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3601

Living Room / The JSMESS Triumph

« Last post by IainB on September 16, 2013, 09:55 PM »

Update from ascii.textfiles.com:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

The JSMESS Triumph — September 16, 2013
What an amazing few weeks it has been!

logo

We made improvements to improvements. We refined refinements, and refined them even more. We found shortcuts and qualities and features. And eventually, it came down to a day when an automatically running script slammed through a list of every functioning platform MESS supports and created a working or near-working JSMESS version.

More than that, we found a single line in the code, one which was meant to make the emulator work better within the browsers, but had now been producing the effect of slowing the program down. We changed a single line to say “0″ instead of “60″, and to our shock, JSMESS now runs many platforms at 100% speed.

It was a fun experience to play with a Colecovision at 70% speed in the browser. Running it at 100% speed is another experience entirely – it is, as I’d hoped, a little window where you see an entire other computer running, doing its thing, accurately showing you images and visions from decades ago but breathing as alive as if they were crafted this morning.

To celebrate, I updated the JSMESS official site, purchasing a basic theme of dynamic images and transparency (since you need to be running javascript anyway), and then jazzing it up to stress how completely fun and fast JSMESS is to work with. I also now have links to all 300 supported platforms that will be in JSMESS 1.0. Three hundred!

addWe’ve got a bunch of tasks ahead of us, but they’re rapidly becoming the kind of tasks that winners have to do, that consist of the effort of the victory lap after a draining marathon, or that weigh heavy the crown of awesome.

They include:

• Adding a virtual keyboard so that you can hit controls and keys that aren’t on whatever keyboard you’re using. It won’t be good for arcade games, but it’ll make using the machines a lot easier.
• Going through and matching collections of software and support materials to the 300 platforms. Luckily many use similar software or are easy to track down. It’s just a lot of them, you know?
• Finding what slows down the remaining platforms that run under 100%, and getting rid of that. Currently, our slowest platform is the Sega Genesis, which runs at 50% speed – Sonic is taking Valium and that needs to end.
• Sound is not activated, because the sound API we’re currently using is going to be replaced with a new one, and we’re waiting on that. It should work nicely when it’s ready, though.
• Moving closer to a distributable package that anybody can set up on their own webservers in minutes. The great thing about Javascript in this case is we can just provide you a .js.gz file and it’ll work, wherever you are. There’s no dealing with binaries or libraries or anything – that’s the browser’s job.

I’ve been cranking away on a new demonstration page, where a dream comes true: you have screenshots of many famous programs, like Visicalc or K.C. Munchkin, and one click brings you face to face with these programs, running as they always have, full speed, and waiting for you.

I feel really bad when people ask me about this in person because I can’t shut up about it. It’s like the first time you realize what version control can do, or taking a new bike out for a spin, or discovering a great new way to walk somewhere – it’s exciting and new and the results feel infinite, far beyond what we’re laying into them. It’s a brilliant new day.

3602

Living Room / Re: The effects of Technology on Education, Demand and Employment.

« Last post by IainB on September 14, 2013, 05:02 AM »

Yes, for example, those jobs you can't outsource to cheaper labour economies, you mean?
Outsourcing otherwise is simply a legitimate form of labour arbitrage, but it's not always effective in maintaining/improving the quality of service delivery. So there are associated risks.

3603

Living Room / The effects of Technology on Education, Demand and Employment.

« Last post by IainB on September 13, 2013, 09:06 PM »

An interesting read on mathforum.org:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class
By DAVID H. AUTOR AND DAVID DORN - August 24, 2013, 2:35 pm

Image: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images Robot arms welded a vehicle on the assembly line at a General Motors plant in Lansing, Mich., in 2010.

The Great Divide
The Great Divide is a series about inequality.
Tags: computerization, Income Inequality, Labor and Jobs, productivity, Wages and Salaries

In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the productivity of American workers — those lucky enough to have jobs — has risen smartly. But the United States still has two million fewer jobs than before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels not seen since the early 1990s and the proportion of adults who are working is four percentage points off its peak in 2000.

This job drought has spurred pundits to wonder whether a profound employment sickness has overtaken us. And from there, it’s only a short leap to ask whether that illness isn’t productivity itself. Have we mechanized and computerized ourselves into obsolescence?

Are we in danger of losing the “race against the machine,” as the M.I.T. scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in a recent book? Are we becoming enslaved to our “robot overlords,” as the journalist Kevin Drum warned in Mother Jones? Do “smart machines” threaten us with “long-term misery,” as the economists Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence J. Kotlikoff prophesied earlier this year? Have we reached “the end of labor,” as Noah Smith laments in The Atlantic?

Of course, anxiety, and even hysteria, about the adverse effects of technological change on employment have a venerable history. In the early 19th century a group of English textile artisans calling themselves the Luddites staged a machine-trashing rebellion. Their brashness earned them a place (rarely positive) in the lexicon, but they had legitimate reasons for concern.

Economists have historically rejected what we call the “lump of labor” fallacy: the supposition that an increase in labor productivity inevitably reduces employment because there is only a finite amount of work to do. While intuitively appealing, this idea is demonstrably false. In 1900, for example, 41 percent of the United States work force was in agriculture. By 2000, that share had fallen to 2 percent, after the Green Revolution transformed crop yields. But the employment-to-population ratio rose over the 20th century as women moved from home to market, and the unemployment rate fluctuated cyclically, with no long-term increase.

Labor-saving technological change necessarily displaces workers performing certain tasks — that’s where the gains in productivity come from — but over the long run, it generates new products and services that raise national income and increase the overall demand for labor. In 1900, no one could foresee that a century later, health care, finance, information technology, consumer electronics, hospitality, leisure and entertainment would employ far more workers than agriculture. Of course, as societies grow more prosperous, citizens often choose to work shorter days, take longer vacations and retire earlier — but that too is progress.

So if technological advances don’t threaten employment, does that mean workers have nothing to fear from “smart machines”? Actually, no — and here’s where the Luddites had a point. Although many 19th-century Britons benefited from the introduction of newer and better automated looms — unskilled laborers were hired as loom operators, and a growing middle class could now afford mass-produced fabrics — it’s unlikely that skilled textile workers benefited on the whole.

Fast-forward to the present. The multi-trillionfold decline in the cost of computing since the 1970s has created enormous incentives for employers to substitute increasingly cheap and capable computers for expensive labor. These rapid advances — which confront us daily as we check in at airports, order books online, pay bills on our banks’ Web sites or consult our smartphones for driving directions — have reawakened fears that workers will be displaced by machinery. Will this time be different?

A starting point for discussion is the observation that although computers are ubiquitous, they cannot do everything. A computer’s ability to accomplish a task quickly and cheaply depends upon a human programmer’s ability to write procedures or rules that direct the machine to take the correct steps at each contingency. Computers excel at “routine” tasks: organizing, storing, retrieving and manipulating information, or executing exactly defined physical movements in production processes. These tasks are most pervasive in middle-skill jobs like bookkeeping, clerical work and repetitive production and quality-assurance jobs.

Logically, computerization has reduced the demand for these jobs, but it has boosted demand for workers who perform “nonroutine” tasks that complement the automated activities. Those tasks happen to lie on opposite ends of the occupational skill distribution.

At one end are so-called abstract tasks that require problem-solving, intuition, persuasion and creativity. These tasks are characteristic of professional, managerial, technical and creative occupations, like law, medicine, science, engineering, advertising and design. People in these jobs typically have high levels of education and analytical capability, and they benefit from computers that facilitate the transmission, organization and processing of information.

On the other end are so-called manual tasks, which require situational adaptability, visual and language recognition, and in-person interaction. Preparing a meal, driving a truck through city traffic or cleaning a hotel room present mind-bogglingly complex challenges for computers. But they are straightforward for humans, requiring primarily innate abilities like dexterity, sightedness and language recognition, as well as modest training. These workers can’t be replaced by robots, but their skills are not scarce, so they usually make low wages.

Computerization has therefore fostered a polarization of employment, with job growth concentrated in both the highest- and lowest-paid occupations, while jobs in the middle have declined. Surprisingly, overall employment rates have largely been unaffected in states and cities undergoing this rapid polarization. Rather, as employment in routine jobs has ebbed, employment has risen both in high-wage managerial, professional and technical occupations and in low-wage, in-person service occupations.

So computerization is not reducing the quantity of jobs, but rather degrading the quality of jobs for a significant subset of workers. Demand for highly educated workers who excel in abstract tasks is robust, but the middle of the labor market, where the routine task-intensive jobs lie, is sagging. Workers without college education therefore concentrate in manual task-intensive jobs — like food services, cleaning and security — which are numerous but offer low wages, precarious job security and few prospects for upward mobility. This bifurcation of job opportunities has contributed to the historic rise in income inequality.

HOW can we help workers ride the wave of technological change rather than be swamped by it? One common recommendation is that citizens should invest more in their education. Spurred by growing demand for workers performing abstract job tasks, the payoff for college and professional degrees has soared; despite its formidable price tag, higher education has perhaps never been a better investment. But it is far from a comprehensive solution to our labor market problems. Not all high school graduates — let alone displaced mid- and late-career workers — are academically or temperamentally prepared to pursue a four-year college degree. Only 40 percent of Americans enroll in a four-year college after graduating from high school, and more than 30 percent of those who enroll do not complete the degree within eight years.

The good news, however, is that middle-education, middle-wage jobs are not slated to disappear completely. While many middle-skill jobs are susceptible to automation, others demand a mixture of tasks that take advantage of human flexibility. To take one prominent example, medical paraprofessional jobs — radiology technician, phlebotomist, nurse technician — are a rapidly growing category of relatively well-paid, middle-skill occupations. While these paraprofessions do not typically require a four-year college degree, they do demand some postsecondary vocational training.

These middle-skill jobs will persist, and potentially grow, because they involve tasks that cannot readily be unbundled without a substantial drop in quality. Consider, for example, the frustration of calling a software firm for technical support, only to discover that the technician knows nothing more than the standard answers shown on his or her computer screen — that is, the technician is a mouthpiece reading from a script, not a problem-solver. This is not generally a productive form of work organization because it fails to harness the complementarities between technical and interpersonal skills. Simply put, the quality of a service within any occupation will improve when a worker combines routine (technical) and nonroutine (flexible) tasks.

Following this logic, we predict that the middle-skill jobs that survive will combine routine technical tasks with abstract and manual tasks in which workers have a comparative advantage — interpersonal interaction, adaptability and problem-solving. Along with medical paraprofessionals, this category includes numerous jobs for people in the skilled trades and repair: plumbers; builders; electricians; heating, ventilation and air-conditioning installers; automotive technicians; customer-service representatives; and even clerical workers who are required to do more than type and file. Indeed, even as formerly middle-skill occupations are being “deskilled,” or stripped of their routine technical tasks (brokering stocks, for example), other formerly high-end occupations are becoming accessible to workers with less esoteric technical mastery (for example, the work of the nurse practitioner, who increasingly diagnoses illness and prescribes drugs in lieu of a physician). Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, memorably called those who fruitfully combine the foundational skills of a high school education with specific vocational skills the “new artisans.”

The outlook for workers who haven’t finished college is uncertain, but not devoid of hope. There will be job opportunities in middle-skill jobs, but not in the traditional blue-collar production and white-collar office jobs of the past. Rather, we expect to see growing employment among the ranks of the “new artisans”: licensed practical nurses and medical assistants; teachers, tutors and learning guides at all educational levels; kitchen designers, construction supervisors and skilled tradespeople of every variety; expert repair and support technicians; and the many people who offer personal training and assistance, like physical therapists, personal trainers, coaches and guides. These workers will adeptly combine technical skills with interpersonal interaction, flexibility and adaptability to offer services that are uniquely human.

David H. Autor is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David Dorn is an assistant professor of economics at the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies in Madrid.

A version of this article appears in print on 08/25/2013, on page SR6 of the NewYork edition with the headline: How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class.

computerization, Income Inequality, Labor and Jobs, productivity, Wages and Salaries

3604

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

« Last post by IainB on September 12, 2013, 12:30 AM »

Found this letter to the editor copied on tallbloke's blog. Brilliant.
(OCR'd using MS OneNote.)

A short guide to the Middle East From Mr KN A1-Sabah.    Sir, Iran is backing Assad. Gulf states are against Assad!    Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi.    But Gulf states are pro-Sisi! Which means they are against Muslim Brotherhood!    Iran is pro-Hamas, but Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood!    Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the US!    Gulf states are pro-US. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro-Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states!    Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day. KN A1-Sabah, London EC4, UK

3605

Screenshot Captor / Re: The Great Screenshot Captor Ruler Debate Thread

« Last post by IainB on September 10, 2013, 08:41 PM »

I had 5 separate scrolling screenshots (images) - each is a shot of a different page of a scanned periodical.

I used the splice tool to cut out the sections of text duplication above and below the horizontal scrolling capture gaps, and then to cut off the extraneous bits on each of the 4 sides of each image.
If I hadn't been so unfamiliar with using SSC for this purpose, I would have gone about it differently, using a fixed-size rectangle applied to trim each of the 5 pages after I had spliced out the excess text.

You've got two good options here:

• In the Edit -> Select menu you'll see an item labeled "Reselect Last region size" that can be used to reselect the same sized region as you previously selected; you can then move that region around if you need.
• You can also set your own custom region sizes any time you want on the MyFavorites option tab, and these are available in the Edit -> Select Preset Region menu and toolbar.

Does that help?

-mouser (September 10, 2013, 07:28 PM)

Yes I think it will! Thankyou. I had not known that.

As for your pointing to the status bar showing the currently selected region size -- that's one of the things we have been discussing, whether that info might be displayed in much larger font with additional info, on an optional top panel that would make it easier to read.

-mouser (September 10, 2013, 07:28 PM)

Yes, I realise that now. I must apologise for entering the discussion at such a late stage and without having previously been following it particularly closely. I only entered it because I had actually been thinking "I need two rulers - one on each axis - here."  I was not aware of how best to use the "currently selected region size". Now I am.

That's sorted my problems, and it seems to have established that one doesn't need new rulers, since they are effectively already in place as the currently selected region size (rectangle).

The only remaining issue is probably that the little yellow circles (handles) for the sides of the rectangle, and the rectangle itself, do not behave consistently and sometimes play up a bit as I described previously.

Thanks again.

3606

Screenshot Captor / Re: The Great Screenshot Captor Ruler Debate Thread

« Last post by IainB on September 10, 2013, 07:18 PM »

OK, I understand now. I was mistaken.   
I thought I "needed" rulers because, as an inexpert user of SSC I didn't realise that I effectively already had rulers. The rulers are the sides of the actual cutting box/rectangle, whose dimensions are shown in the bottom of the SSC work area:



I had been trimming off the excess on one side of the page at a time - just like you might use scissors. If I had simply drawn a standard-sized rectangle around each page, and then shifted that rectangle around to align it with the contents of the page (within the rectangle), then I could have just cut all the outside excess on the edges off in one action, and each resulting cut page would be exactly the same size (length and breadth).
If I'd sat and thought about it, I could have done that the first time.   
The only thing that I would like is to be able to copy the standard dimensions so as to somehow instantly create the same sized rectangle on each successive image to have its excess trimmed off. That would be less tedious and less error-prone than dragging the rectangle out to that fixed size each time.

How could one do that?

Hope this all makes sense.

3607

Living Room / Re: Google Reader gone

« Last post by IainB on September 10, 2013, 05:47 PM »

Another recommendation for https://bazqux.com/. ...

-phitsc (September 10, 2013, 03:14 PM)

^^ +1 from me. An excellent feedreader. Very fast.

3608

Living Room / Privad experiment by the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems

« Last post by IainB on September 10, 2013, 01:35 PM »

I don't know if it was a connected event, but first the FF (v24) browser froze up on my laptop, and then I couldn't get anything to work. System was locked up, but the CPU fans were busy cooling the CPU.
Unable to do anything with the laptop , I switched off (reset) and rebooted the laptop, and then started up FF.

I don't know how they did it - and I think it was arguably rather naughty - but this window popped up on its own before FF had fully loaded:



My first thought was "@#$! - a virus!", but then I fossicked about on the Internet and decided that it was probably genuine.
So I pressed the link at Find out more about non-tracking advertising research, which took me to http://adresearch.mpi-sws.org/ and an About page - Research on Privacy in Internet Advertising
There was an opt-out button at the bottom of the page.
Very interesting and informative (I read/skimmed one or two of the documents there).
The Overview link at the bottom was very interesting too.

So anyway, I clicked the button to participate in their experiment. No response. Nothing happened that I could see.
Then I opened a couple of their PDF docs in Google Docs Viewer, which presumably started to feed anonymous data into the experiment.

Doing a DuckDuckGo search on "Privad experiment by the Max Planck Institute", doesn't turn up an awful lot, but I did find something here: http://www.slideshar...ssvoboda16/pat-study

It was a slideshare:

Privacy, Accountability and Trust Privacy, Accountability and Trust Privacy, Accountability and Trust
by Karlos Svoboda on Jul 08, 2013
(Long and informative document text followed, and it refers to Privad several times.)

I have not found a match for the names of the people apparently involved, yet, in the documentation, but there's a lot to wade through.

EDIT: This PDF slideshow is very interesting (has 75 slides).

Privad: Privacy-Preserving Advertising details

I'm all for it.

3609

Living Room / The last word on Google Reader alternatives?

« Last post by IainB on September 10, 2013, 12:15 PM »

Take a look here at alternativeto.net: http://alternativeto...tware/google-reader/
Then switch off the filters and press the "Show all applications" button/bar at the bottom of the list.

You're browsing Google Reader alternatives. There are 197 apps in this list.

I had not realised there were so many. It also shows the discontinued ones - e.g., including FeedDemon.

3610

Mini-Reviews by Members / PDF X-Change restores PDF attributes in explorer detailed view mode.

« Last post by IainB on September 10, 2013, 02:44 AM »

Update 2013-09-10: PDF X-Change restores PDF attributes in explorer detailed view mode.
This is a bonus that I had been unaware of. I have updated the opening post mini-review.
As described in the xplorer² blog on 2013-09-08:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

See PDF details (Subject/Keywords/etc) in windows explorer and xplorer²
In many respects windows XP was the pinnacle of shell integration. Things were simpler but just worked. With the onslaught of windows vista (and 7/8) things got very complicated, the documentation available for the new shell features was poor to non-existent and many things just stopped working like shell column handlers.

Adobe PDF reader quickly lost interest in PDF metadata and attributes like Author or Subject (what you see in detailed view mode in windows explorer). People who used this information to browse and organize their scanned PDF documents in windows XP immediately felt the problem. In later windows you can only see such properties using the PDF property page, which isn't very convenient for large collections of documents and neither you can search for such PDF information.

You can bring back this information in your windows explorer and other shell-aware file managers like xplorer² by installing PDF XChange viewer. Unlike Adobe, these guys know all about offering quality shell extensions that work both in 32 and 64 bit windows. When you install PDF XChange viewer you can tick off all components except for Shell extensions — if you are after a lightweight solution. This part of the program is completely free for all uses (including commercial).

As you can see in the picture to the right, after installing this tool the PDF columns come back to life and you can browse the missing details. Note that the Keyword property still isn't available in windows explorer but you can see it in xplorer². Moreover with xplorer² you can search and filter using such PDF properties as a rule.

3611

Screenshot Captor / Re: The Great Screenshot Captor Ruler Debate Thread

« Last post by IainB on September 10, 2013, 01:25 AM »

...If people can tell me a good usecase for rulers i might implement them.

-mouser (May 07, 2013, 02:10 PM)

Well, quite coincidentally, last night I was doing some seriously careful clipping of SSC captures of scrolling images from my browser. The images were of pages of text from one of those sites that won't let you read more than a couple of pages of stuff without your joining their blasted website. The scrolling capture was really messy because of the proprietary display - SSC could not compensate for it, and there was a lot of duplicated text on either side of the "joins".
My task was to cut out (remove) the duplicate text. I was working at 200% zoom so as to cut out horizontal sections - sometimes cutting some of the lines of text. I wanted to leave the text looking as though it hadn't been cut and joined (invisible joins). After considerable repeated effort, I succeeded. It reminded me how very useful a tool SSC is.

As I was working on the page images though, I did wish for rulers in both axes. This was whilst I was cutting off extraneous borders that had been added to the top, bottom and side margins of the pages. I was trying to ensure that each page ended up as the same height and width. This was quite difficult to do without rulers, and I ended up having to do everything by eye (using my visual judgement). The results were OK, but imperfect and I only managed to get them approximately the same length and breadth - e.g., 788x1309, 785x1272, 785x1285 pixels. Rulers would probably have enabled me to get these spot-on.

This is the 2nd exercise where I have cut and spliced text horizontally with SSC, achieving an invisible join. It is the first time I have needed rulers for cutting to a specific size.

By the way, whilst I was working at 200% I was making much use of the zoomed pixel display, and even dragged it wider so I could spot the relative differences between top and bottom of the cuts, so as to judge when to cut to get an invisible join. It was whilst i was doing this that SSC drove me mad with frustration because the cutting box did not behave nicely and consistently as it should have done. Sometimes it plumb disappeared, or had a mind of its own and snapped back to its previous shape after being dragged to a new shape. Other times, the handles sort of floated in the air, like in this example:

3612

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

« Last post by IainB on September 09, 2013, 09:56 PM »

3613

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

« Last post by IainB on September 09, 2013, 09:43 PM »

This is not a political joke...



...it's a joke about solvent abuse...

3614

Living Room / Re: The feds pay for 60 percent of Tor’s development. Can users trust it?

« Last post by IainB on September 09, 2013, 08:40 PM »

...Seriously? Is there never going to be any good news? ...

-Renegade (September 09, 2013, 09:07 AM)

3615

Living Room / Re: The feds pay for 60 percent of Tor’s development. Can users trust it?

« Last post by IainB on September 09, 2013, 08:25 PM »

I don’t trust it - never felt very comfortable when I used it shortly after I first heard about it. Now I really don’t feel comfortable using TOR.
Jim

-J-Mac (September 09, 2013, 03:52 PM)

^^ +1 likewise.
"Trust" would require proof that it is trustworthy, and I am unaware of any such proof.

For example, remember this DCF discussion? - Norton Identity Safe -- Free Download
Section 10 of the Norton agreement, copied below: (my emphasis)

10 Privacy; Data Protection:
From time to time, the Software may collect certain information from the Device on which it is installed, which may include:
 
— Information on potential security risks as well as URLs of websites visited that the Software deems potentially fraudulent The URLs could contain personally identifiable information that a potentially fraudulent website is attempting to obtain without Your permission. This information is collected by Symantec for the purpose of delivering the functionalities of the software, and also for evaluating and improving the ability of Symantec’s products to detect malicious behavior, potentially fraudulent websites and other Internet security risks.

— URLs of websites visited as well as search keywords and search results only if the Norton Safe Web feature is enabled This information is collected by Symantec for the purpose of providing protection and of evaluating and advising You regarding potential threats and risks that may be associated with a particular Web site before You view it.
— Executable files and files that contain executable content that are identified as potential malware. including information on the actions taken by such files at the time of installation These files are submitted to Symantec using the Software’s automatic submission function The collected files could contain personally identifiable information that has been obtained by the malware without Your permission Files of this type are being collected by Symantec only for the purpose of improving the ability of Symantec’s products to detect malicious behavior Such automatic submission function may be deactivated after installation by following the instructions in the Documentation for applicable products.

— The name given to the Device during the initial setup of such Device. If collected, the name will be used by Symantec as an account name for the Device under which You may elect to receive additional services and/or under which You may use certain features of the Software. You may change such account name at any time after installation of the Software (recommended).

— Status information regarding installation and operation of the Software This information indicates to Symantec whether installation of the Software was successfully completed as well as whether the Software has encountered an error- The status information could contain personally identifiable information only if such information is included in the name of the file or folder encountered by the Software at the time of installation or error- The status information is collected by Symantec for the purpose of evaluating and improving Symantec’s product performance and installation success rate Symantec may also use this information to optimize its web-pages .

— Information contained in email messages that you send through the Software to Symantec to report as spam or as incorrectly identified as spam These email messages may contain personally identifiable information and will be sent to Symantec only with your permission. and will not be sent automatically If you send such messages to Symantec. Symantec will use them only for the purpose of improving the detection ability of Symantec’s antispam technology. Symantec will not correlate these files with any other personally identifiable information.

— Information contained in a report that You may choose to send through the Software to Symantec when the Software encounters a problem The report includes information regarding the status of both the Software and Your Device at the time that the Software encountered the problem The status information about Your Device may include the system language, country locale, and the operating system version for Your Device, as well as the processes running. their status and performance information, and data from files or folders that were open at the time the Software encountered the problem. The information could contain personally identifiable information if such information is included in, or is a part of the name of the files or folders open at the time the Software encountered the problem This information will be sent to Symantec only with Your permission. and will not be sent automatically. The information is collected by Symantec for the purpose of correcting the encountered problem and improving Symantec’s product performance. This information will not be correlated with any personally identifiable information.

— The Internet Protocol (lP) address and/or Media Access Control (MAC) address and the Machine ID of the computer on which the Software is installed to enable the Software to function and for license administration purposes .

— Other general, statistical information used for product analysis, and for improving product functionality.
In additon to the terms and conditions above, the following terms and conditions will also apply to Your use of the Software on mobile Devices :

— The Software may access the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) in order to generate a hash that ensures anonymity The hash is used to analyze and aggregate equipment data for statistical purposes. The IMEI is not collected or stored by Symantec. This information is used for the purpose of identifying the telecommunications device eligible to receive Content Updates for the Prerelease Software This information will not be correlated with any other personally identifiable information, such as Your account information. Alter the service has terminated the data is retained in statistical form exclusively for internal research.

Unless it is expressly defined as optional. the collected information as set out above is necessary for the purpose of the functionality of Symantec’s products
Information may be transferred to the Symantec group in the United States or other countries that may have less protective data protection laws than the region in which You are situated (including the European Union) and may be accessible by Symantec employees or contractors exclusively to be used in accordance with the purposes described above For the same purposes the information may be shared with partners and vendors that process information on behalf of Symantec Symantec has taken steps so that the collected information. if transferred. receives an adequate level of protection
Subject to applicable laws, Symantec reserves the right to cooperate with any legal process and any law enforcement or other government inquiry related to your use of this Software This means that Symantec may provide documents and information relevant to a court subpoena or to a law enforcement or other government investigation. In order to promote awareness, detection and prevention of Internet security risks. Symantec may share certain information with research organizations and other security software vendors. Symantec may also use statistics derived from the information to track and publish reports on security risk trends by using the Software. You acknowledge and agree that Symantec may collect, transmit, store, disclose and analyze such information for these purposes.
CPS / IDS 1.0 / IE

As I wrote:

...In the doco somewhere it also says that it uses your unique CPU ID, or something, to hash/encrypt data.
NIS is your Friend...     

-IainB (May 30, 2012, 06:19 PM)

I coined the term "Dubiousware" for that, rather than "Freeware".
Wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.

3616

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Qiqqa - Reference Management System - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on September 08, 2013, 03:58 AM »

This is something I'm really interested in, specifically for my music studies. ...

-superboyac (September 07, 2013, 04:17 PM)

I think almost all the points/functionality you mention there can be delivered using MS OneNote - certainly I already do roughly 80% of what you seem to need.
Like most things, OneNote has its limitations, but they probably don't intrude for the sort of functionality you seem to be describing.
As always, rather than rely on other people's opinions, I'd recommend you "suck it and see".

3617

Post New Requests Here / Re: Remember where I got the Download

« Last post by IainB on September 08, 2013, 03:37 AM »

...asking simple questions like this one. ...

-questorfla (September 07, 2013, 09:47 PM)

I reckon that the question you were asking in the OP poses a non-trivial and a perennial problem for most PC users, and the responses you received indicate that no-one seems to have a perfect solution to the problem. For example, as well as the approach I wrote about, I have also for years been doing as per the tips that @TaoPhoenix and @AbteriX mentioned.

3618

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Qiqqa - Reference Management System - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on September 08, 2013, 03:17 AM »

@Contro:
^^ Good question, though a bit off topic.
In response:

• As I wrote above, I took a look at the details on the DocFetcher website, and it seems to be purely a document Search/Index proggy - could be an alternative/replacement  to (say) Windows Search/Index. Thus apparently not the same thing as Qiqqa at all.
• Qiqqa is a fairly specialised (for PDFs) and self-contained reference management system. I think it makes its own copy of every PDF documents file that it finds in the  directories you tell it to monitor, and it searches/indexes them and OCRs any image content, and builds metadata about all documents.
• Windows Search in Win7 can, by default, index/search hundreds of file types, and for those it can't by default, all you need to do is install the appropriate iFilter - e.g., here are some instructions for installing the PDF iFilter.
• Unlike Qiqqa, I don't think Windows Search can OCR images with embedded text in PDF files, though it can OCR and index any embedded text in images in TIF/TIFF files.

3619

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Qiqqa - Reference Management System - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on September 07, 2013, 12:24 PM »

@Contro: I took a look at the details on the DocFetcher website, and it seems to be purely a document Search/Index proggy - could be an alternative/replacement  to (say) Windows Search/Index. Thus apparently not the same thing as Qiqqa at all.

3620

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

« Last post by IainB on September 06, 2013, 07:31 AM »

There was a Russian transistor who worked as a prostitute specialising in S&M. She was so hot she radiated in the infra red end of the spectrum. "Resistance is futile!" she would say to her delightfully terrified customers.

3621

Living Room / Re: FallingFalling is useless in a very impressive way

« Last post by IainB on September 06, 2013, 07:21 AM »

Well, I don't know whether "useful/useless" but it is fascinating. A "Shepard tone", per Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

3622

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

« Last post by IainB on September 04, 2013, 06:06 PM »

A mother went into her son's bedroom and caught him in the act of mast'g.
"Johnny!" she exclaimed, "Don't you realise that if you keep doing that your eyesight will get so bad that you'll go blind?!"
Johnny looked at her and said "Well, can I just do it until I need spectacles, mummy?"

3623

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

« Last post by IainB on September 04, 2013, 03:36 PM »

It's silly.

3624

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

« Last post by IainB on September 04, 2013, 07:54 AM »

Explanation:

Spoiler

• A brilliant and decidedly mocking cartoon.
• The "new" discovery (QED) of the huge ocean knob. (How could you miss anything that big? Ah, of course, it's on the other side, out of sight if you hadn't accidentally gone there.)
• The tiny little control called "CO2" on the front panel that is getting all the focus of attention by the scientists. (The "greenhouse gas" CO2 is a trace gas - 0.0314%.)
• The huge water vapour knob (this "greenhouse gas" is the most plentiful at 3%) that no-one has noticed or is looking at, and that can be turned all the way up to 11. (Probably a homage to Spinal Tap, talking about their amps being better than other bands: "Ours go to 11".)
• A bored scientist has accidentally wandered over to the opposite side of the machine and has just noticed the Sun controls there. (The major influence of earth temps.)
• The machine being so huge and complex, it's sides disappear into the infinite perspective. (Possibly a reference to HHGTTG Deep Thought.)
• The general implication that the scientists clearly understand very little of how the machine/climate operates.

3625

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on September 04, 2013, 03:08 AM »

Why do some scientists break with the scientific process?
Hat tip to: http://wattsupwithth...bers-on-bad-science/

Interesting report of an analysis from a survey carried out by clinicalpsychology.net (February 2012):

Bad Science – The Psychology Behind Bad Research
Scientists are some of our most trusted members of society. We depend on them for a great deal of what we know about the world. Unfortunately, recent looks into the world of scientific research and reporting has discovered that many scientists are not as trustworthy as we would like to believe. By engaging in various kinds of scientific misconduct, such as falsifying or fabricating data, scientists are getting the results they want without the honesty and integrity that we expect of the scientific institution. Some fields are worse than others as well, with clinical psychology being a notoriously troublesome area. How do we fix it? Read the infographic above to find out.

The infographic shows that, of biomedical research trainees at the University of California San Diego:

• 5% of those surveyed admitted to having modified the results of their research
• 81% of those surveyed said they would modify or fabricate results to win a grant or publish a paper.

Perhaps unsurprisingly (because it reveals something about the academic robustness/integrity/ethics of the biomedical research trainees at the University of California San Diego in particular, and of the profession of psychologists in general), the infographic seems to have been disappeared (404) at the original link:
Here it is anyway: (click to enlarge)


Below is the header to that, where it says:

BAD SCIENCE
THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND EXAGGERATED & FALSE RESEARCH
We often thnk that scientists are the most honest people around, and assume that scientific findings are reliable and true. But several new studies have revealed that an enormous number of researchers cut corners, cook data,
and lie about results when conducting experiments.
This is the world of bad science.

(click to enlarge)