Recent Posts

4626

General Software Discussion / Re: Textaizer - free tool to make pictures out of text parts

« Last post by app103 on May 09, 2007, 09:20 PM »

This is pretty cool!

4627

Coding Snack Guidelines / Re: Setting up secure bookmarks/favorites

« Last post by app103 on May 09, 2007, 01:57 PM »

One really big problem with the bookmarks idea...one bad entry in a hosts file by some malware could cause you to go to a fake page when clicking the so-called 'secure bookmark' made by this application....and then there goes your idea of safety right out the window.

4628

Living Room / Re: What's your pet's favorite toy?

« Last post by app103 on May 09, 2007, 01:38 PM »

My old cat used to love playing with a ping pong sized hard plastic soccer ball in the bathtub (it made a lot of noise)...but the younger cat would always steal it and hide it when he wasn't looking. 

4629

Living Room / Re: Impressive little scam

« Last post by app103 on May 08, 2007, 02:26 PM »

Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP

-http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2007-042705-0108-99&tabid=3

Somehow, if I were running Windows 95 and XP Activation came up, I don't think I would believe it.  

4630

General Software Discussion / Re: Software gone social? Wakoopa is quite clever

« Last post by app103 on May 06, 2007, 06:03 PM »

It would be nice if you could hide and/or delete things from your history. It seems to be collecting a lot of garbage.

Self extracting .zip files show up as applications (with the file name), as well as some .tmp files during installs.

There is also some things showing in mine that I am totally clueless about...like an updater for an antivirus product I don't have on my system. It's showing AntiVir Updater running in the background...but I use AVG. 

It also seems to treat 2 different versions of the same program as 2 separate programs, such as when I ran an older version of Copernic Agent and upgraded it to the new one. It is showing a duplicate entry for Copernic...one for each version I ran.

Oh...and for those of you that actually do RTFM, it will show that you read help files. 

4631

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by app103 on May 05, 2007, 07:33 AM »

I finally remembered why I stopped using Copernic for web searches.

• It's too slow.
  
• Even though you have paid for it, you still get hit with ad links. This bothers me considering what they charge for the pro version. ($79.95!)
  
• You don't get that many results for things you should get plenty of results for when doing a general web search. There was only 50 results for 'free programming ebooks' using the default settings and not one of them was my site...but there was 5 for digg.

It's really only good for some very specialized searches, and even then it's very limited.

For example: if you are going to do a search that is programming related, this is where your results are going to come from. If it's not here, you won't get it:


Software reviews? The ones from DC will never show up with this specialized search that only uses these sources:


You want to search newsgroups for something? You only get results from Topica and Yahoo groups.

Now keep in mind that I am using their best version...the super expensive pro version. It's probably much worse if you are using the free one.

Copernic may have been good at one time, before Google became popular, but not any more. 

Systems like Scroogle could be considered proxies that simply convey the information on the page through to the end user.  Yes, Scroogle is stripping away the cookies but the content is still being passed through in its entirety.  Since Google's lifeblood involves those ads, they basically ignore it.

-onyx (May 05, 2007, 07:21 AM)

Scroogle does NOT contain Google ads. They are thrown out of the results you get.

4632

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by app103 on May 04, 2007, 07:43 PM »

how about something like copernic. it returns a set of results by combining the results from several search engines.

-nudone (May 04, 2007, 04:44 PM)

I had Copernic a long time ago...and I loved it. I stopped using it about 5 years ago and I don't quite remember why. I think it was just easier to use Google.

I didn't even know they still had a web search product. I thought they switched over to desktop search and gave up trying to compete with Google.

Maybe it's time I give it another try.

And guess what? I get to upgrade to the most recent pro version for free! How cool is that?  

Of course I'll still be waiting for StumbleUpon to become a full fledged search engine and not just a social bookmarking site.  

4633

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by app103 on May 04, 2007, 04:43 PM »

If you use Ad Muncher you never see any ads, on any site, with any browser. 

I had suggested Scroogle for the reason that not only does it give you ad free results, it makes a statement, too.

I am not entirely anti-ad. I am against how Google is using them in their results and what effects it has had on overall results, with them being filled with garbage pages that exist solely for the purpose of making money with adsense. The quality is going downhill.

It's really bad when someone can steal the content of someone else's site, post it as a blog post on hundreds of splogs with Google's help (blogger.com is owned by Google) and because it has adsense ads on the page and it's hosted by Google it gets a higher ranking in the results, than the original site. They are helping the splog owners steal visitors from quality sites and flood the search results...all in the name of making a buck.

And the creators of these splogs don't care about the content. They are not going to go back and edit it and fix it and keep it up to date and make it worthy of visiting...they just want you to come and click an ad and make them some money. And Google's adsense is the driving force behind this.

The problem is Adsense...it has to go before it destroys the web for everyone.

4634

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by app103 on May 04, 2007, 02:16 PM »

You could always use Scroogle and get the top 100 results without the garbage...and tracking.

Found on their donate page:

Showing Google's results without their ads is another political statement. About 99 percent of Google's total revenue comes from ads, and these are ruining the web. Thousands of "Made for AdSense" domains are spewing garbage. Since these sites need content to trigger Google's ads, they steal it by scraping legitimate sites, or generate their own by purchasing junk from bulk writers. Meanwhile, click fraud is rampant. Zombie botnets are used to click on ads. If you cannot afford to buy a botnet from some shady character, then you can contract with someone in a country where labor is cheap. They will hire people to click on ads all day at below-minimum wage.

It's time to stop pretending that Google's revenue model is anything more than a temporary bubble, and it's time for Google to start developing more socially-responsible sources of income. Showing Google's results without the ads amounts to more public-interest advocacy. It says that the web spam situation is intolerable.

4635

Living Room / Re: A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

« Last post by app103 on May 04, 2007, 12:59 PM »

At one time it could have been possible.

In the beginning, when Google was a university project, there were no ads...but it wasn't making any money either.

Back in the days of dialup and ISP's like AOL not wanting to run their own inferior search engines, ones like Google could make their money by selling search services to ISP's. (and they did...and Google still does with AOL)

But as time went on and these dialup companies cut costs & services, or just disappeared, it became harder to sell search services.

I think the only way Google could be able to get away from shoving their ads down our throats is if they start charging us...making Google a subscription based search engine.

Are you willing to pay a monthly fee for using an ad free Google? I think most people wouldn't.

Way back before Google became as big and well known as they are today, companies like Copernic could sell a search application that would use various smaller sources to find what you were looking for...and it was quite good, considering what else was available at the time, so people gladly paid for it. But even Copernic knows that people don't want to pay for a search engine any more and have changed to desktop search, selling the licensing for their tools to companies like AOL.

To have what you want, ad free results, some government would have to step in and run a search engine supported by tax dollars. And I, for one, don't want the government involved in deciding what results I can and can't have (and making it super easy for them to track my online activities).

I'd rather have Google just the way it is now...ads, flaws & all...for free, than that.

4636

General Software Discussion / Re: Software gone social?

« Last post by app103 on May 04, 2007, 11:19 AM »

I like this...this is cool:


_{What the DonationCoder team does.}

BTW...if someone has tagged an application as malware, it will come up in your cloud as "get violated". 

Do a search on au_.exe and click anybody listed as a user and you will see that in their cloud, linking to a malware list.

The less computer savvy can get some useful info about the things they run...especially when it comes to malware.

So this site can have multiple uses...good ones.

4637

General Software Discussion / Re: Software gone social?

« Last post by app103 on May 04, 2007, 01:22 AM »

I am curious...so I am in too. 

4638

Living Room / Nine tips for dealing with home office isolation

« Last post by app103 on May 04, 2007, 12:51 AM »

Working from home is totally sweet, right? You can earn money without even changing out of your PJs, blast music as loud as you want and talk to your Star Wars toy collection in order to replicate actual human contact.

Okay well, maybe it's a little unhealthy to stay at home all the time. Check out this list of nine tips for dealing with home office isolation and put the Jar Jar Binks doll away, for crying out loud.

http://www.consultan...ome-office-isolation

From DailyTechRag newsletter

4639

Living Room / Re: Best Buy Geek Squad Confession (long and interesting)

« Last post by app103 on May 02, 2007, 09:47 PM »

You mean to tell me this isn't the standard procedure everywhere? 

4640

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use 7-Zip files?

« Last post by app103 on May 02, 2007, 05:07 AM »

I use .zip when I am going to be distributing files to other people and I am unsure if they will have a copy of winrar.

The reason for this is that Windows ME, XP, and Vista can handle .zip files without having to go fetch a program to open it. (I don't know if 2k can)

I don't want people looking at a file and scratching their heads wondering what to do with it or making a face and deciding it's not worth it because they have to go hunt down yet another tool, just to open one of my files.

I am better off using .zip because it's familiar and people know what to do with it and usually already have what they need to open it.

Even people on other OS's generally have what they need to open .zip.



I would have voted for the color, but it was blue and reminded me too much of my bad Win98SE days. Why couldn't it have been purple?

4641

General Software Discussion / Re: Hackety Hack — the Coder's Starter Kit

« Last post by app103 on May 01, 2007, 05:03 AM »

I couldn't help but smile. 

Where was something like this 3 years ago? (I could have used it)

This link is being bookmarked for passing along to the curious that drop into my chatroom.

Thanks!

4642

General Software Discussion / Re: Participate: Online survey of installed fonts

« Last post by app103 on April 30, 2007, 10:34 AM »

1.) 221 of 5549 fonts.
2.) 243 fonts supported. 172 alphabetic. 62 new. 263 scanned.

This doesn't count the more than 12,000 I don't have installed.  

Warning to those with very old slow pc's: don't do this!

My P1 couldn't handle this. GDI & System resources quickly dropped to 0....and this is with trying the page after a fresh reboot. 

4643

General Software Discussion / Re: BugMeNot

« Last post by app103 on April 30, 2007, 12:14 AM »

What mouser needs to do is go to this page and get it all removed:

http://www.bugmenot.com/report.php

4644

Living Room / Re: Gender bender

« Last post by app103 on April 30, 2007, 12:06 AM »

maybe like on some official forms ive seen lately male female unknown lol

-Grorgy (April 29, 2007, 11:07 PM)

[ ] Male
[ ] Female
[ ] Both
[ ] Neither
[ ] Not sure?

 

4645

General Software Discussion / Re: Outsourcing web design

« Last post by app103 on April 29, 2007, 07:52 PM »

A number of companies are now offering to take your site design as a flat file (psd, png, ai - they don't seem to fussed on the format), and return it to you as a working template. Not only that - it will also be xhtml and CSS compliant, cross browser compatible, and their turn around is, in some cases, less that 8 hours. AND it is 'dirt cheap'!


1. Why on earth would I code my own design if I can truly outsource it so cheaply?
2. How can an independent designer, like me, compete with a machine like this?
3. Is this the way the design industry is set to go, with designers who design, and coders who code?

-Ampa (April 28, 2007, 04:55 PM)

The majority of people in this world have no artistic talent...and no design talent...and can't even make the psd, png, etc they would need to start with.

Not only that, but even with a template, many have no clue how to add their own content to it or maintain it....or even how to upload it.

That's what makes you valuable.

If getting a template cheap & easy was going to put you out of business, it would have been done already. There are plenty of sites you can go to and get a free ready made template to use right now. But that hasn't put the web designer out of business. Ask yourself 'why?'. 

4646

General Software Discussion / Re: If you dont see this.......

« Last post by app103 on April 29, 2007, 07:40 PM »

It's pretty limited in the areas you can search...only 4 choices:

• Politics: Drudge Report
  
• Life Sciences: Med Line
  
• Legal: US Supreme Court Decisions
  
• Social Networking: My Space

Interesting idea, though.

4647

General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu Linux vs. Windows Vista

« Last post by app103 on April 29, 2007, 07:21 PM »

Just a reminder:

A human life's worth isn't based on the OS a person runs.

This whole Ubuntu vs Vista argument reminds me of many on the 9x vs XP issue and why someone would choose to run 9x.

The reasons for running any OS are personal. If you like it, run it. If your hardware can handle it, run it. If you can find the software to do what you want, use it. It doesn't really matter what someone else thinks about it.

Don't bash another person's personal choices or opinions just because they differ from yours. These choices are often based on feelings and not facts. When people feel the need to defend their feelings, they tend to get in trouble trying to back up their valid opinions with facts...and they shouldn't feel the need to do that. When they do, things often come out a mess and arguments erupt.

We don't need OS bigotry. There is enough other kinds of bigotry in this world already...we don't need more reasons for conflict.

All that being said, Ubuntu is available for free. There is no reason why you can't give it a try if you want to see for yourself and form your own opinions about the whole experience.

I would probably be more willing to try Ubuntu than Vista, based on this fact alone.

4648

Living Room / Re: Gender bender

« Last post by app103 on April 29, 2007, 07:36 AM »

According to this page, the male to female ratio on this forum is 7.8:1 (stats from those that actually reported a gender for their profile)

4649

Official Announcements / Re: Power Supply on my PC just exploded: i'll be mostly offline this week crying

« Last post by app103 on April 28, 2007, 05:24 AM »

You should be able to boot from it - but I'd guess it depends on your BIOS settings (may be worth a look if it doesn't work immediately as there are settings to allow PCI cards to respond to the BIOS)

-Carol Haynes (April 28, 2007, 04:50 AM)

The Ultra 100 card has it's own BIOS. At a point late in the booting up process, the card will detect and list all devices attached to it. Until that happens, those devices don't really exist on your system.

If you wanted to boot from an optical drive that is hooked up to the card, and it's the only optical device on the system, setting in the system BIOS to boot from a 'non-existing' optical device may not work. And you don't have access to anything in the card's BIOS.

This is why I was unsure if it could be done. It may also depend on the card too. Maybe newer cards are better and will allow you to do more. Mine is kind of old. Of the 2 cards that my father and I have, my Ultra 133 card was the newer one...purchased in 2001...and I swapped that for his older Ultra 100 card.

The drivers for the Ultra 100 can be installed from within Windows.

The Ultra 133 card required you to have a floppy drive to install the drivers during first boot. I had a floppy drive on the pc it was originally purchased for, but I don't have a floppy drive on this pc. On the older pc I originally had it in, that card detected and listed the devices attached to it early in the boot process, right after the listing of the drives attached directly to your system. I think that card would have better luck with booting from a device attached to it than the Ultra 100 would.

Like I said...something to experiment with some day.

4650

Official Announcements / Re: Power Supply on my PC just exploded: i'll be mostly offline this week crying

« Last post by app103 on April 28, 2007, 04:46 AM »

Yep - thats the sort of thing I meant - but app103's PCI card is a good solution if you have a PCI slot - and probably cheaper if you want more than a couple of drives. I presume the PCI card will run normal ATAPI optical drives too.

-Carol Haynes (April 28, 2007, 04:39 AM)

Yes, they do...but I am not sure if you can boot from one that is hooked up to it...never tried that. I have never tried booting from any device hooked up to one. I guess that's something for me to experiment with at some point.