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2801

Living Room / Re: Lifetime access to up-to-date info -- is this the future of the textbook?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 24, 2012, 07:48 AM »

The only notable exception (so far) is xyplorer, and I am not convinced it won't change - just that it hasn't yet.  I can only imagine this idea will suffer a similar fate if they try to accomplish everything claimed above.

-steeladept (June 27, 2011, 07:45 AM)

The big advantages of a lifetime license are: (1) Extremely satisfied users that will spread the word (viral marketing). (2) Less overhead (non-coding work) for the developer: Every 10th customer or so needs support in how to pay or how and where to enter the license key. Lifetime license customers are usually "set and forget" regarding these things.

So there are no plans at all to drop the XYplorer lifetime license. It works great! But it will get more expensive (because currently it is just too cheap for the value).

-DonL (July 04, 2011, 05:05 AM)

I'm gonna get a bit fierce here and say there simply isn't a "lifetime license". It's supposed to mean "lifetime of our user", but far far more often than not it means "the life of our business division before either we change course or someone else buys us and changes it for us."

I'd prefer a fixed-year license, such as 7-12 years. Then the company has a chance to get some angel funding to ride them out and hope to come out the other side, rather than an eternal albatross that ends up being a long term loss.

Unfortunately for some customers like me, the cognitive dissonance of listening to marketing mentioning "Lifetime _____", but knowing it *will* eventually vanish, leads for an occasional sour thought about truth in advertising. After all, when someone closes up shop and says "so sorry, so long and thanks for all the fish", the customer with the "Lifetime ______" is left with the bitter feeling of "I told you so" but no one to satisfyingly tell it to.

2802

Living Room / Re: Lifetime access to up-to-date info -- is this the future of the textbook?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 24, 2012, 07:36 AM »

As a college student, I love the idea! I am sick of paying for books which quickly grow out of date, or paying 200 dollars for the latest edition of a book when nothing really has changed from the first edition.

I am trying a little experiment with my next 2 classes to see if I can make it through them WITHOUT purchasing the textbooks, relying solely on online information and journals.

That said, I would gladly buy books, or services as they were, in this fashion. This is a great idea!

-Josh (June 27, 2011, 06:50 AM)

Hi Josh,
Interesting idea to see if you can make it through without buying the textbook. Just a tip or two to be aware of:
- I have noticed the type and especially the mix of the content in a textbook is sometimes/often hard to completely duplicate in fragmented online form, because the higher level info seems to be behind journal paywalls.
- "You can't learn what you don't know is there" so let's say in biology they take three pages discussing the similarities of St. John's Wort to SSRI class anti-depressants, you'd be blindsided unless you knew to look for approximately equal content online. If you didn't even know "it was on the test" then you'd lose a few questions on a test.

2803

Point Motivator / Re: Point Motivator a big software

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 23, 2012, 07:07 PM »

"I could install Motivator software but I don't feel like it." 

2804

Living Room / Re: Facts about Facts?

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 23, 2012, 07:06 PM »

Most of that stuff was just "kinda neat", but feels a bit peripheral to how regular life feels. The winner of the article is the Driverless Car. That's the one I think will lead to wholesale cultural adjustments. (But can they handle NY Cabbies using legally-questionable moves!?)

2805

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Expert PDF 8 Professional

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 23, 2012, 01:33 PM »

http://computelogy.c...-8-business-edition/

-cmpm (December 19, 2012, 01:31 AM)

I downloaded the trial today. It may not be bad if you need a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat, but the interface layout just felt a little strange to me coming off of Adobe X with their sliding "Vertical Menu Bar".

2806

Living Room / Re: The Rant Thread!

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 11:54 PM »

The rants go marching two by two, hurrah!

Do only paid members get to see the basement?

2807

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 03:33 PM »

"This video is not available in your country" 

-Stephen66515 (December 22, 2012, 11:20 AM)

Blecch again. I didn't know that even generic news videos were that locked down!

-TaoPhoenix (December 22, 2012, 11:29 AM)

Apparently so...Could you record the video and post it here? (Living in the UK,  I'm not used to seeing those screens lol)

-Stephen66515 (December 22, 2012, 02:46 PM)

Sorry Stephen, I have to leave that to my betters. I'm just a poor ol' humanities birdie.

2808

Developer's Corner / Re: Pricing Strategies for Products and Services

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 03:32 PM »

Totally off topic, but lemme just say laterally that Paul K. is in the top 25 list for consistently posts the longest replies I have ever seen on the web. That's one reason I hang here besides the software stuff.

2809

Living Room / Re: (NSFW?) Casually downloading Malwarebytes from Techspot.com...when suddenly...

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 02:15 PM »

Hehe a recommended Ass! Words fail me!

2810

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 12-22 only: Glarysoft Screen Recording Suite 2.5.3 free

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 02:13 PM »

"This giveaway has not yet started, Thank you for your patience." ?!

Edit: They seem to have a suite, only about 1 item becomes live per day. "Over the next few days we will be featuring:   ......  "

2811

General Software Discussion / Re: Video rant against Windows 8

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 01:53 PM »

I'll simply say I'm still waiting for the Next Evolution for context. Win8 caught my psing notice for being among the most aggressively hyped editions ever. I don't like "blind walls" of the future.

So by Win 9 (Win Blue? I saw an article on that!) (which will also be hyped), at least we'll have a bit more context to work with.

2812

Developer's Corner / Re: Pricing Strategies for Products and Services

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 01:51 PM »

It also matters hugely in what context Pricing is being discussed. In the Web Services market it has been about 5-7 years of "start free, then sneak in monetization after everyone is hooked". That's not even the "try once" joke about drugs, that's "it's free for years until we decide to do X when you can't easily leave."

2813

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 01:35 PM »

So on the dept of Most Useful stuff, I might have to think about AdMuncher and Ghostery again. I know, Ghostery prob. sells its list elsewhere for its own uses, but if it at least locally blocks the random crap, then that's fine by me. "Which ad companies wanted to track me" isn't very important to me, even by my medium privacy standards.

2814

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox CPU usage

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 01:34 PM »

I have a bit more data.

Both AdBlock and Simple AdBlock seem to chew up some CPU power doing their thing.

I took a hand at putting in a trial of AdMuncher + Ghostery again after I took it out for other reasons, and I am def. seeing a CPU improvement. I don't expect miracles, but maybe the AdBlock type addons have to examine the page to see what to block, and Monster.com according to Ghostery is a pretty heavy page. (Facebook Connect?! Eew! And other barely less evil pulls.) '

Edit: I'm back on Mainline 17.01, not Beta 18.0, not that I think it really matters.

2815

Living Room / Re: 21st December 2012...Why it won't happen...(Nibiru/Planet X)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 01:30 PM »

Cthulhu sends his regrets he couldn't make it.

He got hung up devouring all the inhabitants of Dylath Leen, but promises to make it next time, schedule permitting.

-40hz (December 22, 2012, 01:23 PM)

Maybe he never fully recovered from this!

http://www.dorktower...dork-tower-21-11-12/

2816

General Software Discussion / Re: Purging old stuff off your comp

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 01:01 PM »

It took a bit of "what the hell" to nuke approximately 1TB worth of "stuff" since I'm an info squirrel by nature. But I figured if I hadn't needed or missed any what was on them in over three years, it wasn't anything critical to my current life.

Once the initial wave of anxiety passed, I suddenly felt a sense of...I dunno...maybe something akin to liberation?

Maybe I lost something nuking those drives I'd rather I hadn't. But if so, I've already forgotten what it was.

-40hz (December 22, 2012, 12:42 PM)

Oh, it's def. liberation. I didn't have so many terabytes because all the apps were like 14 megs each. And yes, you definitely did lose something in the process. But life just marches on, and the really good ones will come back, and maybe you/I had a brilliant idea X years ago that you/I nuked, but maybe that's just a casualty of the march of time. I used to really value the Jack-of-All-skills mentality, but if you only spend 4 days on each one, it gets thinner and thinner.

I have an additional goal here - to try to clean up some cruft on my comp and get a little bit of performance back. I do think I'll get a few percent because I do think a few of the B-Grade programs were fighting each other for default preferences.

2817

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 11:29 AM »

"This video is not available in your country"  

-Stephen66515 (December 22, 2012, 11:20 AM)

Blecch again. I didn't know that even generic news videos were that locked down!

2818

General Software Discussion / Purging old stuff off your comp

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 09:44 AM »

General thread for deciding that "enough is enough" and removing stuff that maybe was your thang in prior years but no longer.

I deleted another 20-30 programs today (including I overshot and nuked my Adobe PDF printer, oops!) just to try to clarify what's on my rig. I have done a lot of trial experiments over the years, but unlike some of you hotshots, I just can't recall why some 70 programs even do anymore, so let's say I put 5 of them back, maybe twice a decade it's not a bad thing to just clean house. Heh a few reports have come in that my comp is starting to creak at the edges, so maybe somewhere in this cleanup I'll remove some ultra-obscure cross-dependencies/whatever and get a bit of performance back.

Edit: could be as much as 5-7 gigs worth of stuff, not "crap" because it got there for some whatever reason, but it's all just too much anymore.

2819

Developer's Corner / Re: Pricing Strategies for Products and Services

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 09:38 AM »

@Tao - I've sat on both sides of the table too. And I must admit I always found it a lot easier to buy than it ever was for me to sell something.  

-40hz (December 22, 2012, 09:15 AM)

It's been tricky to buy, when I go to oDesk I am sorta ready to spend money, it then just comes down to "optimizing the hire". This last time I purposely lowballed because the app was so simple I figured it didn't need a whole lot of firepower thrown at it, aka "almost anyone" could do it, so it was better to save $600 even if I had to burn a few extra hours bug checking use cases that a senior A+ dev might have thought of.

But until I ran out of funds, I do keep an eye on the complexity vs proposed ability of who I hired and I had a better dev last time.

2820

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox CPU usage

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 08:54 AM »

Good to know.

I opened 8 more tabs in quick succession just now, and FF v18.0 beta presented no probs/lags (tab load in background).
I suspect that the lags you are experiencing may be peculiar to your configuration.

-IainB (December 22, 2012, 08:31 AM)

Good to know. By now it looks like my rig has a few quirks, but if it's "just me" at least I can try to fiddle some more to fix them.

2821

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 Find Long Names

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 08:41 AM »

^^ What @mouser said + 1 from me. Rather neat idea.

I was mulling over this problem (of long file names) the other day, wondering how best to approach a solution. This might be it.

-IainB (December 22, 2012, 08:23 AM)

Yeah, because you want to make a simple archive so you drag and drop your 10 gig folder and go to have lunch, only to come back with a halted process that "file name is too long so I can't move it".   

2822

Developer's Corner / Enlightenment 0.17 is out! (With awesome web page copy!)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 08:39 AM »

I'm way out of my depth here but I figured this would interest someone. In what might be one of the longest dev cycles ever, apparently after *twelve* years of dev (          )  work, the new Enlightenment environment is out. It claims to be a response to all the dumb-ifying trend of some of the latest environments. The web page announcement is awesome:

(In part)
Enlightenment 0.17 (a.k.a E17) is the next generation of graphical desktop shell from the Enlightenment project. When you first run it and get past the initial setup wizard, you should end up with a desktop not unlike the above. It is a very traditional UNIX/X11 style desktop, because that is what E primarily is and attempts to be, BUT with a bunch of bells, whistles and modernities that were never there, as well as a different core design philosophy.
...
Also be aware that this page is large and is meant to provide a lot of important information. It is not for the tl;dr; (too long, didn't read) set of people with minimal attention span. It contains lots of that scary thing called "text" and "information". It is assumed that you can make use of the education you have been provided with that allows you to read and comprehend what has been written.
...
    WE HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR

    We are not always that serious a bunch. Deal with it. We have a sense of Humor. We exercise it regularly. You may call it "unprofessional". We call it "having a life".
...
And for the tweaker heads amongst you, there is an option for every occasion. We don't go quietly into the night and remove options when no one is looking. None of those new big version releases with fanfare and "Hey look! Now with half the options you used to have!". We sneak in when you least expect it and plant a whole forest of new option seeds, watching them spring to life. We nail new options to walls on a regular basis. We bake options-cakes and hand them out at parties. Options are good. Options are awesome. We have lots of them. Spend some quality time getting to know your new garden of options in E17. It may just finally give you the control you have been pining for.

 

2823

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 08:27 AM »

In other humor, this is an awesome graduation prank!

http://gma.yahoo.com...news-topstories.html

"Years from now when Kelsie Frick thinks back to her college graduation, she will only need to use one word to describe it: awesome.

Earlier this month, the newly-minted Grand Valley State University alumna pulled off a graduation prank that left her parents and classmates stunned, the crowd in hysterics and the administrators on stage stifling back giggles."

2824

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 Find Long Names

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 08:17 AM »

Hey this is a really neat idea!

May I offer a really really simple stupid suggestion? Show somewhere near the top of the panel the maximum allowed path size before problems occur in windows?  This might be useful to remind people when they should start getting worried.

-mouser (December 22, 2012, 08:02 AM)

Mouser,

What is in fact the Win XP length that "officially" begins to create problems moving? And how is it possible that a too-long file gets created and saved, but then you can't move or delete it? Monster.com has been giving me a bunch of those in my job searches.

2825

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on December 22, 2012, 08:07 AM »

BTW - My other comment there was:

You only need 1 brain cell over and above the brain cell you use to breathe with. Well, unless you can hold your breath for 5 seconds...

-Renegade (December 22, 2012, 07:47 AM)

Now I really have to go fiddle with it!

Oops!

http://www.quiterly....6/I-cant-breathe.jpg