Recent Posts

301

General Software Discussion / Firefox 53.0 is released

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 19, 2017, 02:29 PM »

Firefox 53.0 stable is released.

Release Notes

302

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 19, 2017, 01:37 PM »

The comment started out as a play on "vast web of connections."

-MilesAhead (April 18, 2017, 03:37 PM)

Yeah, I got that. Now that you say so, I think I spied a pun in there somewhere.

-cranioscopical (April 18, 2017, 09:32 PM)

Are we really going down the wire with this? 

-Shades (April 19, 2017, 01:26 AM)

Wire you saying that Shades?   

-MilesAhead (April 19, 2017, 07:04 AM)

I'm surprised you couldn't gauge his intent.

-cranioscopical (April 19, 2017, 01:30 PM)

Ah well, mystery is the splice of life.

303

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Professional:UAC (User Account Control)& especially commandline tools

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 19, 2017, 11:24 AM »

This tutorial may shed some light if I follow what seems to be happening:

https://www.tenforum...nt-windows-10-a.html

I think with Vista they changed it so that the "administrative type" account created by default when you set it up is really similar to the "operator" account on Windows NT.  You can register and unregister COM/ActiveX stuff, install uninstall stuff, but it is not the full-blown Administrator account.  The tutorial shows how to enable and disable this built in Administrator(elevated) account on the system.

As for stuff that will work on Home and not on Pro all I can think of is it may think it is on a Domain rather than a Workgroup.  So greater security may be involved.

If you haven't tried the Windows 10 Forum I would try posting your questions there.  There are very knowledgeable people who would be glad to help you out.  I never did much with Win 10 even though I was in the Insider Program because all I had was a Laptop.  Even getting it to install and run without hanging took all day defragging all layers of the disk storage space in the real PC as well as the virtual machine etc..  It was just too slow to use.  With only one computer it was too risky to install it on the metal.

But I would be very surprised if nobody over at ten forums had any helpful suggestions.  It's worth the few minutes to sign up.  Needless to say all is free.  No charges, no spam etc.. 

304

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 19, 2017, 07:04 AM »

The comment started out as a play on "vast web of connections."

-MilesAhead (April 18, 2017, 03:37 PM)

Yeah, I got that. Now that you say so, I think I spied a pun in there somewhere.

-cranioscopical (April 18, 2017, 09:32 PM)

Are we really going down the wire with this? 

-Shades (April 19, 2017, 01:26 AM)

Wire you saying that Shades?   

305

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 19, 2017, 07:04 AM »

The comment started out as a play on "vast web of connections."

-MilesAhead (April 18, 2017, 03:37 PM)

Yeah, I got that. Now that you say so, I think I spied a pun in there somewhere.

-cranioscopical (April 18, 2017, 09:32 PM)

Heh heh heh.  Fortunately in Miami I don't have to worry about coming in from the cold. 

306

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 18, 2017, 03:37 PM »

My father's favorite expression was "It's not what you know.  It's who you know." 

Unfortunately he never introduced me to anyone useful. 

-MilesAhead (April 11, 2017, 07:06 AM)

Well, what do you know!

-cranioscopical (April 18, 2017, 02:33 PM)

Unfortunately I wasted a lot of time learning how to do stuff instead of who to do it for.    It is pretty funny when I think about it.  My father did not have a gregarious personality.  But he ran for public office three times.  I suspect he didn't really want to win very badly.  The large Irish enclave is South Boston.  When my sister told him she was going to get married and live there he asked her "why do you want to be around those kind of people?"  He should have tried for an appointed position if he wanted to get into government. 

Edit: The comment started out as a play on "vast web of connections."  Made me think of the "who you know" homily my father favored. 

307

General Software Discussion / Re: Considering going Android all the way

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 18, 2017, 03:27 PM »

It can't hurt to try. Anywhere you can stow the laptop for a while while you experiment?

-cranioscopical (April 18, 2017, 02:31 PM)

Unfortunately storage and ID are the major stumbling blocks.  The pattern seems to be anywhere close enough to be accessible is priced out of the ballpark.  Anyplace advertising a reasonable storage rate you have to hire a Sherpa to get there.    If I could store my suitcase and just use a small knapsack for my tablet and a few odds and ends I would have a much easier time of it.

Even if the prices were reasonable most places won't deal with you if you don't have a government created ID to show.  It is really frustrating.  Of course since the Age of Terrorism(tm) in the USA you cannot rent a locker by the day.  I think the only people who have lockers in the college are those in the Culinary Institute since they have to change into their staff uniforms to cook or serve at events.

Plus it makes it nearly impossible to apply for a decent job.  If you are dragging all your stuff behind you it gives the game away.  Additionally, with no state ID they figure you are an illegal Immigrant.  I can see the Federal Prison from the campus where Immigration puts those people.  I'd rather be homeless than live there. 

308

General Software Discussion / Re: Considering going Android all the way

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 18, 2017, 03:15 PM »

The only thing binding me to it is Windows Programming.

-MilesAhead (April 18, 2017, 07:43 AM)

The fly in the ointment is going without coding.

-MilesAhead (April 18, 2017, 07:43 AM)

This is ofc not a 1 + 1, but maybe this would be an option? http://www.android-ide.com/

-Ath (April 18, 2017, 02:39 PM)

Thanks for the link.   

309

General Software Discussion / Considering going Android all the way

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 18, 2017, 07:43 AM »

At least until I get a desktop PC I am considering going Android all the way.  The Ten Ton Toshiba(tm) is just too heavy to drag around.  The only thing binding me to it is Windows Programming.  I just purchased an RCA Viking 10.1" Tablet.  It has a keyboard, mouse pad and touch screen.  In effect it is a neat little Laptop for $100.  The fly in the ointment is going without coding.  But I am not coming out with anything new anyway   Perhaps the next thing will be to do some Android Apps..

With Windows 10 I feel the Windows Desktop days are numbered anyway.
The other thing a bit annoying is the  tendency of Tablets to only support USB 2.0.  But my USB 3.0 thumb drives should run a bit faster then a USB 2.0 would.  Plus it is more likely I will back up via WiFi in any case.  It is hard to imagine no Dos/Windows but I cannot push this weight around anymore.  It is doing bad things to my body straining against the load all the time.  It may be time to bite the bullet and go Linux/Android all the way.

310

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 18, 2017, 07:16 AM »

found this site this morning, and if any of you are anything like me (who hates picking up a book only to find you're half way through (or worse, at the end!!) a series it's likely useful

http://www.orderofbooks.com/ - purports to list book series in order.  Its clearly not comprehensive, but its certainly worth keeping up your sleeve

-Target (April 17, 2017, 06:05 PM)

Another good resource is the Wiki.  If you look up the author often there are sections for series with the books in order.  In addition books not officially in the series that transpire in the same universe may be noted.

311

Living Room / Re: 1986 dial-up bulletin board system has brought the old Web back to life

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 17, 2017, 03:15 PM »

I wrote an automated system to collect all the new Forum messages, log off, let you reply to everything offline, then connect up and post it as fast as possible.

-x16wda (April 13, 2017, 07:45 PM)

It's always nice when programming skill can directly save you cash!!  My favorite kind of programming.   

312

Living Room / Re: 1986 dial-up bulletin board system has brought the old Web back to life

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 17, 2017, 03:13 PM »

Ah... the... wonder... of... the... 300... bored... modem.  I... wonder... how... long... this... will... take...

-cranioscopical (April 14, 2017, 05:43 AM)

My brother went to Wentworth Institute(if that is not a redundancy.)  He had an account on a PDP-11 there.  We dialed in on a modem with suction cups similar to the model below.  Talk about a dinosaur. 

313

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

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 17, 2017, 07:51 AM »

@Curt I hate running without favicons o any browser.  So I will go to some length to get them loaded.  If you have your FF already backed up there may be very little risk to the folowing scheme.  Get a FF installer for the last version that supports the AddOn and install it.  Install and run the favicon getter.  If favicons seem normal I would log off, then back on just to make sure they are flushed to disk.  Run the latest FF installer.  You should still have your favicons

FF used to balk if you tried to downgrade but they removed that block some time ago.  I regularly install older versions on top with no particular issues.  It is probably the easiest way to get the favicons back short of visiting the sites manually.

(Sorry if typos.  I am on a 7 inch tablet.  It has a keyboard but the text is pretty small to read.)

314

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

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 13, 2017, 05:23 PM »

schmuck (n.)

-Arizona Hot (April 11, 2017, 09:58 PM)

If you happen to Schlep on over to google, see "putz." 

I have always considered "Schmucked" to be a verb.  If you made a fool of someone we say you fooled them in English.  So I figure in Yiddish slang if you made a Schmuck out of someone, you have Schmucked them.  Seems logical at least. 

Edit: Therefore I would assume a Schmucker is a person who habitually makes Schmucks out of others.

315

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox regularly not taking/executing input

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 13, 2017, 02:39 PM »

One thing that seemed to work for me lately in FF is to downgrade back to a recent version that seemed stable.  Then as new releases came out I would try them to see if the weird pauses and hangs no longer occurred.  Also you may want to try CPUBalance

Especially I noticed that when doing a SuperAntiSpyware scan in the backgroud FF got all "jittery" in the foreground. With CPUBalance running the FF in the foreground runs smoother at the cost that the background scan takes a bit longer.  If you install CPUBalance Pro without a license it is in effect the free version.  The only feature missing in the free version is the ability to tinker with the Affinity of running processes(assign the program to another CPU core essentially.)

The genius of CPUBalance is two fold.  One, you can just install it and run with the default settings.  Two, by default it never throttles or boosts the program that has the focus.  A lot of "booster" type programs tried to get the foreground program to run quicker by boosting its priority.  This throws the system out of kilter.  CPUBalance does it the other way around.  All but the foreground program are throttled if they start to eat up too much CPU.

Anyway, if CPUBalance is helpful that should show up pretty quickly.  On my system it was very obvious when running FF whereas with other browsers the effect was more subtle.

Another thing you can try it toggling "use hardware acceleration when available" in the FF settings.  I tried turning acceleration off but it made things even worse.  But back to the original premise, I don't know why but there seemed to be a stretch of FF releases where it was very reluctant to react to input.  Only in the last couple of releases have I noticed the symptom is not as pronounced.

Another alternative for the short term, try Cyberfox.  It has both X64 and X86 Intel and AMD versions.  As far as I remember it runs every AddOn that regular FF does.  It is a bit slow loading, but once running it seems much more stable than FF.  I mainly use it to watch streaming videos that won't play well in other browsers.

I say "in the short term" for Cyberfox because the author has announced that he is easing out of updating Cyberfox due to health issues.  If you google you can find the announcement with all the details.  But Cyberfox should be getting at least minimal updates to keep in sync with FF for a while.

316

General Software Discussion / Re: Adobe Acrobat DC

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 12, 2017, 05:01 PM »

Does it happen with every PDF file you try to open?  If it is only PDF files from a certain source, like a flash drive or whatnot, I am thinking the files themselves may be corrupted.  Try downloading a PDF you know is good from an online source, and opening that after it is on the HD/SSD/whatever.

317

General Software Discussion / Re: imgur bbcode?

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 12, 2017, 10:41 AM »

Ok, the old way when I first started using it way back a few weeks ago, as soon as you dragged and dropped an image, even if you weren't logged in, it gave a stack of buttons.  Now even if I am logged in, it just shows one link with a "copy" button.  But if I go to my images and click on the image, I get the stack of buttons.  Trying it now with the BBCode Button.  Bingo!

Thanks guys. 

318

General Software Discussion / imgur bbcode?

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 12, 2017, 09:02 AM »

imgur used to have a button to copy the bbcode for pasting in foums.  I tried wrapping the image address in image tags.  No good.  Anyone know the secret and why they did away with the convenient button?



The above smudge is what happens when using the image file url inside image tags. 

319

Living Room / Re: 1986 dial-up bulletin board system has brought the old Web back to life

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 11, 2017, 01:57 PM »

When they mention "expensive phone bills" in the article it reminded me of learning my lesson the hard way on a software download.  I was living in Boca Raton and found a BBS phone number in South Florida where I could download the software package I wanted.  Later when I got the phone bill I saw that the "free download" cost me $18 and change.  It turns out calling long distance after 11:00 PM to the West Coast of the USA and getting the download from there was about 10 times cheaper than Southern Bell long distance inside Florida.  I learned to get off the land line and onto the satellite asap!   

320

Living Room / Re: 1986 dial-up bulletin board system has brought the old Web back to life

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 11, 2017, 10:00 AM »

I remember in the late 80s and early 90s if you were a consultant and therefore had a business incentive or just had lots of money, you had a CompuServe account.

I didn't have either.  But during one of my consulting gigs at IBM Boca PC Center one of the tasks I had was to help people overcome basic programming hurdles, be it for Dos, Windows or OS/2.  I thought it was so cool because they gave me a CompuServe account to post code snippets in response to questions.  At that point I had never done any programming for Windows.  I had to dig around to find working code so that I could understand how to do whatever it was that was asked.  Then I would write an example snippet and post it after testing that it ran without crashing.

Of course there was always some feedback of the "why do they make you do it that way?  That makes no sense" variety.  Unfortunately I was not allowed to reply "I don't know.  They don't invite me to the board meetings."  So I would just say that I didn't know why these particular flags had to be set when making such and such API call, even though there seems to be no rhyme or reason for it.  All I know is if I don't set them the call returns with an error.  Maybe me catching some of the flack there avoided support calls or something, if it happened to concern an IBM compiler. 

It was kind of fun though.  And it got me started with the old fashioned message loop switch statement type of Window processing.

One of the user groups I joined was The C Users Group which gave birth to The C Users Journal.  Getting published in that journal enabled me to break into the business as a Software Analyst with no relevant work experience.  A lucky break.  They solicited articles in the magazine with specifications for the article text and working code.  I submitted an article and forgot about it.  Never thinking it would actually be published.  But a couple of months later I got a call from a CUJ Editor.  Anyway, if I tell everything now nobody will buy the biography.    I call it a biography rather than an autobiography because my plan is to ghostwrite my biography, then hire another writer to put his name on it and take the blame. 

By the way, speaking of nostalgia, The C/C++ Users Group has a page on the web here:
C/C++ Users Group

Edit:  Note that The C/C++ Users Journal was purchased by the company that owned Dr. Dobb's Journal.  The CUG site is just an archived page and links to the journal are no longer valid.  However they did archive the articles published in CUJ.  I wish they also archived the cover images for the monthly magazines but back in those days image files must have seemed like they used a lot of storage.  Fortunately for me four of my articles, those that were published in CUJ, still survive there.  I have links to them on http://milesaheadsoftware.org if anyone is curious.

321

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 11, 2017, 07:06 AM »

"...all matter exists in a vast web of connection"

-cranioscopical (April 10, 2017, 08:44 PM)

My father's favorite expression was "It's not what you know.  It's who you know." 

Unfortunately he never introduced me to anyone useful. 

322

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 10, 2017, 11:10 AM »

More like a short story, but I followed up When They Come From Space by Mark Clifton, with Do Unto Others.  I suspect Mark viewed Imperialism(tm) with a jaundiced eye to say the least. 

I have a few more of his eBooks to curb my appetite until my Green Lantern anthology arrives at the Library. 

323

Living Room / LoveHKFilm calls it quits after 15 years

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 10, 2017, 08:53 AM »

Another site bites the dust.  LoveHKFilm is throwing in the towel after 15 years of reviews.  This site hipped me to the works of many of the most intriguing HK actors, actresses, and directors.  It also warned me to avoid productions by the sinister Wong Jing. 

I am sorry to see it go.  But the heyday oh Hong Kong films is long past I suppose.

324

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

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 07, 2017, 07:13 AM »

A common one is "I could care less" (sic), which I gather means the opposite of what it says - i.e., "I don't give a damn" (OWTTE) - whereas the correct English for this would be "I couldn't care less".

That one always bugged me.  Another twist on a common saying was a habit of my father's.  He would always say "You have to take the good with the bad."  For many years every time he said that I would reply "You mean, you have to take the bad with the good."  He wouldn't react to my comment.  When I got to be around 42 I realized he was right.  You have to take the good with the bad. 

325

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

« Last post by MilesAhead on April 06, 2017, 09:01 AM »

@MilesAhead: Regarding "motion elements", thanks for trying anyway. Looks like you saw just as confusing a mess as I saw then.

I gather the correct expression was/is:

"If the mountain won't come to Muhammad then Muhammad must go to the mountain."

- and has to do with not being able to always get one's way in life, when things may be, quite literally, immovable, so one has to compromise.
- possibly from a Turkish proverb?

-IainB (April 06, 2017, 08:54 AM)

On TV shows for decades I have always seen the dialog, when they could not get someone to go where they wanted, that "if we can't get Muhammed to go to the mountain, we'll have to bring the mountain to Muhammed."  I have never seen it the other way around.  What would be noteworthy about making some guy go to a mountain?  Seems like it would be newsworthy if they moved the mountain to the guy.  Taking a boat across the Red Sea vs parting it you might say.  Not many remember a boat ride unless George Washington is standing in the bow or it's the Titanic.