Recent Posts

351

Living Room / Re: I'll donate $20 to Donation Coder if DC member PMs me a valid Google Wave invite

« Last post by iphigenie on November 27, 2009, 08:39 AM »

how come you guys have 16 invites and i only got 8

352

Living Room / Re: Google execs may go to prison!

« Last post by iphigenie on November 27, 2009, 08:36 AM »

still, if "allowing a clip to be posted" is breaking the law, it's the end of the open web

-iphigenie (November 27, 2009, 02:40 AM)

Certainly the end of YouTube. Can you imagine trying to moderate every clip that is uploaded - you would need to recruit a nation full time to do it.

-Carol Haynes (November 27, 2009, 03:19 AM)

I doubt they would stop at video clips - photos and text would qualify too, probably

353

Living Room / Re: All Wordy and Junk: A brand new multi-author blog

« Last post by iphigenie on November 27, 2009, 02:43 AM »

I suspect friendfeed didnt die so they all went back

354

Living Room / Re: Google execs may go to prison!

« Last post by iphigenie on November 27, 2009, 02:40 AM »

still, if "allowing a clip to be posted" is breaking the law, it's the end of the open web

355

Living Room / Re: Google demonstrates new communication platform "WAVE": mail, chat , wiki, ..

« Last post by iphigenie on November 26, 2009, 08:57 AM »

Could we make a list somewhere of who is already on it (and the corresponding email if they want connecting) and who might still want one?

356

Living Room / Re: I'll donate $20 to Donation Coder if DC member PMs me a valid Google Wave invite

« Last post by iphigenie on November 26, 2009, 08:45 AM »

I would love to have more wave users in my network so i can actually test its potential for collaboration, support, training and more.
I'm superiphi at gmail (note: dont need an invite, just contacts to add)

357

Living Room / Re: Best Free and Pay FTP Client

« Last post by iphigenie on November 21, 2009, 02:51 PM »

What i use as a client tends to be penguinet - had it forever - or total commander - had it forever too, so not much help here

358

General Software Discussion / Re: [rant] Seriously? Software pricing is officially nuts

« Last post by iphigenie on November 19, 2009, 10:53 AM »

Although the official price of ACDSee pro 3 is US$169.99 and that is not much more than the official price of ACDSee Pro 2 was ($10 more?) - i think the upgrade price is aroun 80. Not cheap, but not in the league of other similar pro products.

Still, I am hesitating too 

359

What's the Best? / Re: Video conversion: What's the best (freeware or shareware)?

« Last post by iphigenie on November 16, 2009, 01:37 AM »

video conversion/modification always makes me feel lost - sooo many choices of codecs etc!

I have several times wanted to share a video taken with my camera but wanted to remove the sound track - have given up, lots of time wasted trying to find one tool that could remove the sound and would not end up with a file 10 times bigger than the original...

For example with virtualdub i did countless attempts with different settings to a)not lose too much quality and b)remove the sound. Results were... mixed

gave up

360

Living Room / Re: Lenovo Reliability

« Last post by iphigenie on November 16, 2009, 01:28 AM »

I have owned an Asus screen, several Asus wireless routers (1 router, 1 working as a bridge, 1 when i lived elsewhere and their mini pocket router) and some asus fanless graphics card. All still in use and still working, the routers are 2 to 3 years old, the cards both about 2 years old etc. Oh, and we had the barebones Terminators at work in a past company, no complaints there either.

Could have been lucky in my choices but it does give me some confidence within these range of products - although whether it carries to laptops is anyone's guess since I think most manufacturers actually only assemble. And I still check specs and reviews before I buy anything

Other laptops I have had great experiences with are fujitsu (but know people who didnt, on that one)

My partner has an Asus notebook with an ATI card we snatched on ebay and it's solid

Not sure what notebook I would buy if I bought one now, alas my requiremements tend to go contrary to the market (high res but small screen etc.)

361

Living Room / Re: Lenovo Reliability

« Last post by iphigenie on November 15, 2009, 12:51 PM »

Does anybody have any thoughts on Asus laptops? It seems I (almost) only see them widely rated and available on newegg.

-rgdot (November 14, 2009, 01:07 PM)

I have no experience directly but several people were very happy with their eee and the high end asus laptops - they are certainly a brand I would/will personally consider, based on my experience with other asus products

What always surprises me is that there are so many different experiences when there are so few companies actually building the barebones stuff - for example the large 17" laptop I have existed as Dell, Toshiba, HP, several smaller brands - same looks, same spec, only tiny cosmetic differences

362

General Software Discussion / Re: 10 things to do after installing Linux

« Last post by iphigenie on November 08, 2009, 05:22 AM »

I guess as a long term user of both I might put my 2c in

Wireless

Is a big issue *everywhere* - I have had problems with my windows machine, usually not with drivers but with getting the right settings and connecting to networks. On most machines on windows the driver comes with its own wireless manager tool, and more often than not some network settings work on the native wireless tool but not the manufacturer's tool, and vice versa. People who dont travel much dont have that problem, but if you do, you have encountered it. Now we have perhaps forgotten how nasty it was on windows even 2 years or 1 year ago...

Most cards have decent driver solutions on linux - at least it is well documented what works and doesnt so you can avoid trying on a hopeless machine - but the "connect to a network" bit is the same mess as on windows - several different "supplicant" layers available, and lots of trial and error to figure out how to set up the different kinds of networks you encounter.

Too many cooks:

But the biggest obstacle to switching to linux on the desktop for me is: the mutually exclusive choices you have to make when it comes to desktop environmnent, sound and multimedia (and perhaps others). It is not always even clear what the choices mean you are giving up.

I have been using linux and bsd on the server side for ages and am totally convinced there - but there are no mutually exclusive choices on the server side linux. Installing Apache does not somehow prevent you from using entire sets of tools and software.

On the linux desktop, on the other hand, choosing to run one set of apps means you cannot run another set - your choice of desktop will suddenly limit what apps you can use, and sometimes not very clearly (better know which key library set your chosen set up uses, and not get gtk apps on the wrong desktop etc.). Yes, it is kind of possible to mix some but at a risk of weird problems, and certainly at a high performance cost.

Say you've got your distro installed and you read up on what apps might do to replace your photo management app, music player, screenshot editing tool, desktop recording, information manager, email clients etc. tools. It's very likely you might find apps that tick most boxes for your most wanted features. But what is also likely is that they will need different core libraries and desktop environments and you wont be able to run them all on your distro comfortably. Eg: you cannot have the best image/photo manager and the best screenshot tool at the same time - one's KDE and the other Gnome - and both need the full stack. Sorry. Got to use a half baked half finished app for one of the two tasks, make your choice.

Read about a great music app or video editing app? Sorry, can't use it, because they only work with a different audio or video layer than the one your distro installed. And you can try to install that layer, but then it is likely that your already installed audio solution will stop working and you will need a lot of trial and error to get all the layers happily hierarchized so everything works - and in some cases you just won't. Now I am close to an expert on the server so I can dig in the manpages and config files until I get something working, but it's a waste of time and I cannot be bothered, after a while.

The main problem with those sets of mutually exclusive choices is that they are not clearly documented - nobody spells it out for you, since it would imply admitting linux ain't the perfect solution, and would get you all the fanatics on attack - you cannot make an informed decision up front, and it is frustrating.

I think it would be the best thing that could happen if these projects could work towards a more compatible architecture on the audio, video and desktop layers - and in the meantime far better information on what works with what and what each choice you makes excludes you from

Frankly I ended up using neither gnome nor kde, and using a minimal setup with tools not much better than what I could get on a windows95/98 machine in 1998... and as many great text mode/console apps as I could.

363

Living Room / Re: What are you waiting for?

« Last post by iphigenie on October 28, 2009, 11:52 AM »

Things I'm waiting for

- the right idea - feel like I am in limbo (been living on savings) waiting for the good idea I can throw my energy into, partly it is perhaps silly. Tempted to take a job again if a good offer comes along. But in the meantime, continuing my slow process of decanting what truly matters (easy) and what I am good at

- on the gadget side, the maemo Nokia N900 is awfully interesting

- house renovations to move forward so we can use the top floor again

I'm waiting for:
— openSUSE 11.2

-zridling (October 21, 2009, 01:54 PM)

That's Robb linux of choice here - so it is awaited here too

364

General Software Discussion / Re: Godin: the end of dumb software

« Last post by iphigenie on September 15, 2009, 01:21 PM »

Sounds like a very interesting individual. I'd be happy to chat with him. But better yet, maybe you could convince him to join us here and start up a thread on the topic? I'd love to hear what someone who is actively involved in language research and design has to say. And I'm sure I'm not alone.

BTW: Does he have any publications or a webpage?

-40hz (September 15, 2009, 12:44 PM)

I am trying to make him join here or start a blog etc. He's been off the radar for a while, writing lots of tidbits and building a provable consistent yet usable language - but it's all on our computers and backup...- it started as an example language for reasoning about and teaching certain concepts, but it got more ambitious over time...

Will keep trying

365

General Software Discussion / Re: Godin: the end of dumb software

« Last post by iphigenie on September 15, 2009, 01:03 PM »

As to the question of the program figuring things out for you or not, I think the solution is

a) do figure things out for the user especially if they are outside the core goals of the user
b) make it transparent, easy to correct/undo, and easy to tweak

I'm with Mouser on the annoyance that are word processors when you are in writing mode - as a matter of fact I cannot write in any of the current word processors - all of them just volunteer formatting in the wrong way at the wrong time, and frankly when I am writing this improvised formatting gets in the way, it breaks the flow. But I think it is in part the right way for a word processor to do this, it is just that people who get bothered shouldn't use them for first drafts, we should use a text editor or a structural editor (actually, a smart word processor might have a modal component - in draft mode just let me dump stuff, in revision mode focus on corrections and merging versions, in polish mode help maintain a clean and consistent styling etc.)

But I would like smarter software in the sense that with a lot of software I still spend far too much time managing, and too little doing/thinking what really was my goal. Managing the management, and managing the process.

Let me give a few examples:

1. email
Most people keep email, but since most programs make it hard to find email, get an overview of a history, or drill down through email, we end up creating folders. And once a folder has too many emails in it so we once again cannot find things easily with a browse or a quick search, we tend to create more folders and move email around. Before we know it we spend more time moving filing and finding email than we do reading and writing it, or acting on whatever it is.

Then you use a tool like Opera's M2, Gmail, or a methodology that shows how to do virtual organization in outlook, or use an add on like xobni, and you realize how much time you save when you stop organizing the email

None of the tools mentioned above pulls the whole job off, each has some nice ideas that you wish the others had to be perfect...

2. launchers
We've all tried menu systems and the problem is that you have to keep maintaining them - adding new programs, removing old ones, categorizing - then you switch to the dynamic launchers (like FARR), or the self-building launcher (I use "task commander" on windows) and yes, the tool does some thinking for you, but you can tweak it, and you stop having to constantly organise things

For example task commander adds every program that is run to its launch list - whether they are run from the command line, started via file manager, or the start menu. I find it a lot less time consuming to go and tell it to hide the ones I dont want to launch again, than it was adding programs manually to a launcher. This is especially great if you reinstall windows and have a lot of tools which dont need an install and can just be run from their folder (for example you dont want to reinstall your games when they dont need it), with a traditional launcher you have to add them all, with task commander they just appear the first time you run them... easy

3. Information
To me the big problem with outliners and most notes/pim/information managers is exactly the manager bit - it assumes that what I want to do is manage my information. No, what I want to is to store, save, find again, and be able to USE my information. The management part just came about as a necessary evil in order to not lose or be overwhelmed, but managing the information is not what we want to do, its what we want the tool to do for us.

I used to manually file my photos, now I let a tool file them on a pattern (date based) for me, and use the tags etc. to find it again - far less time wasted. I want the same for my information, i dont want to have to manually put it in a tree or whatever, i want to capture it, and know it has been put somewhere half logical on a pattern I am aware of (perhaps date based). Then i want to be able to virtually retrieve it and organise it on a per-project basis - ideally after the tool has used semantic clustering so i dont have to do stupid basic housecleaning...

PS: I have to disagree with Seth - the default on the web is not to be smart, it is to be cool. Smart is wholly optional and often gets in the way of cool or popular

366

General Software Discussion / Re: Godin: the end of dumb software

« Last post by iphigenie on September 15, 2009, 12:14 PM »

Understood. And be assured, you guys are far from clueless. Unfortunately, what you're asking for often cuts right to the heart of most of what's wrong with the current state of 'computer science.'

Marvin Minsky (one of the founding fathers of AI) once complained that there were far too many smart people working on the "easy problems" (like designing a 'better' word processor) while most of the real problems were largely being ignored. Truth is, many of the fundamental questions in computer science have yet to receive definitive answers. And for better or worse, most people 'outside the profession' are unaware of that.

-40hz (September 13, 2009, 10:50 PM)

According to my partner, even inside the profession many people have stopped asking the questions. You'd think we have found the answers, the right ways to abstract domain problems and write code that is correct and does what we expect every time...

But then a lot of it is over my head, I'm just married to someone who cares about these things and has been working on the theory of programming languages for 15 years now, with the firm belief that there are right ways to figure out - if anyone really is interested in problems like completeness and correctness and can talk for hours about individual languages, what they did good and where they went wrong etc. I'd love to put you in touch...

367

Living Room / Re: Free Alternatives to Silktide Sitescore

« Last post by iphigenie on September 15, 2009, 02:46 AM »

That looks nifty!

368

General Software Discussion / Re: Will Win7 last as long as XP?

« Last post by iphigenie on September 15, 2009, 02:45 AM »

After my last serious attempt to switch to the open source world, the lack of apps that work smart (apart for a few glorious text-based ones - but my gripes with FOSS desktop are a things for another thread) and get out of the way clearly shows me I'm probably staying on the windows train for a bit

So it would make sense to update to a family pack of some sort when there is a good deal

(I am trying to be thrifty, no income at the moment while I find my next reinvention)

My problem:

1. So far windows 7 does not work properly on my main desktop, it's a problem between motherboard and graphics card that gives garbled graphics (not usable, you are guessing where buttons would be). I could try other graphics card or change the motherboard, but of course that makes it a bigger job... or wait and hope it gets better. (I updated the bios to all versions and alas no improvements, and i lost the fan speed management somewhere along the way)

2. I use a lot of shareware, some of it is not updated often or an old version. Not sure it all will work ok on Windows 7 unless I get the Pro version, if I understand it correctly. Due to my graphics issue I havent been able to test that 

3. Not sure about this but I'd want to have ALL my main OS on my machines on the same, rather than some still on XP some on 7 (ofc for the usual "fix someone's problem" i have several OSes on multi boot - a win98 and a 2000 somewhere too, but havent looked at them in ages)

All in all I am tempted to wait and upgrade a bit later, but getting knowledge of it is also important...

In short? undecided

369

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 10

« Last post by iphigenie on September 08, 2009, 05:09 PM »

Opera is my standard browser, and I don't really miss extensions.

-iphigenie (September 08, 2009, 10:39 AM)

Do you happen to know if it still keeps Form Fill personal info in clear text? I'm just curious if they at least encrypt it now or if they just shuffled it into another file.

-MilesAhead (September 08, 2009, 02:38 PM)

Absolutely no idea, don't use the feature - although there's nothing particularly sensitive about my name, address, phone number etc. since they are in clear on my business cards, stationery etc. What fields you can save for the form is not a lot, so I never bothered.

As for the passwords they must be at least vaguely encrypted, a file content search produced nothing - although I dont have my really key passwords in there (not due to issus of encryption, more the fear of someone stealing the pc and the browser nicely volunteering the passwords. Convenience vs Security)

370

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 10

« Last post by iphigenie on September 08, 2009, 10:39 AM »

Opera is my standard browser, and I don't really miss extensions.

371

General Software Discussion / Re: Multi OS Boot Loading

« Last post by iphigenie on August 21, 2009, 02:22 PM »

I use Grub on several computers but no expert - I will check which version they have. I've never had a Grub version problem using whatever the first (or sometimes last) installed distribution has put in place.

I tend to install *nix style OSes by telling them to put their boot stuff on their own partition, apart from one, then I can copy and paste it to the main grub config.

I've also tended, because I am lazy, to choose as "main grub" that of a distribution which has a nice helpful "detect other OSes" config script - so if I get problems I can re-run that

Currently trying to learn some of the nitty gritty as I have decided to jump in and help some distributions I like and I should better understand installers...

372

General Software Discussion / Re: Let's Fork The Thread! Linux Notetaking Thread!

« Last post by iphigenie on August 16, 2009, 03:16 PM »

I am certainly considering splitting activities

1. there is the capturing information part - i cant rely on bookmarks or bookmarking/snipping sites, after all content disappears off the web every day, and as per "snippet" sites they might get bought, hacked, bankrupted without notice. Need local copies, of the bits I am interested in, with link to source. Something like the opera "save note" but now and then with the occasional formatting or image. And it all needs to export or be stored in a standard format

2. there is the organising and writing for thinking - ideally this is in the same tool as above because all the snippets can be part of the process, but I can live with it being separate if no tool does both well.

373

General Software Discussion / Re: Let's Fork The Thread! Linux Notetaking Thread!

« Last post by iphigenie on August 16, 2009, 05:57 AM »

thinking about it on a unix-modular way:

- the search bit is easy to fix on linux with something like Beagle
- some of the wysiwyg options are also easy to fix, a few of those tools allow a change of view/edit modules

paste html is a good question: when you copy html on linux, does any URL information get put in the clip memory. I know it does on windows, but I dont think it does on linux. You will need a tool that has a "right click to..." function for that. But there is always a way to chain it, i.e. have a tool that does that, even if it does not have all your features, and have the organiser/searcher tool take the data afterwards (auto import)

374

General Software Discussion / Re: Let's Fork The Thread! Linux Notetaking Thread!

« Last post by iphigenie on August 16, 2009, 03:55 AM »

i am about to ruin some of your Sunday  

Here are some other tools I have in my diigo bookmark collection (mostly comes from watching icewalkers and freshmeat for years and bookmarking what looks interesting or original)

- there are several emacs based options, wont mention those for now. I will mention vimoutliner http://www.vimoutliner.org/

- i didnt see anyone mention tomboy. it is very simple but it does have the menu integration and there are iirc a firefox extension and an emacs integration. worth a look?

all right, my list:

research assistant - clearly aimed at onenote - http://sourceforge.n...projects/rassistant/
treeline http://treeline.bellz.org/feature.html - not tried, seems a competent outliner style product
tobu http://tobu.lightbird.net/ freeform note organiser (wxpython)
treesheets http://treesheets.com/ - tries to combine wiki linking with onenote-style 2D content box organising
chandler - much discussed - http://chandlerproject.org/ - pim with strong opinions on information management
compendium - topic map and idea organizer from the open university - http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/ (not tried the linux one, but on windows the beta is cooler than the release)
mindraider - notes and mindmaps - http://mindraider.sourceforge.net/
gjot - jotter - http://bhepple.freeshell.org/gjots/ (gtk)
tobu - pim http://tobu.lightbird.net/
luminotes - wiki outliner - http://luminotes.com/ desktop+web
tellico - cataloguing apps, but works for bibliographical notes and free text http://tellico-project.org/
storybook - focused on novel writing - http://storybook.intertec.ch/joomla/
celtx - multimedia, focused on preproduction - http://www.celtx.com/features.html

more technical but with powerful note/information features:

leo - leo is a programmers editor but it has an outliner and pim mode http://sourceforge.net/projects/leo/
lyx - lyx is a latex working env. but it has templates/moders for a lot of writing preparation/organisation which works for gathering project related bits - http://www.lyx.org/Features

375

General Software Discussion / Re: MonsterCart

« Last post by iphigenie on August 12, 2009, 03:06 AM »

if you want to try magento there are quite a few places that give you a free test/dev virtual server - see the magento community forums - and feel free to ask if you get confused, as I probably will have been confused by the same things in the last few months