws, but the statement is quite valid.

-wraith808 (October 24, 2012, 09:16 AM)

Everyone's word against his (or her).
The PR machines of corporations really bore me. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I lived in a crowded city one day too much, but I can't bring myself to read reviews of how microsoft's latest os rules, or how apple's latest gadget is coolest, or how amd's latest chip will really turn the tide. They almost never live up to the hype, so I just end up wasting my time reading and thinking about them.

I'm happy with my eleven year old os, 4 year old cpu, and 4 year old nokia dumb phone. And my notions

254

General Software Discussion / Re: Neowin reviews Windows 8 - Leave your pre-conceived notions at the door

« Last post by eleman on October 24, 2012, 08:52 AM »

Before you read another word of this review, I need you to do something very important. Take all of your preconceived notions about what Windows is today and what you are familiar with, and put them aside. It’s time to reinvent the desktop OS and Microsoft is leading the charge.

Source

-Josh (October 24, 2012, 08:48 AM)

Why? I like my notions better than a corporate product.

255

General Software Discussion / Re: PastePath 1.0.0.0

« Last post by eleman on October 22, 2012, 11:38 AM »

Clever. Thank you

256

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Readyboost for me ?

« Last post by eleman on October 17, 2012, 01:44 PM »

No it's not.

Readyboost is a marketing gimmick Microsoft came up with to soften the blow of complaints about hardware requirements of Vista. It won't do much good, and it won't do any good at all if your swap file is on an SSD drive.

257

General Software Discussion / Re: ExploitShield

« Last post by eleman on October 16, 2012, 04:38 PM »

Legal scareware?

258

General Software Discussion / Re: Does the browser Opera suck?

« Last post by eleman on October 11, 2012, 01:21 AM »

My personal view of Opera after three attempts to use it: "too different to switch to at my age [35]". And also it failed to render some pages correctly (this is probably caused by web designers' faults in standards compliance, rather than Opera, but in any case, why should I bother?)

259

Living Room / Re: Promised Land

« Last post by eleman on October 09, 2012, 01:23 AM »

 And perhaps if you had read the whole post, you would have seen who the author was....  Either way, I still agree with his writings, Keynes or not.

-Tinman57 (October 08, 2012, 07:40 PM)

Uh, that line looks like a signature liNe, so I must have omitted it


ed: corrected typo (see the letter N, it was k)

260

Living Room / Re: Promised Land

« Last post by eleman on October 07, 2012, 10:24 PM »

Sorry to hear that you felt so depressed.

But if you have the concrete proof that Hayek's economic theories work better than those of Keynes, as you sound to have, write an economics paper and get famous. That will make you much less suicidal than the Pakistani guys.

261

General Software Discussion / Re: I may be the last one to learn about this, but...

« Last post by eleman on October 06, 2012, 09:54 AM »

Locking out a massive user base (those who have used desktop forever and still need to) will not be easy. ... Even Apple would have failed if they want/wanted that fully on Mac computers.

-rgdot (October 06, 2012, 01:32 AM)

Uh, Apple does it all the time. Remember the transition from 68000 to Powerpc?
From classic os to os x?
From Powerpc to x86?

Just dump the old API. Provide a crude emulator. Let the PR machine roll and tell the story that the emulator works marvellously, and you shouldn't need it anyway.

Wait and see that the PR machine of MS telling the story of how you don't need legacy desktop applications anyway, and if you need them, there is a virtualization solution in win9.

Granted that Microsoft does not have the hypnotism powers Apple has over the media, this may fail, but the failure is far from certain.

-eleman (October 06, 2012, 02:36 AM)

Yes, but to me hardware changes or programs not running on new code is very different than having the walled garden.
The temptation to do the former has existed at MS too, for a long time, believe me.

-rgdot (October 06, 2012, 09:49 AM)

Uh, I gave the examples of dumping existing user bases out in the cold, not erecting walled gardens

262

General Software Discussion / Re: I may be the last one to learn about this, but...

« Last post by eleman on October 06, 2012, 02:36 AM »

Locking out a massive user base (those who have used desktop forever and still need to) will not be easy. ... Even Apple would have failed if they want/wanted that fully on Mac computers.

-rgdot (October 06, 2012, 01:32 AM)

Uh, Apple does it all the time. Remember the transition from 68000 to Powerpc?
From classic os to os x?
From Powerpc to x86?

Just dump the old API. Provide a crude emulator. Let the PR machine roll and tell the story that the emulator works marvellously, and you shouldn't need it anyway.

Wait and see that the PR machine of MS telling the story of how you don't need legacy desktop applications anyway, and if you need them, there is a virtualization solution in win9.

Granted that Microsoft does not have the hypnotism powers Apple has over the media, this may fail, but the failure is far from certain.

263

General Software Discussion / Re: I may be the last one to learn about this, but...

« Last post by eleman on October 06, 2012, 01:08 AM »

I know this news sucks, but isn't also probably true that someone like ad muncher will just implement windows 8 ad blocking features into their programs?  Also, same issue with the desktop/metro thing...wouldn't someone (rather quickly) create a program to default send the user to the desktop?  Just like how DOPus can replace your windows explorer?

(I'm not being sarcastic.)

-superboyac (October 05, 2012, 08:04 PM)

These are just temporary solutions to a problem which will decisively go worse by time.
Just watch it when visual studio 2015 or something stops supporting desktop applications.
Or when windows 9 makes it much harder to get a desktop, which will be completely deprecated by win10 anyway.

If people wanted a closed ecosystem, they would go apple, wouldn't they. But, what do the people know in any case. They will just buy the latest hype.

264

General Software Discussion / Re: Antivirus-less setup

« Last post by eleman on September 28, 2012, 08:33 AM »

what other security measures do you take  (if any) ?

-tomos (September 28, 2012, 07:23 AM)

I wish there were an equivalent of chroot jail on Windows, but there's not. So what I ended up doing is setting up the mail client in a VM. It's not the most convenient option, but it's a very simple one.

-apankrat (September 28, 2012, 08:29 AM)

Uh, why not simply disable the js, activex, and similar garbage in the mail client? Even using plain text instead of rich text formats is a viable option.

265

General Software Discussion / Re: Antivirus-less setup

« Last post by eleman on September 28, 2012, 03:07 AM »

Last I knew on Windows the big problem was ambient Drive-By attacks that involved no user interaction at at all. There was a meme at one point that a Windows Box "busy patching" with no AV would get hacked in a matter of hours.

-TaoPhoenix (September 28, 2012, 02:50 AM)

Usual windows boxes at homes sit behind blank NAT tables of DSL modems. So the chances are not that high even for vanilla windows xp boxes to get infected without a user browsing penis enlargement sites.

Though machines on universities or other places with a direct internet connection or boxes in large LANs would be subject to this criticism.

266

General Software Discussion / Re: Antivirus-less setup

« Last post by eleman on September 28, 2012, 02:54 AM »

I do that for maybe 10 years, without the VM, with occasional use of virustotal.

267

Living Room / Re: Barebone server: what else do I need to complete it?

« Last post by eleman on September 27, 2012, 12:48 PM »

Yup, buy the server, add the cpu, mix with some ram, leave in the oven for 20 minutes, you're ready to go.

Though this server has 10 sata interfaces, you won't be able to cram in 20 sata drives.

-eleman (September 27, 2012, 12:35 PM)

yeah, I was confused by that also.  What would I need to do to be able to use all 24 drives (SATA)?

-superboyac (September 27, 2012, 12:39 PM)

There are pci-x expansion cards which provide additional sata ports. But I can't figure out how many pci-x1 slots this server has.

268

Living Room / Re: Barebone server: what else do I need to complete it?

« Last post by eleman on September 27, 2012, 12:35 PM »

Yup, buy the server, add the cpu, mix with some ram, leave in the oven for 20 minutes, you're ready to go.

Though this server has 10 sata interfaces, you won't be able to cram in 20 sata drives.

269

Living Room / Re: In Search Of Good Web Based RSS Reader

« Last post by eleman on September 18, 2012, 02:53 AM »

It sometimes automatically marks old items read, but I am not sure if it is based on a 30 days rule or some other mechanism.

270

Living Room / Re: In Search Of Good Web Based RSS Reader

« Last post by eleman on September 18, 2012, 02:38 AM »

Turn off the "In expanded view, mark items as read when you scroll past them." option in google reader.

You may also like the following greasemonkey scripts for Google Reader:

Google Reader Sanity

Google Reader Subscribers Count

GReader Favicon Alerts

Smart Google Subscriber

271

Living Room / Re: Cascading grammar trolls

« Last post by eleman on September 18, 2012, 01:51 AM »

excelent 

-phitsc (September 18, 2012, 01:30 AM)

not a chance, no one here will fall for that

PS you spelt excelent wrong

-Target (September 18, 2012, 01:41 AM)

Next time put a : after PS, wiil you?

272

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 15 less of a memory hog

« Last post by eleman on August 30, 2012, 06:09 AM »

Hey calm down. Don't get into a fight over a letter. From now on, everybody call firefox "FI".
OK?

273

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 15 less of a memory hog

« Last post by eleman on August 29, 2012, 11:55 PM »

There I was thinking I am keeping up with firefox changes  

-rgdot (August 29, 2012, 11:32 PM)

While you're trying to keep up with FF versions, could you do me a small favour and count the drops of water in the ocean, and grains of sand in the desert and tell me which is more?

-Renegade (August 29, 2012, 11:51 PM)

Definitely the drops in the ocean.

BTW, Firefox Extended Support Release is here.

I was looking forward to the fruits of memshrink project, the one that aims to reduce memory hog. As of FF15, the efforts reached to their zenith. From now on, the law of diminishing returns apply. So I'll jump in the Extended Support Release bandwagon when they release FF17.

274

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 15 less of a memory hog

« Last post by eleman on August 29, 2012, 11:26 PM »

My personal conclusion is flash is the guiltiest, not the only one, but guiltiest. I am running a portable firefox with flashblock and there is a difference with another running parallel to it without flashblock.

-rgdot (August 29, 2012, 11:11 PM)

As of FF14 you don't need flashblock. FF now includes the functionality of flashblock. See this link.

It doesn't have the whitelisting function yet, but one less add-on, one less memory hole I believe.

275

General Software Discussion / Re: Arranges in a txt file

« Last post by eleman on August 13, 2012, 12:17 AM »

Open the file in notepad (or word, or any text editor you like). Get to search and replace function (ctrl-h usually).
Replace all instances of   ,   with    ","
Adjust spaces as you like.

-eleman (August 12, 2012, 10:21 AM)

and the commas at the beginning and the end ?

-Contro (August 12, 2012, 05:08 PM)

uh... there were none in your sample text