Recent Posts

2776

Living Room / Re: Shiny Disco Balls

« Last post by app103 on June 18, 2010, 03:33 PM »

And just 2 years before that (1977), Jean Michel Jarre released this timeless classic:

http://www.youtube.c...t?p=CDA9B9BD30F40AB0

http://en.wikipedia....rg/wiki/Oxyg%C3%A8ne

-app103 (June 17, 2010, 02:17 AM)

THANK-YOU!

For pointing that out! Loved it! I will definitely have to go out and buy that.

-Renegade (June 17, 2010, 06:19 AM)

If you want a real trip into the odd and before his time stuff, Jarre did an album back in 1972 (Deserted Palace) that you can no longer purchase, that will take you on a trip to the land of game music, long before the days of video games.

2777

General Software Discussion / Re: Quora invite request

« Last post by app103 on June 18, 2010, 02:46 PM »

I have been a Quora member for awhile and do have invites to give away.

Any member that wants an invite, just PM me your request, along with an email address to send it to.

You have to use your real name to set up the account, but you can ask, answer, and follow questions anonymously.

2778

Living Room / Re: Shiny Disco Balls

« Last post by app103 on June 17, 2010, 02:17 AM »

And just 2 years before that (1977), Jean Michel Jarre released this timeless classic:

http://www.youtube.c...t?p=CDA9B9BD30F40AB0

http://en.wikipedia....rg/wiki/Oxyg%C3%A8ne

2779

General Software Discussion / Re: Can i upgrade to MS-DOS v6 or v6.22

« Last post by app103 on June 08, 2010, 10:35 AM »

32bit versions of NT did also include 16bit command.com (and a bunch of the other dos tools, although some are 32bit console apps and some are 16bit dos apps) - up to and including XP

-f0dder (June 08, 2010, 07:16 AM)

I don't have a NT4 vm handy here at the office, but command.com in Win2k/XP?!? Where? I've seen (and frequently used) Edit.com in 2k & XP - But I ain't never seen a command.com.

-Stoic Joker (June 08, 2010, 09:48 AM)

He's right. It's in my XP.

Screenshot:

2780

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Vendr.com Beta invite code (good for first 100 people)

« Last post by app103 on June 08, 2010, 10:05 AM »

They provide a snip of code to add to your site that creates a tab at the top of the page for your store. When clicked, the store opens up as an overlay on your site, which means your site visitors never have to leave your page to shop.

What I thought was really nice is that you sell your own products, not someone else's. So you could use this to sell your own software, ebooks, music, and other digital content that you have produced. Or you could use it to sell hard goods, as an alternative to etsy or ebay.

2781

Found Deals and Discounts / Vendr.com Beta invite code (good for first 100 people)

« Last post by app103 on June 08, 2010, 08:50 AM »

I was contacted recently by Vendr and asked to review their service on one of my blogs. The particular blog they wanted me to post it on (Snailware), it really doesn't fit with the theme of the blog (it's not desktop software for old computers), so I replied and declined.

They responded to my reply and informed me that the beta code they supplied in the original email, for inclusion in my article to be used by my readers, is still mine to give away to other people in any way I wish.

So, I figured I'd post it here in case anyone is interested in trying out their service.

This invite code is good for the first 100 people that use it to sign up for their closed beta.

MVA750CGY2

For more information on what exactly Vendr is, please refer to this article: http://thenextweb.co...eb-store-beta-codes/

2782

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Problem with Avatar Image

« Last post by app103 on June 07, 2010, 11:04 PM »

Upload your animated avatar somewhere else and enter the url, instead.

If you upload it here on the forum, it will be converted to PNG and that will kill the animation.

2783

Living Room / Re: Is a college education worth the money?

« Last post by app103 on June 07, 2010, 05:55 PM »

According to the Times, eight out of the ten job categories that will add the most employees during the next decade—including home-health aide, customer-service representative, and store clerk—can be performed by someone without a college degree. “Professor Vedder likes to ask why fifteen percent of mail carriers have bachelor’s degrees,” the paper reported.

You can get a job as a store clerk in a lot of places without a college degree. Lots will even hire you without a high school diploma. But there are places that won't even accept your application unless you are either a college student or have a degree in something, anything.

Try getting a job in my local Barnes & Noble's with nothing but a high school diploma and see how far it will get you.

They won't even hire you to sweep their floors or clean their toilets without evidence of a college education, either in progress or completed. They don't even care about experience. You could have 20 years worth of experience, a proven track record of competence, come highly recommended by your previous employers, but without that college education, they aren't going to even let you get your little toe in the door.

Once upon a time all you needed to get a low paying minimum wage job was a high school diploma, if that. Now days, for a lot of the same jobs you need to at least spend the $5000 to get an associates degree (in anything) at your local community college, for the same jobs.

I think part of the problem is that it's possible to get a high school diploma in many areas without even being able to read, where it's not as likely that you could get even the bare minimum of an associates degree, anywhere, without evidence of basic literacy skills.

2784

Living Room / Re: Why do we always wait for apple's stuff before making a i[blank]-killer??

« Last post by app103 on June 07, 2010, 01:14 AM »

Even all you haters...I know you've walked into an Apple store and had fun trying out the gadgets.  Don't lie!!

-superboyac (June 06, 2010, 11:51 PM)

I have never been in an Apple store. I have never even seen one in the real world. I have seen photos of them and they don't look like some place my sensible frugal self belongs.

You KNOW most people care about the UI, so put some effort into it!  Geez, I mean seriously.  Even if I were SOny's CEO and I was a poweruser, it would stupid of me to keep seeing apple succeed because of UI, and Sony keep failing because of UI (or other similar issues).  if there's a problem, fix it!  If you can improve yourself, then do so!

-superboyac (June 06, 2010, 11:51 PM)

My daughter replaced her iPod with a Sony MP3 player and now she is a very happy girl.

She hated iTunes so much that she loaded all her favorite music onto her iPod and uninstalled iTunes (and all the other useless crap it came bundled with), and never changed the music on the iPod for about 3 years.

She isn't a computer geek. She gets easily frustrated when software goes and makes changes on her system without asking, that she doesn't know how to undo. That's what iTunes did to her PC. It forced her to install Quicktime which hijacked her preferences for handling certain media file types in her browser. It made it rather difficult for her to download music because Quicktime would end up playing it in her browser instead of letting her save the file.

I walked her through fixing the issue not once, not twice, but at least 3 times, because various updates from Apple would just end up messing up her settings again.

Now I didn't know she went and uninstalled all of that stuff after the last time I helped her, so when I set up her laptop for her again after she kept getting hit with malware and it trashed her system (Thank you, Sun!), I installed iTunes along with all her other software. She completely freaked out when she saw the iTunes icon on her taskbar and demanded I get that malware off her laptop.

When she went shopping for a replacement for her iPod, she had 2 requirements:

• long battery life
• no crazy software needed to put music onto it

The Sony she bought fit both of those and had a decent amount of storage space too.

2785

Living Room / Re: Why do we always wait for apple's stuff before making a i[blank]-killer??

« Last post by app103 on June 06, 2010, 09:15 AM »

Mouser, you hit it on the head. They don't sell a product. They sell an experience. From the design of their stores to the design of their packaging, it's meant to make you feel special, pampered, and people love the feeling. It's not just about hardware, software, or customer service.

There was this toy store in NYC that had a similar approach to business. You could buy your Legos at Toys-R-Us for less money, or you could get your Legos from this toy store and pay a lot more. They were the same Legos, and people bought them there for the higher price, because of the whole experience the store gave them. They made kids feel like they had just visited a magical world where everything came directly from Santa's workshop, and they made adults feel like kids again. And for that experience, people were willing to shell out the bucks. It really wasn't about the toys.

2786

Living Room / Re: A warning from History

« Last post by app103 on June 05, 2010, 11:10 AM »

It's the implementation that's the problem; not the ideas.

Could you elaborate?

-Paul Keith (June 05, 2010, 07:09 AM)

I think what she means is that someone still has to do the work (and that's a lot of work).

2787

General Software Discussion / Re: X-Setup Pro now free, but abandoned

« Last post by app103 on June 03, 2010, 04:45 PM »

I found this post from TeX on the MG forum that explains better what happened, and also explains what WUG is:

Howdy!

Now this is what you call a bad start: My first post to the MG forums and it’s about why we shut down X-Setup Pro

Thanks for the encouragements we have receive in the last days, we highly appreciate this.

Now to clear up that "WUG" confusion: It is NOT the Windows User Group it was, "Windmeier UG" the company of Eric. UG is a German registered company, like LLC or Inc. in the US. Don’t ask me why, but our lawyer recommended it to write it that way.

And finally a question: Would it be possible that MG could host the portable and U3 version of XSP also? I’m getting a lot of requests about this. I know we can’t support XSP anymore, but given the requests I receive I think it would help some users.

http://forums.majorg...=1495880#post1495880

2788

Living Room / Re: How The Mainstream Media Stole Our News Story Without Credit

« Last post by app103 on June 03, 2010, 12:16 PM »

I have noticed quite often that TV news broadcasts often credit "Twitter" as being where they get a tip for a news story, not actually crediting the blogger they are following or the site the link they clicked lead them to, as the actual source. It seems like it's cool and trendy to stick the word "twitter" into everything, as a substitute for proper credit.

I am sure they know that Twitter is service with millions of people and not a single entity posting all that stuff, so there is no excuse for what they are doing.

And before that they credited just "the internet" as if it was all published by one entity, too. So this is a practice that has been going on for quite some time and it shows no signs of letting up. In fact, it seems as though it's getting worse.

2789

Living Room / How The Mainstream Media Stole Our News Story Without Credit

« Last post by app103 on June 03, 2010, 11:51 AM »

You hear so much crying from the mainstream media about bloggers stealing and republishing their content without credit, but you rarely hear about the reverse, where the mainstream media is ripping off bloggers and not giving them proper credit, not disclosing them as the source of their information. But it does happen and probably more often than we know about.

Here is one such case of the mainstream media ripping off a blogger and not giving him the credit he should have had, and in many cases giving someone else the credit, instead.

On Friday, I broke a tasty story about a woman suing Google, claiming bad directions caused her to get hit by a vehicle. Today, I discover our story is everywhere, often with no attribution. Come along and watch how the mainstream media, which often claims bloggers rip it off, does a little stealing of its own.

Woman Follows Google Maps “Walking” Directions, Gets Hit, Sues was the story I posted on Friday afternoon, Pacific Time. I was tipped to the lawsuit by Gary Price of ResourceShelf. Gary hadn’t written about it himself but thought Search Engine Land would be interested in it. He came across it through the regular monitoring of search-related news that he does across a variety of resources (Gary watches many, many things — he’s a research guru extraordinaire). Gary downloaded a copy of the suit via the PACER Service and sent it to me.

No one had written about the case before I put my article up. I know. I checked before publishing. There was nothing out there. So what happened next?

http://daggle.com/ma...ws-story-credit-1906

2790

Living Room / Re: So when do the iads law suits start?

« Last post by app103 on June 01, 2010, 05:51 PM »

HP should sue apple. ipad is much too close to ipaq. 

2791

Living Room / Re: So when do the iads law suits start?

« Last post by app103 on June 01, 2010, 03:03 PM »

Those are not "iads". 

A lowercase "i", usually in a circle, is more or less the universal symbol for "information".

2792

General Software Discussion / Re: What to use to back up 1:1 ?

« Last post by app103 on June 01, 2010, 07:40 AM »

Isn't Seagate owned by Western Digital (or vice versa)?

-Darwin (June 01, 2010, 07:39 AM)

No. You are thinking of Maxtor, which is now owned by Seagate.

2793

Living Room / Re: Google Ditches Windows on Security Concerns

« Last post by app103 on May 31, 2010, 10:01 PM »

Either Google is not telling the complete truth and will be running Windows, at least in a VM, or they have plans on releasing future versions of their Chrome browser (and other software) for Windows, without them ever having been tested on Windows.

2794

Living Room / Re: Does DRM Kill the End of a Movie??!?

« Last post by app103 on May 31, 2010, 03:53 PM »

are you sure?

2795

Living Room / Re: Does DRM Kill the End of a Movie??!?

« Last post by app103 on May 31, 2010, 03:22 PM »

I know it is DVD's that we are talking about, but something similar started happening to music CD's in one of my computers about 5-6 years ago. Everything would be fine till it got to one point on the disk, then I couldn't get it to play past that. Couldn't even skip ahead to the next track. I could skip back though, just to have it repeat again when it got to the same spot.

The CD's worked fine in any other player or computer.

It started happening more frequently, and with CD's that used to work in that drive. That's when I knew it was a drive issue and not really the fault of the disk (and there was no DRM involved, or that would have just caused an immediate software crash, and it wouldn't have played at all)

I am not sure how old your TV is, or if you might need to have the drive cleaned, but maybe that is a possibility, too.

What I am trying to say is it could be either dying or dirty.

2796

Developer's Corner / Re: "Rites of Passage" applications

« Last post by app103 on May 30, 2010, 09:14 PM »

I think it depends on the particular culture you find yourself surrounded with when you start learning.

For many where I began, a chat client was a "rite of passage". In my WinMX programming chat room there must have been at least 10 of them made, some of them with chatbots included.

Then there was the "competition" on the network to see who could create the best WinMX compatible chat server.

Then the gazillion plugins for everything related to any software used on the network...most notably, Winamp/WinMX compatible chat room music spammers. (I could kick myself repeatedly for coming up with the idea for the first one) Any piece of information they could grab from somewhere else and display in the chat room, they did it, from system information, running processes, translations, google searches...the works. It made the network a crazy place.

You weren't one of the cool kids unless you made something to "enhance" someone else's winmx experience. I used to get teased for not being interested in making any of that stuff. I was content to make stuff for use outside of WinMX, like a text editor, a mini browser, a desktop clock, etc.

And it didn't stop on that network...it started all over again when we branched out to Ares Galaxy, and that was before it was open source. Renko (one of my mentors) opened a chat room there and developed a chat server with a built in javascript interpreter and debugger that could do absolutely amazing things (Arca Eclipse)....for the purpose of teaching all the kids there how to program, too. (he was the original instigator of the WinMX coding fury)

2797

General Software Discussion / Re: Popup Translator Shootout?

« Last post by app103 on May 30, 2010, 09:17 AM »

There is also Fried Babelfish which was a NANY 2009 submission from Krishean and myself, that is fairly simple, has 2 tabs for easily switching between 2 languages (good for doing 2-way stuff a lot quicker), it's portable, and uses Google Translator, which means it has that auto-detect language feature, useful when you have no idea what language the text you want to translate is in. (does require internet access to make it work)

It doesn't automatically copy to the clipboard, but that is something I am planning on adding at some point. I'd like to make it useful for 2-way translating of chat room text, for use with any chat client. This might not be a feature I add in the near future, though.

The Delphi/javascript source is included, if you (or anyone else) feels like improving it.

2798

General Software Discussion / Re: Facebook exploit Fail!

« Last post by app103 on May 30, 2010, 08:47 AM »

I asked about this awhile back on Quora, where a number of facebook employees have accounts and answer questions, and the reply I got was to email [email protected] and tell them what the problem is and give a link to the group.

2799

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Axialis Software 50% off sale, until May 31st 2010

« Last post by app103 on May 30, 2010, 08:32 AM »

I love their screensaver producer.

2800

Living Room / Re: website maker?

« Last post by app103 on May 29, 2010, 11:47 AM »

I came across this today:

A set of plugins for the Chrome browser, one of which is capable of identifying various CMS's.

Discover What Powers Your Favorite Websites