Recent Posts

4001

General Software Discussion / Re: Perfect Software?

« Last post by Darwin on November 08, 2007, 11:04 AM »

The world would embrace something like XP 2008, where the core product remains the same but additional drivers are included, the Aero interface is an option, and loads of cute new themes (shudder) are thrown in for fun.  Charge $99 for the upgrade and people will pay.

Agreed. This is essentially what Mac does with their OS - these new versions that roll out every 18 months or so are paid upgrades, but the price is very small. AFAIK, you simply go buy the latest version and install it. I *belieive* the price is in the $100 to $149 range. Compare this to the pricing scheme for XP and Vista! Nontroppo would know better than I (my OS-X machine is simply too old to run anything newer than OS-10.2 and is a glorified toy WRT how I use it, so I don't pay attention to the cost of OS-X!).

4002

Official Announcements / Re: November Discounts and Giveaway

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 06:11 PM »

Heh, heh - great minds think alike! I dropped in here to say that I'd uninstalled CPUIdle for the same reasons (well, barring the indexing thing - Archivarius didn't have a problem with it)...

4003

General Software Discussion / Re: split PDF files - context menu program?

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 06:08 PM »

Good thinking, Carol! No point spending more of my grossly inflated Canadian dollars than I have to! A dollar, after all, is still a dollar. Unless of course it is more than a dollar... Now I'm confused 

4004

General Software Discussion / Re: split PDF files - context menu program?

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 11:45 AM »

BrotherS - I hope this signals a return to "active duty" on your part? Seriously, it really is good to see you posting again 

4005

General Software Discussion / Re: split PDF files - context menu program?

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 11:44 AM »

I take it that the PDF Explorer and PDF Shell Tools are two distinct products? I did look at the website, I swear! Anyway, Carol, do you also use PDF Explorer? I use Archivarius, Endnote and PaperPort (the latter very minimally) and wonder if PDF Explorer is an advance over any/a combination of these? With the Canadian dollar so strong at the moment the price might even be acceptable...

4006

Developer's Corner / Re: Consumating’s Ill-Fated Point System: Nice Blog Essay

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 11:34 AM »

Things like adding a mod to the forum that will allow people to rate posts to give more interesting posts a higher rank. Or some of the ideas he has for the Cody Club. It's not the spirit and intention of it that I am worried about. It's how it could encourage people to compete and create a false sense of superiority among members if these things were visible and comparable in some way. That's what I worry about. I really don't want to be a part of a community that is competitive like that or fighting for gold stars again.

My impression is that even when he comes up with ideas like this, he always argues against them, for the reasons that you list. I agree with you and Ralf - DC works beautifully the way it is!

4007

Official Announcements / Re: November Discounts and Giveaway

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 09:16 AM »

George, it occurs to me that the problem most likely lies with a different Copernic setting, like "don't index when cpu usage is above XX%" or something similar (don't have Copernic installed so can't check). Might be worth looking at...

I'm starting to see sporadic unheralded and unwelcome reboots on my XP Pro machine. Can't quite match it up to having CPUIdle installed and running, but I can say that it's happened twice SINCE I installed it and never before... I *think* it has to do with changing settings in CPUIdle options. Will follow up on this and post back later today.

4008

Living Room / Re: Wedgie-Proof Underwear!

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 09:12 AM »

LOL - simple solution 'go without' .... ooo er missus 

-Carol Haynes (November 07, 2007, 08:44 AM)

Naw - to paraphrase Kramer (character in the sitcom "Seinfeld") on the same theme: "My boys need a home!". To clarify, he wasn't referring to his children 

4009

Living Room / Re: Alternate Reality Gaming

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 08:34 AM »

Great. Not only are you people STILL POSTING, but now I have to do a CTRL + A on every frikin page to look for hidden messages. I curse you all!!  Don't make me start posting in white font with the text in Russian that I have ROT13ed!

-tinjaw (November 07, 2007, 08:08 AM)

The gates are open, but the beast is asleep

4010

Living Room / Re: Wedgie-Proof Underwear!

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 08:20 AM »

No more gaunchy pulls! Nice to know that my boys will be growing up in a world free of such barbarity! Seriously, I think this *might* have happened to me once in school - hard to do this to a 12 year old that is 180cm/6 ft tall and weights 160 pounds, sadly I've not grown since... well, I've been posting some big numbers in weight but no movement in height, other than down, in over 25 years now  - but I saw a lot of kids get picked on this way when I was in the 10 to 12 year old range and it's both dangerous and humiliating.

4011

Living Room / Re: To wide-screen or not to wide-screen

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 08:14 AM »

I'll probably be joining you in widescreen nirvana, Dirhael. I live in a small town and AFAICT widescreen is about the only choice I'll have. I'm agnostic on the issue of the merits of 4:3/5:5/16:9 from a user's perspective. Mostly because I've never used a widescreen monitor in computing. Only one in the house is on my wife's personal notebook and I haven't really tried to use it "prodcutively" (just poke around on it updating security apps and troubleshooting the odd problem for her). So we'll see... I can tell you that I always disable sidebars in software because of the real estate it takes up on my computer, so 16:9 might be a refreshing change for me and allow me to utilize features of varous apps' GUI that I've not been able to use fully in the past.

4012

General Software Discussion / Re: Google OS already here, with hardware?! Well, sort of.

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 08:08 AM »

Sort of agree with you, icekin. When you're dealing with linux you really ARE spoiled for choice.

Have to agree with iphigenie as well - another monolithic software company is not really desireable. However, I'm still watching this with interest - I expect that google WILL roll out their own OS in the future and I'm curious to see what they come up with. I'm guessing that they'll try to come up with something with as much interoperability with apps for Windows (and Apple?) as possible while making the result as easy to use and as minimalist as possible. If done right, this might be very compelling...

Anyway, to return to what iphigenie said, Google scares me too and I feel much the same way about MS as she does - as monopolistic and technologically imperialistic and colonial as they are, they've decades of experience in OS development and I trust them. For now... I hope they can re-direct their energies away from DRM and focus on the user experience again. Well, that and security...

4013

Developer's Corner / Re: Consumating’s Ill-Fated Point System: Nice Blog Essay

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 08:03 AM »

My impression is that it works quietly in the background and hasn't in any way negatively influenced the way people behave on the site. In some ways, it works so well and so seamlessly that it is almost invisible - I often think that it is underutilized, but then I look at the donations that have come my way and realise that this is far from the case. I also try to give as good as I get!

Anyway, Ralf, your usage of it seems spot on to me. But that's probably a bit ego-centric because you've described how I use them too 

4014

Living Room / Re: Genuinely stupid laws - that still APPLY !!

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 07:54 AM »

Here is a well known law from my home state of New Jersey, that is enforced, and makes us kind of an odd-ball state:

It is against the law here to pump your own gas.

-app103 (November 07, 2007, 07:43 AM)

We haven't had full-service stations where I am (BC) in years - they disappeared in the early to mid-90's. Are they still around in NJ, or is everyone there breaking this law 

4015

Living Room / Re: Genuinely stupid laws - that still APPLY !!

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 07:53 AM »

This had me rolling about ...

http://news.bbc.co.u.../1/hi/uk/7081038.stm

I want to know how Indonesia enforce their law ?

-Carol Haynes (November 07, 2007, 06:27 AM)

Nice post, Carol. Good to have a morning chuckle (well, it's morning where I am, anyway)!

The Indonesian law is distrubing because it's the kind of statute that in the past (one REALLY hopes that it's ignored in the present) would likely have relied on accuastion - you don't like someone, just start a rumour about their hobbies...

4016

General Software Discussion / Re: Perfect Software?

« Last post by Darwin on November 07, 2007, 07:47 AM »

This is an excellent thread, raising and really interesting question. Sadly, I can think of many wonderful apps that were abandoned (but released as freeware) after a major OS upgrade (Win 3.x to 9x or 9x to XP etc.) but nothing that has been maintained and updated for years without a significant upgrade.

Unfortunately, as much as I recognize that this is desireable, I'm like those people in the box stores looking at packaging. I find it almost impossible to resist the urge to upgrade to the latest version of an application, even if my needs are more than met by the previous version. This is a complusion, and an often expensive one! I'm pretty sure that I'm not in the minority. I'm sure that software developers are aware of this mindset and keep piling on the features/tweaking the GUI/changing the code to accomodate it. Why? Two conflicting reasons: 1. This mentality will drive many users to DIFFERENT solutions, even if there is NOTHING wrong with the current one. There is the perception, familiar to anthropologists and sociologists, that stasis in culture or evolution is backward despite the fact that it is seen by practitioners as indicative of success and 2. It keeps revenue coming in because people like to buy actively developed software so either you've got a lifetime licence model and need to keep evovling your product to attract new users or you've got a paid upgrade model and need to keep your existing users coming back to fill your coffers (even if only a little)...

Both developers and end-users are caught in a vicious cycle - one that is ultimately counter-productive.

4017

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro X2 - installation from hell ...

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2007, 05:04 PM »

Yeah... not much of an advertisement for the "thinify" tool when everything else in the picture gets distorted, too... But then, what did I expect?

4018

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro X2 - installation from hell ...

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2007, 03:20 PM »

I don't know what to say about the makeover tools - I don't really use them so fired up PSP X2 and opened up a piccie of myself and applied them all. It was pretty quick and dirty but the results were good - I managed to "thinify" myself (always a good thing), whiten my teeth and give myself a suntan...

Before:



After:

4019

Living Room / Re: Alternate Reality Gaming

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2007, 03:11 PM »

Heh, heh - I almost missed it too - only reason I saw it was because I hit "quote" to reply 

4020

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use Desktop Widgets?

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2007, 01:55 PM »

Nicely said, Nosh. Mirrors my sentiments exactly 

4021

General Software Discussion / Re: Paint Shop Pro X2 - installation from hell ...

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2007, 11:01 AM »

For me it's the startup and operational speed. Also seems more stable and less resource hungry. However, if you are happy with X1 (ie your system specs are such that you aren't noticeably inconvenienced by the resource problems) you're probably not going to gain much by upgrading.

Here's a list of the new features (I have the graphite theme turned off).

4022

Official Announcements / Re: November Discounts and Giveaway

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2007, 10:41 AM »

Re-reading lanux128's original post (as linked to by Josh in the op of this thread), CPUIdle probably will NOT do much for me. My system is pretty stable and I don't really have an overheating problem. I also have no onboard sensors for CPU temperature so can't gauge that, either...

4023

Official Announcements / Re: November Discounts and Giveaway

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2007, 09:26 AM »

Don't know anything about Defensewall HIPS, other than that it seems popular. Thanks for pointing me to RM Clock - I'm checking it out, too 

4024

Living Room / Re: To wide-screen or not to wide-screen

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2007, 09:21 AM »

OK - thanks for confirming that, Ralf. I guess the final "step" in considering this should be to hook my notebook up to my friend's monitor and see if the anaemic Centrino video card is up to the task. I'd hate to spend the money only to find that the secondary monitor flickers on me...

4025

Living Room / Re: To wide-screen or not to wide-screen

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2007, 08:55 AM »

More food for thought. I don't game and I don't watch movies on my computer (very often, anyway). Seems there may be compelling reasons to avoid widescreen given that I, too, like to maximize my apps (Word, Excel, Access) when working?