Recent Posts

3601

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Why Trying to be Productive is a Huge Waste of Time

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 23, 2011, 04:49 PM »

Interestingly, I've noticed how often productivity experts are authors by trade. Which in turn makes me wonder if most productivity systems are intrinsically better (or possibly best) adapted to the tasks surrounding a professional writer (deadlines, milestones, meetings, submissions, tracking, etc.) or related "wordsmith" careers than most other occupations.

-40hz (September 23, 2011, 04:03 PM)

Or maybe it's more like those people who write "get rich quick" schemes - the only one that actually works is writing and selling the schemes.

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (September 23, 2011, 04:12 PM)

That one gets my vote! 

3602

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Why Trying to be Productive is a Huge Waste of Time

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 23, 2011, 03:36 PM »

People don't have productivity melt downs, most people have false hope meltdowns. Sugar coating it as productivity is only giving strength to the excuse that flawed methods are not flawed but you are the ones flawed or nobody is flawed and we all live in this happy rainbow waiting for the next Santa Claus to drop down the next God-like and infallible system that feels like raw hell when it severely destroys our inner identity and adds little to our external lives and surrounding.

-Paul Keith (September 23, 2011, 02:45 PM)

Damnit man, that was positively beautiful! ...Hell I'm thinking about framing it.

There was a discussion in one of Heinlein's books about the quickest way to getting something done was to slow down. It involved an analogy of chasing someone by cutting through a planets atmosphere instead of all the way around the planet. I've always just added that to my grandfathers pick a pace you can maintain and stick with it philosophy and let the rest just be.

Uber productivity, and a case of 5-hour energy drinks a day ... is a dull ass-ed way to ensure an early grave.

3603

General Software Discussion / Re: Why 2012 may finally be The Year of the Linux Desktop (courtesy of Microsoft)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 23, 2011, 03:10 PM »

All I need an OS for as an end user is to get me to the cloud, to my browser, and from there I can do the rest in HTML5 and beyond. Adobe is still building 20th century apps.

-zridling (September 23, 2011, 02:35 PM)

You should bite your tung for that. Cloud schmoud, we don't want no stinking cloud(s). I'll not be sticking my data balloon up into no cloud. 'Cause I don't want the first stiff breeze to whip that sucker over the horizon and away.

Sure, it'll be perfectly secure (Ha!) in 10 or 20 years ... But until then it'll be a friggin train wreck of horror stories about where ones data isn't anymore. Remember the good ol' days when you could get your data back in a month or so for $3,000 - $5,000? Now progress has made the cost ($0) irrelevant ... because your data is just flat gone. Unless you happen to be in a Russian coffee shop (where it's being sold to the highest bidder).

3604

General Software Discussion / Re: Couldn't be more disappointed in Windows 8 :(

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 23, 2011, 02:45 PM »

I would effectively turn every open plan office into a call centre! I amnot sure everyone would be happy with that (outside the cheaper markets in SE Asia)

-Carol Haynes (September 23, 2011, 10:55 AM)

It's time to dust off John Dvorak's old joke from the 80's about going into a room of voice commanded computers and saying loudly "Format hard disk!"

-daddydave (September 23, 2011, 02:14 PM)

  

3605

General Software Discussion / Re: Couldn't be more disappointed in Windows 8 :(

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 23, 2011, 11:35 AM »

Except that it drives everyone else nuts

-Carol Haynes (September 23, 2011, 09:54 AM)

That's a social issue, and those rules change in different places. Still, I don't think that it will prevent anyone from doing using their mobile devices with voice when it is finally "there". People do it now anyways. Let's face it -- nobody cares about anyone else, and being demure or polite is so last millennium.

-Renegade (September 23, 2011, 10:06 AM)

I'm with Carol on this one. Social Issue (Meh...) no. Educational issue ... definitely getting warmer.

Lets take two people talking in a crowd. They will typically speak just and only loud enough to be heard by the other person. Now put one of these people on a cell phone.... And suddenly they are seized with the need to inhale deeply so the can bellow into the phone loud enough to be heard in the next god damn county. Why? Because they're to freaking stupid to realize that one of the phones most basic functions is to amplify the speakers voice so it can be heard.

I sometimes get calls from one of these people, and no matter how far I turn down the volume. I can't make out what they're saying because the (their) phone is distorting so badly from their inanely loud choice of speaking voices.

Or to put it in nice short words: Use you're indoor voice when on the phone ... it isn't designed to be screamed through, and you're not up in a tree trying to be heard on the other side of a fucking jungle..

This behavior isn't rude ... It's retarded.

3606

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 22, 2011, 06:48 PM »

Cool! Thanks for chiming in ... Now we just gotta get cranioscopical sorted out.

-Stoic Joker (September 22, 2011, 03:09 PM)

Hold on, I just found a different application with missing context menus.

-cranioscopical (September 22, 2011, 04:46 PM)

hehe ...Now that a special brand of weird. Menu eating gremlins ... eek!

GotSpace is working perfectly.

GS 'safely removed' my thumb drive and also ejected discs from the optical drives.

-cranioscopical (September 22, 2011, 04:46 PM)

Excellent! Now I just need to figure out how to handle the External USB drives that want to show up as local. I'm guessing that ejecting an actual internal local drive would be (Um...) bad... Should also be impossible, but bet taking I am not.

I had to use system restore to get back my context menu on GS and some other applications (though it was working perfectly well in most). My apologies if you wasted time on this SJ!

-cranioscopical (September 22, 2011, 04:46 PM)

That really is quite curious behavior. Glad you got it nailed down. Was no trouble at all on my end.

Now for the flakey intermittent stuff... *Sigh* I just wasted the better part of two weeks tracking down a brand new crashing Dell on a bug like that. Turned out to be a (banking security) browser plug-in that uses a slew of kernel hooks to "defend" the system ... Apparently it defends the system from the user by making the machine unusable given its ill behavior (Gotta love security theater).


Let me know what you think on the local USB drive thing (needed or ignorable).

3607

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 22, 2011, 03:09 PM »

IIRC the optical drives are hidden by default so you may need to go into settings and un-hide them.

-Stoic Joker (September 22, 2011, 02:49 PM)

that's it - it's my first go at this 
working, (also context menus working)

-tomos (September 22, 2011, 02:57 PM)

Cool! Thanks for chiming in ... Now we just gotta get cranioscopical sorted out.

3608

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 22, 2011, 02:49 PM »

damn, I spoke too soon.

DVD drive (with DVD) is not showing at all

-tomos (September 22, 2011, 02:38 PM)

hehe ...Don't ya just hate when that happens...

But seriously, the DVD drive is not being shown/detected by GS at all? IIRC the optical drives are hidden by default so you may need to go into settings and un-hide them.

3609

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 22, 2011, 02:27 PM »

Anyone else in my boat?

-cranioscopical (September 22, 2011, 01:32 PM)

no, for once things are going okay for me today (sorry)

-tomos (September 22, 2011, 02:19 PM)

So... It's working correctly for you then, yes??

3610

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 22, 2011, 02:26 PM »

I don't get a context menu.
Downloaded a couple of times to make sure nothing weird happened there.
I have context menus in all else.
I do have both optical and removable drives showing in the table.

Anyone else in my boat?

-cranioscopical (September 22, 2011, 01:32 PM)

That's interesting... You get no context menu (at all) for either the optical or removable drives, but the other drives show all one? I DL'ed it here at work and it's working fine. ...But obviously something ain't right.

Does GS freeze when you right click it? Or just do nothing.

If you double click on the free space column does it turn into a progress bar? (Test code I forgot to remove).

3611

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: New program: ActiveHotkeys (freeware)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 22, 2011, 11:57 AM »

If for whatever reason the de-registration failed, there would be trouble, because the hotkey would remain registered and hence unusable in other applications, until you quit ActiveHotkeys. I know of no reason why registration should succeed but de-registration should fail. I've never seen it fail, and MSDN does not list any 64-bit specific issues (or any potential gotchas at all). In any case, quitting ActiveHotkeys should restore all keys to normal behavior.

-tranglos (September 22, 2011, 08:47 AM)

I used it extensively when coding the HotKeys option into T-Clock and never noticed any ill or even odd behavior. And that was all done on a Windows 7 x64 machine that runs 24/7 for months at a time ... And ActiveHotKeys was running along just fine the whole time.

3612

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone seeing problems with MS Security Essentials recently?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 22, 2011, 11:35 AM »

I did some quick Googling and found several places that mentioned the recently opened file history to be a frequent cause of this behavior. *Shrug* That would certainly explain why the 9x style open/save dialogs weren't affected.

Fix was to clear the recently opened file history.

3613

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone seeing problems with MS Security Essentials recently?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 22, 2011, 07:03 AM »

If it don't start behaving soon, its gonna get executed permanently.

-Stoic Joker (September 21, 2011, 09:00 PM)

Ah, interesting. I'm not actually seeing any CPU spikes, during the freezes or otherwise. But I've burned through most AVs on the market, and they only go from bad to worse. Not much left to try anymore. MSSE used to be a pretty friendly neighbor before this.

-tranglos (September 21, 2011, 09:04 PM)

I hear ya man, I coined the (derisive) phrase "Baby Sitter Suite" during my quest to find an AV that wasn't more of a hassel than most viruses. MSE really hasn't been that bad overall ... Its just picked some really bad times here lately to act up. I've got it running on close to 100 machines at various (SMB) locations, and there haven't been any major (mass) complaints, or really any minor ones I can attribute to MSE. But it has earned itself some negative attention as of late from me due to the pissing contest usage spikes lagging the machine.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any open/save dialog addons that it could be having a problem with? Its shenanigans are always purposful-ly directed at something specific ... From what I've seen.

3614

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone seeing problems with MS Security Essentials or recent ?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 21, 2011, 09:00 PM »

Hm... Well if you mean has it been acting like a belligerent whiskey drunk redneck that wants to start fights with everyone, then yes. I have noted it behaving rather badly as of late (or rather its last update).

Seems like every time I turn around its got the chip pinned at 50% (its max usage cap) because it got pissed at some process that has been running on the machine for the last 5 freaking years. Start an .exe from a network share and holly crap does it ever go bat shit. I did however discover that you can actually whitelist network/UNC path locations if you type them in manually.

If it don't start behaving soon, its gonna get executed permanently.

3615

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 21, 2011, 08:49 PM »

Context menu entry to eject drive?
Context menu entry to 'safely remove' drive?

-cranioscopical (September 20, 2011, 08:44 PM)

Okay I'm going to stash this one here only, instead of in the normal First Post location. For now, drive type must be either Optical or Removable (We'll have to work out the "Local" USB drives part later) to show up on the context menu. Optical gets eject, and USB gets safe remove.

There is much not done-ness in this build ... but what is there works without crashing anything.

Interim Build Removed - Cleaner... - Latest now in first post of thread.

Let me know what you think and I'll go from there.

3616

Living Room / Re: Linux game devs pirate their own game

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 21, 2011, 03:41 PM »

Suggestion: in the movie Hogfather a nanny asks her frightened little children what she said to do about things that scared them. The little children say "Don't be frightened. Get angry."

-40hz (September 21, 2011, 03:33 PM)

I Loved That Movie ... Brilliant Twist on Christmas it was indeed.

3617

General Software Discussion / Re: Tuesday's online debate: Windows Right vs. Windows Wrong

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 21, 2011, 01:43 PM »

And a bit more than unnerving in the wake of Microsoft's announced plans for a walled-garden distribution model (ala Apple's AppStore) for all Metro apps. I started a separate thread on that here.

-40hz (September 21, 2011, 11:45 AM)

I saw that, however... My initial reaction to the news requires the use of language that they don't even allow on 4chan. So I'll just be quiet about that for a bit.

3618

Living Room / Re: You Selfish E-books! (Contains the F word)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 21, 2011, 01:39 PM »

After seeing the latest Conan the Barbarian in a 3D cinema, I really wished there were a way get my money back.

-vlastimil (September 21, 2011, 01:15 PM)

There is. Next time you go to a movie...Sneek in the back door, and call it even.

3619

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 21, 2011, 11:51 AM »

Context menu entry to eject drive?
Context menu entry to 'safely remove' drive?

-cranioscopical (September 20, 2011, 08:44 PM)

This one might get me into trouble as not all drives are ejected the same (USB vs. Optical vs. ?), but it's worth a shot. I was also thinking about adding mapping/disconnecting network drive options. But that's really getting close to the razor edge of the project scope. As initially this was only supposed to be a passive display utility. *Shrug* Oops.

-Stoic Joker (September 21, 2011, 06:41 AM)

They are only suggestions 
Had you not made it so effective you might have got away with passive only. (Make rod for Empire, Empire strikes back.)

-cranioscopical (September 21, 2011, 11:01 AM)

The Empire had a rod...? ...a Street Rod? I don't recall there being a death rod (death stick, maybe...) ...(has been a while since I've seen the movie, true...)... But I was thinking it was a sphere, or orb or something. Death Ball? No...That's not right. Death Cube?!? No, wait that was the borg. Shit, this is going to bugg me all day...

I assume you could lock out inappropriate actions for given drive types.

-cranioscopical (September 21, 2011, 11:01 AM)

Me too except for the ones that defy definition, like external USB drives that insist on calling themselves local etc. But I think I can ballpark it cleanly enough to give it a shot ... We'll see what happens.

3620

Living Room / Re: Linux game devs pirate their own game

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 21, 2011, 07:18 AM »

I think it will only be a short time before most nations adopt legislation similar to Korea's "real name verification" anti-anonymity laws. So far, the UK, France, Australia, and the US have legislation pending that would basically require a license to access and use the Internet.

And with the huge amount of media and entertainment industry lobby money behind the push, (and several government security agencies jockeying for ever bigger roles and budgets) it will only be a matter of time.

-40hz (September 21, 2011, 05:48 AM)

Oh goodie, now identity theft has a whole new incentive ... and a wide open consumer level market. Jesus these people are freaking stupid.

3621

General Software Discussion / Re: Tuesday's online debate: Windows Right vs. Windows Wrong

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 21, 2011, 07:08 AM »

I'm surprised by the whole topic. Are there any Windows left?

-cranioscopical (September 20, 2011, 08:15 PM)

There are. But lately all you ever see is cloud whenever you look out of them.

-40hz (September 21, 2011, 06:45 AM)

That would be funny if it wasn't true; It's actually a bit unnerving.

3622

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 21, 2011, 06:41 AM »

Suggestions welcome

-Stoic Joker (September 20, 2011, 07:00 PM)

On W7-64 my external USB drives show up as local (both USB 2 and 3).
How about a user-selectable exclusion by drive letter?

-cranioscopical (September 20, 2011, 08:44 PM)

I had actually been toying with that, but wasn't sure if it was needed. Guess I'll delve into it a bit more then.

Context menu entry to eject drive?
Context menu entry to 'safely remove' drive?

-cranioscopical (September 20, 2011, 08:44 PM)

This one might get me into trouble as not all drives are ejected the same (USB vs. Optical vs. ?), but it's worth a shot. I was also thinking about adding mapping/disconnecting network drive options. But that's really getting close to the razor edge of the project scope. As initially this was only supposed to be a passive display utility. *Shrug* Oops.

3623

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 20, 2011, 07:00 PM »

My how time slips away...

Finally got a few minutes to poke the GS project with a stick so I thought I'd update folks what I'm currently working on for the next build. So... comming soon (i hope...) ontext menu with three options:

Extended Information - Honestly not a clue what this will do, but it sounds cool Huh?
Open drive letter X: in Windows explorer - This will also be the default double-click option.
Edit drive label for drive X: - Obviously this will not work for Optical & SUBST drives but everything else has past the first batch of tests.

So that's the plan at the moment ... Suggestions welcome

3624

Developer's Corner / Re: Any wordpress coders here available for hire?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 20, 2011, 05:16 PM »

FWIW, I think the "hide-stuff-until-mouseover" is a terrible UI design idea.   

-skwire (September 20, 2011, 04:01 PM)

+1 Peek-A-Boo is only fun those 5 and under.

3625

General Software Discussion / Re: Mother****ing placeholder text mother****er (Warning: Image contains bad words)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 20, 2011, 05:14 PM »

O_o ...Guess that for those days when you're just MF tired of those MF blank spaces on that MF page.