topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Tuesday November 11, 2025, 7:29 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Recent Posts

Pages: prev • 1 ... 7 8 9 10 11 [12] 13 14 15 16 17 ... 23 • next
276
General Software Discussion / Re: how undo Norton 'safe search' in FF?
« Last post by bit on January 14, 2015, 03:10 PM »
This should help.
-eleman (January 14, 2015, 12:09 AM)
^success! :) tnx!  :Thmbsup:
277
General Software Discussion / Re: Beware of download sites
« Last post by bit on January 14, 2015, 02:42 PM »
@bit

 .. no gizmo's ?   :(  http://www.techsupportalert.com/  Gizmo's introduced me to DC.
-crabby3 (January 14, 2015, 06:08 AM)
tnx. ^gizmo's added to my last post & personal list :)

I didn't say 'yea or nay' to majorgeeks and leave that call to others.
278
General Software Discussion / how undo Norton 'safe search' in FF?
« Last post by bit on January 14, 2015, 12:05 AM »
1) This is for when you highlight a word, right-click on it for the drop-down menu, and choose a search engine to open results in a new page in Firefox.
2) I used to have it set to duckduckgo.
3) Then I decided to try adding Norton toolbar at the top of the FF browser.
4) Changed my mind, unchecked Norton toolbar.
5) Discovered Norton hijacked ^1) above in this post. >.<
6) I even went into FF Add-ons and disabled Norton Toolbar, but still can't get duckduckgo back as my preferred search engine.
279
General Software Discussion / Re: Beware of download sites
« Last post by bit on January 13, 2015, 10:14 PM »
How-To Geek has an interesting cautionary tale.
Why do nice things always have to go to crap?
-CWuestefeld (January 12, 2015, 10:54 AM)
A friend once told me over a decade ago crapware that does not uninstall itself properly is 'not polite', and ^this is so far beyond that, words fail me.
I tried to make my own 'good - bad' download sites list, but I'm not so sure anymore, but here's what I compiled:
Crapware sites:
Softonic
Brothersoft
CNET installs crapware/malware/trojans;
http://www.tomsguide...Nmap,news-13410.html
MajorGeeks is suspect.
Download.com

(possibly/maybe) Clean download sites:
http://LO4D.com
http://freewarebb.com
http://ninite.com
http://Softpedia.com
http://TechSpot.com
http://Filehippo.com
http://SnapFiles.com
http://fileforum.betanews.com
http://downloadcrew.com
http://www.techsupportalert.com/

I will cheerfully edit and amend my ^list according to approved comments.

Five stars: donationcoder

Installing Malwarebytes slowed my OS down so much that there is an 8 to 10 second pause after I click on any folder or program before it opens.
But after Malwarebytes rescued my machine from a few PUPs, I keep it installed permanently anyway in spite of the slowdown.

PS - as an afterthought, check out this thread.
280
General Software Discussion / Re: patchpae
« Last post by bit on January 04, 2015, 02:03 PM »
OK. Tnx everyone for the head's-up.
281
General Software Discussion / patchpae
« Last post by bit on January 03, 2015, 09:10 PM »
PatchPae is a Windows patch to enable Windows 7 32-bit to run up to 128GB of ram.
You can only run it with an N-Vidia card, which I have.
I tried installing the patch in cmd prompt with admin rights, and failed.
I wonder if there is any chance of someone creating an auto-loader/installer/patcher, or if one exists?

282
Living Room / Re: Happy Holidays!
« Last post by bit on December 25, 2014, 05:44 PM »
Cool Christmas card at LiveLeak.  8)
In all seriousness, every year that goes by with you guys and gals I realize more and more how wonderful and unlikely it all is.. It's a real pleasure to be in the company of all of you oddballs, freaks, soldiers, rebels, gentlemen, geniuses, and weirdos. and mouser  :Thmbsup:
-mouser (December 24, 2014, 05:13 PM)
^echo this. :)
Happy Holidays to you.
A nativity scene from Europe: (see attachment in previous post)
-Giampy (December 25, 2014, 04:10 AM)
^ditto this. :)
Merry Christmas everyone.
Jesus is the Reason for the Season. :)
283
General Software Discussion / Re: moon phase app?
« Last post by bit on December 18, 2014, 10:03 PM »
Moon Phase - runs directly as a Systray icon
MoonTool - minimise to have it run as a Systray icon

Both free.
-4wd (December 18, 2014, 03:24 PM)
I like MoonTool very much. I totally like the look of the little phase-changing moon in my systray. Tnx.  :)
284
General Software Discussion / moon phase app?
« Last post by bit on December 18, 2014, 03:02 PM »
I would like to find a moon phase app for Win 7 Desktop (or time-date area of systray), or Firefox (or Seamonkey), that is as minimal as possible and just shows the phase without a ton of auxiliary stuff?
Can't seem to find anything.
285
Living Room / Re: production salt-water pwrd car
« Last post by bit on December 16, 2014, 08:40 AM »
I used to have the same problem with my kitchen faucet, having to constantly replace the washers...until about 10 years ago when my new landlord replaced the faucet with one of these:
 (see attachment in previous post)
I don't know what brand he bought but it only cost him $20 and I have not had to change a washer, since.

He explained to me that the need to constantly replace the washers was caused by a worn seat, and the faucet I had was so old that it was impossible to find replacement seats for it. Therefore either he replaces the whole faucet or I would have to continue to keep replacing the washers on a regular basis, and eventually even that would not work any more, and the faucet would end up leaking, even with brand new washers installed. So, he can either replace the faucet now, or later. He chose now, and 10 years later, I am so glad that he did.
-app103 (December 16, 2014, 12:48 AM)
Yes, it's very nice-looking too. :)

Hidden fasteners really piss me off.  :)
-MilesAhead (December 16, 2014, 05:37 AM)
^agreed. :)
286
Living Room / Re: production salt-water pwrd car
« Last post by bit on December 15, 2014, 09:05 PM »
I posted here in DC about a year ago that my bathtub faucet washer seats, made of brass, would corrode and leak about once every month or two.
Regular as clockwork; every month or two, a leaking faucet.
I mention this here, because we're into 'planned obsolescence', and it would be so nice to have stainless steel faucet washers, but no, they gotta be cheap brass that causes problems.
I would have to shut off the water, dismantle the faucet handles, unscrew the faucet washer seats, which are threaded brass rings with recessed square inside holes for installing or removal.
Each $(%&^%# brass ring would be pocked with corrosion bumps, and have a slit worn through from inside to outside of the seat face where it mates with the rubber washer.
Once a leak starts dripping, the water just corrodes a neat little path through, leaving a tiny slit just like a hacksaw slot.
Then the chewed up brass washers would also have ruined the rubber washers, requiring new ones.
The plumbing industry had a real racket going, all at my expense.
So back then about a year ago, I got a brain storm.
I resanded the slot out (again, for the umpteenth time), and then I tried a new idea; I heated up the brass ring on a full size soldering iron, then puddled a ring of lead-free solder onto the brass facing.
Don't try it with a propane torch; the flame will oxidize the surface and the solder won't stick.
To avoid getting the solder on the threads of the brass rings and ruining them, I used micro-fine electrical soldering wire with its own built-in flux.
In fact, hit it with a propane torch first, to form an oxide coating that will prevent the solder bonding into the threads and ruining the brass washer.
Then sand the mating face to form a golden-colored pure brass finish to safely bond the solder only where you want it.
That gol-darn solder had an amazing tendency to create a high spot on one side and a low spot on the other every time, and almost drove me nuts.
It took me an hour, but I finally managed to compensate for this, get a good uniform layer, and sanded it down to a smooth finish, giving me two brass faucet washers each with a beautiful flat silvery-looking solder facing where it mates with the rubber washer.
Well, I am pleased to announce that ever since then, over one year now, both brass faucet washers do not leak to this day.
That solder plating works beautifully.
287
Living Room / Re: production salt-water pwrd car
« Last post by bit on December 15, 2014, 08:40 PM »
Then there is the spark plug racket, with the outdated 'finger' sparking design which is the only available design for automotive use, versus the magnitudes superior small plane spark plug which fires from all around a slotted circular rim and does not foul or burn out.

When I saw the documentary on the light bulb cartel and how they pressured all manufacturers to limit light bulb life to something like 3000 hours, I used to wonder how they could engineer that.
Then one day it came to me in a flash; just make sure a precise, miniscule amount of an oxidant like oxygen is left in the bulb where there should be a pure vacuum, and the tungsten filament is toast.
In the documentary, it showed an old light bulb that has been shining for close to 100 years by now.
I've wonder, how could you make a hand-blown glass light bulb like that.
But now we have LCDs which are even better, if only the price will come down to sensible levels.
I got an LCD replacement 'bulb' (it's not actually a bulb) for my cheap 2 D-cell flashlight.
It didn't fit, so I took a 1/2 inch bolt, put the end in a propane torch flame, and pressed it into the light bulb socket and reshaped it.
Chances were 10-to-1 I'd goof it up, but I managed to get a perfect fit, and now my flashlight is 2x or 3x as bright as before and the batteries go on forever without going dead.

288
Living Room / Re: production salt-water pwrd car
« Last post by bit on December 14, 2014, 12:56 AM »
Its not sea salt. Or anything remotely common or cheap.

Its an exotic chemical salt that makes this work, and the article grossly understates this fact.

Though it is certainly one of the more interesting energy solutions, its not going to be cheap or widespread unless the method of making the salt solution it consumes can be done on the cheap and has no lasting environmental consequences if it is spilled.


-SeraphimLabs (December 09, 2014, 03:05 PM)
That's too bad.
There are some designs that run on water, but one inventor was poisoned and his plans confiscated by the govt., and no other breakthroughs have reached the street level market.
Some high school kids came up with a Diesel that got 200mpg, and I guess big industry swooped on them and not another word was heard.
Some guy in Japan keeps promising a water-powered power generator, but so far it's just 'promises promises'.
I guess the 'car of tomorrow' is very aptly named; it's 'always tomorrow'.
289
Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies?
« Last post by bit on December 11, 2014, 10:59 PM »
Hachi: A Dog's Tale with Richard Gere.
I can just about guarantee you won't be dry-eyed by the time you finish watching this one.
290
Living Room / production salt-water pwrd car
« Last post by bit on December 09, 2014, 02:50 PM »
Purely aside from how way cool this car is, can you imagine a salt-water powered DC3 retro-airliner, or this NASA concept airliner, that guarantees if it crash-lands you won't be burned alive by all the spilled fuel?
291
Living Room / Re: Code Combat!
« Last post by bit on December 06, 2014, 06:31 PM »
^Yes, this is totally awesome.  :Thmbsup:
292
General Software Discussion / Re: how play Kindle for PC text-to-speech?
« Last post by bit on December 06, 2014, 06:09 PM »
With very small font I can select a lot of text on a Kindle Reader page.
But TA (TextAssist) only plays back a portion of it.
It may be that Kindle Reader limits its clipboard capacity to inhibit massive whole-book copying to defeat piracy.
I was getting half-page playbacks, and having to search really tiny font text to figure out where to reselect the remaining unplayed text.
To avoid this, I began increasing font size incrementally until selecting a whole page of text corresponded to how much TA would play back at once.
It's not that TA is limited to selection size, but that Kindle Reader has a deliberately arbitrarily small clipboard.
At least now I can just select an entire page in the Reader and be sure TA will play it all so I can just turn pages between playbacks.
293
General Software Discussion / Re: how play Kindle for PC text-to-speech?
« Last post by bit on December 06, 2014, 04:29 PM »
It would be nice to have a way to select all or more text in an entire Kindle ebook than a single page, for text to speech playback.
294
General Software Discussion / Re: how play Kindle for PC text-to-speech?
« Last post by bit on December 06, 2014, 03:58 PM »
I figured it out.
I use TextAssist 4.0 for all text-to-speech playback.
All I had to do was highlight the text with TA already started, and click on 'play'.
I also reduced text size to get more text on the screen and a longer playback between e-page turns.
Thank you.

PS - TextAssist is a very old program, from back in the days of WinXP or Win98.
It's only 'gliche' is that to make it work with Windows 7, you have to 'wake it up' first by playing any .flv video file for 2 seconds first, using FLVPlayer4free first (which I figured out through sheer blind persistence when I first installed Win7).
Then you can start TA safely and it works perfectly in Win7.
295
General Software Discussion / how play Kindle for PC text-to-speech?
« Last post by bit on December 06, 2014, 03:44 PM »
Is there a freebie way to get the free Kindle for PC to do text to speech?
Or a free app or freeware program to use with it?
I tried searching Google and can't seem to wade through all the ton of offers for tablet and handheld device reader apps to find anything.
296
General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox update download trap
« Last post by bit on December 06, 2014, 03:41 PM »
Aside from the other remedies, I would suggest switching to Firefox Portable, then you can create a couple of backup copies and number them with suffixes, as 'Firefox bkup 1', 'Firefox bkup 2'.
Then if everything gets hopelessly goofed on your active copy, export your bookmarks.html file to Desktop, rename a backup copy to be the active copy (temporarily rename the goofed copy 'Firefox goofed' before deleting it), then import your up-to-date bookmarks.html.

^re: [I thought "sneak snack snuk" was better but online reference says I should write "sneaked."]
You could also write or say 'snook'. :)
297
ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer Auto Start NOT working in Windows 7 Starter
« Last post by bit on December 04, 2014, 03:20 AM »
Process Tames doesn't auto start with windows. Please help!

Thank you!


SOLVED! Please delete this post. Thank you!
-johndoe (May 25, 2014, 01:45 AM)
How did you fix it? Same problem.
-bit (December 03, 2014, 06:51 PM)

Hi! I used Task Scheduler to start the Program Automatically when the Windows Starts.
-johndoe (December 03, 2014, 08:43 PM)
Hi, no soap I'm afraid.
I set it up with Task Scheduler okay, but then on Boot when ProcessTamer tried to start automatically, the screen dimmed and a pop-up 'User Account Control' window appeared asking me if I wanted to approve of this program making changes to my computer.
The UAC allows me to change its response levels, and I lowered the slider from Level 3 (Windows recommended) to Level 2 (not rec'd), which eliminates the screen dimming action, but it still required me to give approval every time.
So I moved the UAC's slider down to Level 1 to totally stop using it, in order to get it to stop blocking automatic 'start on boot' of ProcessTamer, and two other programs stopped working properly; SurfSolo (a paid tunneled & encrypted VPN) and f.lux.
In fact, SurfSolo normally never self-starts the way I've got it set up, and it was trying to self-start but failing to connect.
So I had to put UAC back to Level 3, and delete the Task Scheduler task to start PT on boot, to get SurfSolo and f.lux working properly again.
It's no biggie; one click and PT starts very nicely, so I'm not going to worry about it.
Thank you for the info anyway though; almost had it figured out there. :)

UAC is supposed to help prevent unwanted PUPs and malware from self-installing, so it's not so bad having it set to Level 3 like that I guess. :)

BTW, I never knew about Task Scheduler before, and now I've got a very useful tool to play with. Thanks again!  :Thmbsup:
298
ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer Auto Start NOT working in Windows 7 Starter
« Last post by bit on December 03, 2014, 06:51 PM »
Process Tames doesn't auto start with windows. Please help!

Thank you!


SOLVED! Please delete this post. Thank you!
-johndoe (May 25, 2014, 01:45 AM)
How did you fix it? Same problem.
299
General Software Discussion / Re: ProcessTamer not self-starting on boot
« Last post by bit on December 03, 2014, 06:36 PM »
I've just speed tested Process Tamer [PT] on a 32-bits Win 7.
After re-booting the laptop, PT was both starting and working as promised.

However, you might want to start a thread >here (over there)<, so mouser for certain will notice your questions.

-Curt (December 03, 2014, 06:11 PM)
Tnx. There are 3 PT threads there now. Which one, plz? :)
300
General Software Discussion / ProcessTamer not self-starting on boot
« Last post by bit on December 03, 2014, 05:45 PM »
I just installed ProcessTamer, and have high hopes for fewer BSODs and lock-ups.
I already set them to high priority, but why would I want to click on 'force high priority' for ProcessTamer and the 'front end' PT GUI themselves?

(edit)
Any idea why Process Tamer won't self-start in Win7?
I checked the box for it to start on boot and also entered my DC key, but it won't do that.

(edit)
My Norton Startup Manager says ProcessTamer is on its 'start on boot' list, but PTs 'front end' says it's not running at boot, and I have to manually click the Desktop icon to make its icon appear in System Tray.

(edit)
My Norton Startup Manager says ProcessTamer is on its 'start on boot' list, but PTs 'front end' says it's not running at boot, and I have to manually click the Desktop icon to make its icon appear in System Tray. My OS is Win 7 32-bit.
Nice program! Thmbsup
Pages: prev • 1 ... 7 8 9 10 11 [12] 13 14 15 16 17 ... 23 • next