Recent Posts

4176

General Software Discussion / Re: Who is still runnig XP?

« Last post by 40hz on January 27, 2013, 12:33 AM »

Once I get Wine installed...

-Tinman57 (January 26, 2013, 08:17 PM)

Wine works surprisingly well. But it's not a panacea. Don't expect everything to run under it. Or be stable if it does run. Because there's many times a winapp simply won't work with Wine no matter how much fiddling you do.

Fortunately, with the advent of inexpensive and very large hard drives, it's quite practical to allocate some space for XP and setup a dual boot system. Especially since most flavors of Linux are Windows 'aware' and can install themselves alongside it with no fuss or headaches.
 

4177

General Software Discussion / Re: Who is still runnig XP?

« Last post by 40hz on January 26, 2013, 01:14 PM »

Still running XP on a separate disk, though I hardly ever boot into it;

-Edvard (January 25, 2013, 11:22 PM)

That is certainly the easiest way. I still keep a few copies of XP on swappable hard drives for those increasingly rare occasions when I do need it. Mostly for use with antique but still useful music software such as Tascam's Gigasampler.

I'll also probably keep some VMs of XP around indefinitely. Just in case.

4178

Living Room / Re: NASA OOPS!

« Last post by 40hz on January 26, 2013, 01:00 PM »

I'll forward this to my contact in NASA. She can probably tell at a glance what it is they picked up.

-SeraphimLabs (January 26, 2013, 11:10 AM)

But how do you know she hasn't been already compromised or is working as an agent for the {Area-51 aliens|Illuminatus|Church of Subgenius|Warren Belch Society}? Or even *gasp* The Mad Fishmonger?

Mad Fishmonger???

 

4179

General Software Discussion / Re: My Digital Documents 2011 on BDJ Today 4-7-12

« Last post by 40hz on January 26, 2013, 12:53 PM »

I want a system where changes I make in Windows folders are immediately reflected in the document management program, which is why I opted for Filecenter.

-johnk (January 26, 2013, 12:43 PM)

Makes perfect sense to me why you'd prefer it that way and why you selected what you did.

I was more referring to the functionality of the system which is to manage documents when I called it similar to MDD. 

4180

General Software Discussion / Re: Strategies to stay with Windows 7 as long as possible

« Last post by 40hz on January 26, 2013, 12:35 PM »

I'm more concerned with data access speeds and programs opening and closing since I'm in and out of things constantly with what I do.

-40hz (January 25, 2013, 05:58 PM)

One acronym: SSD.  With backups, of course.

-skwire (January 25, 2013, 06:15 PM)

Yeah...been looking at those. (Installed a few for clients already. The reliability experiences were definitely mixed.) I'm going to give SSD another 6 to 12 months to mature further before I'll seriously consider it for my own use. Right now the benefits don't outweigh the risks enough for me. YMMV.
 

4181

General Software Discussion / Re: My Digital Documents 2011 on BDJ Today 4-7-12

« Last post by 40hz on January 26, 2013, 12:29 PM »

I use BenubirdPDF for document organization when I'm running Windows. It seems to be very similar to this app. It's also free.
 

4182

Living Room / Re: NASA OOPS!

« Last post by 40hz on January 26, 2013, 08:45 AM »

...or Venus.

-paulobrabo (January 26, 2013, 08:21 AM)

Well... it is a delta, so...maybe!  

But it could also be the cursor if whoever took the screenshot had the "capture cursor" option on. 

4183

Living Room / Re: The end of FreewareBB

« Last post by 40hz on January 26, 2013, 06:55 AM »

In the broad developer community, most developers have a very cynical and low opinion of download sites. But there are some good ones out there, and there are some good people behind some of these sites. Yes, they're a bit rare. Yes, there are lots of spammy download sites. But again, baby & bathwater situation here.

-Renegade (January 26, 2013, 02:41 AM)

Agree.

This thread prompted me to visit FreewareBB. Something I hadn't done in a good long while.

While there I found four products I had no idea even existed. I'm now evaluating one of them for possible paid use by a client of mine since the authors also sell a "commercial" version. If it turns out to be a go, these authors stand to earn some very good licensing fees for it.

I never would have known this product existed if I hadn't seen it on FreewareBB.  

4184

Living Room / Re: NASA OOPS!

« Last post by 40hz on January 26, 2013, 06:44 AM »

-4wd (January 25, 2013, 09:22 PM)

My guess too. If it were an aircraft, it would be "kinda big".

-f0dder (January 26, 2013, 03:24 AM)

Most likely. But where's the fun in that. Half of UFO watching is the pleasure of pulling answers out of your butt with zero in the way of proof to substantiate them.

That's why I enjoy a good conspiracy argument. They're creativity stimulators. Some of the most amazing speculative fiction concepts get generated during a good 'serious' conspiracy discussion. I just sit back and listen. I usually come away with a handful of clever plot ideas for stories after an hour of that. .

More seriously, they now have software that can determine whether an image has been 'photoshopped' or not. All it would take is for everything presented as evidence to be run through it. That should cut down on about half the para-nonsense going on these days.

But where's the fun in that?

4185

Living Room / Re: NASA OOPS!

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 07:39 PM »

I'm gonna guess it's the "nonexistent" SR-91 Aurora. It has the correct footprint.



 

4186

General Software Discussion / Re: Strategies to stay with Windows 7 as long as possible

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 05:58 PM »

Running an i3/6GB of RAM and I have not noticed this to be the issue. This laptop currently has a full load of office, kaspersky A/V 2013, VS 2010 and several other tools. I am to a desktop in about 12 seconds after boot and login with approximately 14 start-up processes.

-Josh (January 25, 2013, 10:21 AM)

The startup/shutdown times aren't that big a deal to me. But I don't reboot a lot.

I'm more concerned with data access speeds and programs opening and closing since I'm in and out of things constantly with what I do. I should probably shrink my tookit down and just leave everything open. Different OS - different workflow, right?
 

4187

General Software Discussion / Re: Who is still runnig XP?

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 05:51 PM »

something that shocked many in the Linux community who though the dawn of the Nix order would soon come to pass...

-40hz

Wait...something actually shocked the Linux community?!  

-Paul Keith (January 25, 2013, 04:34 PM)

Happens constantly. Mostly we're amazed at just how awesome we actually are.  

But seriously, pretty much everybody sitting on the Penguin doorstep conceded that Windows 7 was a decent OS. It even interfaced with Samba rather well and generally played nice in a mixed OS environment. So yeah...maybe not shocked. But pleasantly surprised wouldn't be an inaccurate characterization.
 

4188

General Software Discussion / Re: Who is still runnig XP?

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 04:11 PM »

Seems to be a lot of that going around.

-superboyac (January 25, 2013, 03:28 PM)

It's still not too late for MS to regroup and do right by their users. Most want to stay with Windows if they can.

I thought I was going to go over to Linux in the wake of Vista. I gave MS the benefit of the doubt and was amazed they exonerated themselves with Windows 7 - something that shocked many in the Linux community who thought the dawn of the 'nix' order would soon come to pass...

Unfortunately, the lessons many people thought MS had learned from Vista (and applied to Win 7) seem to have been forgotten with the advent of Win 8. And MS seems to be intent on using their size to tough things out. Which is why UEFI/SecureBoot (as currently implemented) seems (to me) to be a very transparent obstructionist ploy rather than a genuine attempt to deal with system security issues. And there's enough of a gap between what MS is saying about it and how it's actually working that I have no reason to believe much of what MS is saying any more.

4189

General Software Discussion / Re: POSTING 101

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 03:57 PM »

Easiest is to first write your post without the images.

Once your text is done, switch to preview by hitting button at the bottom of the box.

Next - decide what type of image you want to display. Most times it will either be an image or a thumbnail.

Position your cursor where you want the picture to go.

For a full size image hit the little picture button between the YouTube and globe icons up above on the second line.

That will put an anchor in place where the image will eventually be loaded

Wherever the anchor is will be where your picture gets displayed in your post. You can't see the picture until you actually post it to the forum because it also needs to be uploaded before the forum software can display it..

You do that by scrolling down to the bottom of the posting form to where you see Attach:

Click the browse button and locate the picture you want to post.

You'll see the file name is now shown in the box.

Hit post - and when it finishes loading you'll see it on the forum page.

4190

General Software Discussion / Re: Who is still runnig XP?

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 01:20 PM »

Seriously it took me a while to move from XP to 7 but there is no way I would move back now and I'd go to Linux before returning to the misery of Windows 98 !!!

-Carol Haynes (January 25, 2013, 10:56 AM)

Same here - and if MS continue too much down the path they've started with Win8, I might (begrudgingly) jump ship... but until that happens, why consider a second-grade OS?

-f0dder (January 25, 2013, 12:56 PM)

I pretty much have. All my personal use, and about 75% of my profession use is now running on Linux. Not exactly something I planned on. Or asked for. Windows 8 was the last straw for me. And now that I've transitioned (and very rarely miss Windows now that I have) I doubt I'd move back to Windows even if they dropped Metro, fixed (or stopped playing games with) UEFI/SecureBoot, and rationalized their SKUs.

First rule in customer retention: Never do anything that annoys an existing customer so much they start shopping around. Because once they do there's a good chance they'll be leaving.

In my case, I'm gone. Not so much for technical reasons. Like many here, I've been around the block so many times with this stuff that I know how to work around most technical hassles. What I can't get my head around is the FU attitude I'm seeing from Microsoft about this. It's almost as if the user no longer matters to them - it's an "our way" and "mother knows best" vibe I'm getting. And while I may not be the smartest guy in the room tech-wise, I still don't like being talked down to. Especially when I'm writing the checks.
 

4191

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 12:59 PM »

OO!!  One of the very few editors with ftp access built in.  Very tempting just for that.

-superboyac (January 24, 2013, 04:27 PM)

I see that as a kind of anti-feature, aimed at disorganized PHP developers

-f0dder (January 25, 2013, 01:56 AM)

LOL! That was cold! Likely true. But still cold.

-40hz (January 25, 2013, 08:56 AM)

Well, sorry.

But once you've seen enough people that directly edit their scripts webpages on production servers, don't have any VCS, and only occasionally do backups in zipfiles (with no coherent naming schemes...), you kinda start to disapprove of built-in ftp support

-f0dder (January 25, 2013, 11:46 AM)

No need to apologize over that observation.

Not that I can really blame the pHp crowd. Just like you can't be a good employee if you're working for a bad company - you can't become an elegant programmer if you're working with something like pHp. At least from my experience with it. pHp is easily the least elegant of any computer language I've ever seen. And I've worked with COBOL, Basic, and APL so I know ugly when I see it. But in this case, it's more than just the syntax. It's the whole design of the thing (or possibly lack thereof) that makes me want to scream every time I see a listing of pHp code. It's brought the concept of 'quick & dirty' and 'fix it later' programming to a whole new level AFAIC.

4192

General Software Discussion / Re: Who is still runnig XP?

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 12:51 PM »

I don't especially miss the crashes, freezes and BSODs - plus disk corruption!

Seriously it took me a while to move from XP to 7 but there is no way I would move back now and I'd go to Linux before returning to the misery of Windows 98 !!!

-Carol Haynes (January 25, 2013, 10:56 AM)

Agree. However, you could do what I did and not wait to be threatened with having to return to Win98 before taking that next step.  

And here I was the person who always thought that Linux (despite my feelings about the philosophy behind it) would always (of necessity) remain my alternate OS. Funny how these things sometime work out.

4193

General Software Discussion / Re: Strategies to stay with Windows 7 as long as possible

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 10:06 AM »

I have already noticed Win 8 slowing down on my laptop. Doesn't seem much faster than Windows 7 to a working desktop.

Don't have much installed and all my data is on a separate partition.

Granted it is quick to the tiled interface and that works as soon as it has loaded but I have used Start8 to boot directly to the desktop and I don't think I am noticing any huge imporvement - especially as it is a clean install which is only about 1 month old.

-Carol Haynes (January 25, 2013, 09:21 AM)

Interesting. I noticed that too but thought I might be imagining things...

If anything, once Office and some other (all Microsoft) software got loaded following a fresh install of Win8 it seemed to become slightly sluggish on the the Core-2 Duo (T7250/2Ghz/800mhz w/4Gb RAM) laptop I've currently got it on. After a few MS winupdates it seemed to feel even more sluggish. Which is funny because Linux Mint with Cinnamon is very peppy running on the same box.

I'll be putting Win8 on an i3/8Gb RAM laptop shortly for another extended tryout. Or will as soon as the new drive (WD Scorpio Black 750Gb) I ordered arrives. Hopefully it will feel snappier with that combo and the faster disk.

4194

Living Room / Re: The end of FreewareBB

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 09:23 AM »

Yay! Looks like the site is now officially back!

Just received this in my mailbox:

40hz,

 It would appear that FreewareBB just won't be allowed to close, this time thanks to Christopher from http://www.lo4d.com who has came to the rescue and offered FreewareBB a home.    We have taken Christopher up on his offer and will hopefully see improvements in visitor numbers over the coming months ... we will also be performing a lot of updates on our listings very shortly as a number of them are now outdated.

For more information, please see this thread: http://www.freewareb...line-for-freewarebb/

 
Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter

So it's back. Or at least it is for now.

Here's from thread referenced in the e-mail above (emphasis added):

Well, for the second time in nearly as many years, it would appear that FreewareBB is still hanging on in there and the site has now been offered a new home by the owner of http://www.lo4d.com, another download site which shares the same ideals as us here at FreewareBB.

The site owner, Christopher, very kindly offered to host our site because of the difficulties we were having.   Initially, I felt our current host wasn't able to host our site comfortably and that spikes in traffic were resulting in lost visitors and a bad experience for regular visitors and despite many support requests to our host it seemed they still didn't manage to get to the bottom of what was going on.

This, I believe, led to the loss of revenue that was needed to pay for the monthly hosting which put us in a vicious circle ... I had to pay for the hosting from my own pocket, but with less and less people coming to the site (or able to get to the site), barely any revenue and frequent issues with the server I decided it was not possible to watch FreewareBB die slowly and made the decision to close.   Searching for another host was possible, but my past experiences tell me that for the amount I was able to pay each month, I would be looking at similar, substandard, hosting.

Christopher then came along and offered his help and now I'm thinking, let's give it another shot, let's see if a decent server and host makes the difference to FreewareBB and everyone finally manages to get to the site without any issues and it remains as fast as it should have always been !!.

So, for the next few months, and with Christopher's help, I hope we see an improvement in the visitor numbers to FreewareBB once again - thereafter I'll review the situation and see what position we are in so for now we're still alive and kicking - feels good again  :good:

Marko

 

Now can somebody maybe change this thread's subject line to read: Almost the end of FreewareBB?

4195

Living Room / Re: Animal Friends thread

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 09:14 AM »

A dog and his friend the dolphin get together for their almost daily swim...

Incidents like this are why I find dogs such fascinating people.

4196

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors

« Last post by 40hz on January 25, 2013, 08:56 AM »

OO!!  One of the very few editors with ftp access built in.  Very tempting just for that.

-superboyac (January 24, 2013, 04:27 PM)

I see that as a kind of anti-feature, aimed at disorganized PHP developers

-f0dder (January 25, 2013, 01:56 AM)

LOL! That was cold! Likely true. But still cold.

4197

Living Room / Re: The end of FreewareBB

« Last post by 40hz on January 24, 2013, 09:23 PM »

That's odd. I checked the page before, saw the note, and it was clear that it was shut down.

Maybe he had a change of heart or was just having a bad day.

-Renegade (January 24, 2013, 09:18 PM)

Weird.

So yeah. Maybe he was having a bad day...or something glitched? Hard to believe it was a glitch however since he's running on Invision PB which is about as bulletproof as they come.

Maybe he got his homepage vandalized?

4198

Living Room / Re: The end of FreewareBB

« Last post by 40hz on January 24, 2013, 09:21 PM »

He did post something to that effect back in 2010. Link here.

Maybe somebody saw it and didn't notice the date?

4199

Living Room / Re: The end of FreewareBB

« Last post by 40hz on January 24, 2013, 09:11 PM »

Out of curiosity, where does that news come from?

If you go to their site, there isn't any mention of them shutting down. Nada. Zip.

A google search doesn't flag anything about it - except here.



I asked my GF to register right now and she was able to do so without a problem.

There was a post from alt.comp.freeware that mentioned it (by 1 author with 1 post) - but I don't put too much faith in that source.

So...what's the story?

4200

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors

« Last post by 40hz on January 24, 2013, 05:57 PM »

And I'd try Jetbrains... I love it!

-wraith808 (January 24, 2013, 02:36 PM)

I've used a copy of their PyCharm (a friend of mine uses it for work) and liked it very much. Probably would have bought my own copy if I were doing a lot with Python. But for the levels I code at it would be massive overkill.