Recent Posts

476

General Software Discussion / Re: Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

« Last post by Jibz on April 09, 2013, 11:26 AM »

I cant download Libreoffice. It apparently is a torrent download from their site. Claims it is a 185 MB file but only 7.79 MB is downloaded. Do I need a torrent program to get this?

-J-Mac (April 09, 2013, 09:44 AM)

I think you might be clicking on the wrong link -- confusingly, the links for the installer and for the torrent are very close:

477

General Software Discussion / Re: thunderbird alternative

« Last post by Jibz on April 04, 2013, 06:11 AM »

You are right, looking back it was more like every 2-3 years, I guess it just felt like more because we had multiple licenses. Still, I maintain that for my use, nothing useful changed over the past couple of versions.

478

General Software Discussion / Re: thunderbird alternative

« Last post by Jibz on April 04, 2013, 06:00 AM »

I switched to Thunderbird from The Bat!, after having paid for upgrades through four versions -- it is a nice program (albeit a bit alternative in some ways), but the past two versions nothing has really happened and you still keep paying.

Basically I found that Thunderbird did what I needed with way better search and without costing anything.

Mozilla stopping development on new features for Thunderbird made me look for alternatives, and I would have no problem paying for a good solution, but I am not going back to paying yearly for nothing but UI tweaks.

479

General Software Discussion / Re: thunderbird alternative

« Last post by Jibz on April 04, 2013, 05:36 AM »

I tried installing PostBox and eM Client and import my Thunderbird mail to check them out.

PostBox imported fine, looks a lot like Thunderbird (for obvious reasons), but the search didn't work until I manually chose to index the mail, and after that I had to manually index the folders I had created myself for backup.

eM Client stopped halfway through the import with an error ("value out of range", no indication of where and what), so I was only able to import two accounts into it. It looked very sleek and the extra functionality it has like calendar seemed nice. But if it can't even import from Thunderbird ...

480

General Software Discussion / Re: Six free security tools from Microsoft

« Last post by Jibz on April 04, 2013, 05:29 AM »

I use MSE as well, it's free and lightweight, and like app says, if you are not the type of person who clicks anything that pops up, it works quite well.

I have used various commercial anti-virus and personal firewall products over the years, and most of them have gradually turned from sleek power tools to huge suites that try to do everything, but end up just eating up space and time on your computer.

There was a recent article that described how many of the anti-virus solutions available don't really protect very well against the threats of today, because they try to solve the problem of file viruses from 10 years ago.

I am also using EMET from Microsoft.

481

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendation for a free (and good) video conferencing solution

« Last post by Jibz on March 24, 2013, 06:05 AM »

Yes, Skype has become kind of the lowest common denominator in voice and video chat it seems -- even people who have no idea are able to use Skype, facebook and DropBox.

It will be interesting to see what happens once WebRTC evolves.

482

Living Room / Re: Newly coined term, "internet fury"? A sad article...

« Last post by Jibz on March 22, 2013, 03:04 PM »

I thought this article gave some interesting background and perspective on the story:

http://amandablumwor...ss.com/2013/03/21/3/

483

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendation for a free (and good) video conferencing solution

« Last post by Jibz on March 21, 2013, 12:42 PM »

Hangouts are a good free solution yes, or I think it might be enough to have one person buy premium Skype and invite the rest to one big chat (not sure about this though, haven't tried it myself).

484

Living Room / Re: Google Keep note-taking app spotted

« Last post by Jibz on March 21, 2013, 12:39 PM »

It could also be that they think they need this type of data to make Google Now more efficient. But I agree, releasing this right after they killed off reader with all the publicity that got, seems counterproductive.

485

Living Room / Re: Can you inagine a world without any personal privacy? Because it's here.

« Last post by Jibz on March 19, 2013, 02:39 PM »

Hasn't this been around before it started on the internet?

I mean, I am quite sure banks, credit card companies, airlines, hotels, etc. have been tracking your habits for a long time. The internet has made it easier to do in many ways, but the decline of personal privacy has been here for a long time.

If you are willing to accept inconveniences like always paying with cash, you can avoid some of it in the real world, and in the same way you can avoid some of it on the internet if you accept other inconveniences.

486

Developer's Corner / Re: SourceTree for Windows in Beta

« Last post by Jibz on March 19, 2013, 02:32 PM »

I found it interesting that they only support git so far, promising mercurial support after 1.0.

487

Living Room / Re: Free ebook "The Da Vinci Code"

« Last post by Jibz on March 18, 2013, 03:06 PM »

Quick google-fu:

http://www.mediabist...ntil-march-24_b67042

(there's plenty of other places with the news, but this one had links)

488

General Software Discussion / Re: Listary 4 released - tons of new features

« Last post by Jibz on March 09, 2013, 12:13 PM »

how current users pay the upgrade? just buy a new license?

i didnt get any email about the new version 

-flamerz (March 09, 2013, 11:29 AM)

According to the site you get free upgrades:

Life-time updates for free for all future versions

-http://www.listary.com/pro

I just downloaded the new version and used my registration code from version 3 .

489

General Software Discussion / Re: Listary 4 released - tons of new features

« Last post by Jibz on March 08, 2013, 02:04 AM »

It's checked, and it runs fine if I log into the admin account, but on my normal account it does not start.

If I run it manually, I get a dialog asking for admin privileges.

490

General Software Discussion / Re: Listary 4 released - tons of new features

« Last post by Jibz on March 08, 2013, 12:39 AM »

Just upgraded from version 3, and it seems it still does not support selecting multiple files .

Also, it apparently needs admin privileges to run, so it doesn't start with Windows automatically anymore.

491

General Software Discussion / Re: upgrade to SSD

« Last post by Jibz on March 06, 2013, 01:19 AM »

I recently added an Intel SSD to a computer that was a few years old. There was some software for migrating Windows included (based on Acronis), but the old drive was partioned, and the software was unable to clone just one partition to the new drive, and insisted on fitting the entire 1 TB drive onto the 120 GB SSD and failed.

I ended up installing the free version of Macrium, and it copied the Windows partition including resizing and everything without any problems.

492

General Software Discussion / JPEGmini company releases video service Beamr -- marketing gone wild?

« Last post by Jibz on February 27, 2013, 02:51 AM »

ICVT, the company behind JPEGmini, have announced a similar service for video called Beamr Video.

For some interesting discussion, check for instance this post and the comments in the associated HN thread.

I have done absolutely no testing, and have no experience with either service, but to give you a TL;DR of the critique, I think it is that they give the appearance that they invented some advanced encoding mechanisms to improve H.264 and JPEG, while it seems like they are just automatically selecting reasonably good quality parameters for each input and then using a more or less standard encoder.

Now, this is of course not trivial to do either, but the way they are marketing their services means a lot of the press ends up writing it up as "OMG all new super compression algorithm beats everything!".

Also, the impressive results in their examples seems to come from using originals encoded at very high quality which gives a lot of room for compression while maintaining similar quality.

493

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: GridMove at github

« Last post by Jibz on February 25, 2013, 03:34 AM »

I understand that. I've looked at it for a bit, but couldn't find anything that compares to the CC license I'm "using" now and just gave up. Also, like you, I'm not a big fan of GPL, and it looks like it's sort of the standard these days.

-jgpaiva (February 23, 2013, 05:26 AM)

Yes, I had much the same problem when I was changing some projects from commercial to free or open source. As I understand it, having a non-commercial requirement means it is not strictly speaking open source, at least by the OSI's definition.

I ended up using the more permissive open source licenses for most stuff, because I figured I wasn't going to make any money from it anyway, so it might as well be as easy for others to use as possible.

But if I were to release something as open source, while still retaining the ability to sell it, I would probably consider the GPL. Even though I object to the way it makes it hard for people to use the code in free (but not GPL) software, the GPL has, in a way, ended up being the most commercial of the open source licenses; if you want to make money selling your open source project, dual-license it under the GPL to get all the benefits of open source, while making it near impossible for companies to use it without buying a separate license from you.

Btw, I think it's great you have released the source and put it on GitHub, so please do not take my comments as being negative, I just find this licensing stuff interesting in a kind of masochistic manner .

494

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: GridMove at github

« Last post by Jibz on February 23, 2013, 03:07 AM »

I am not a license expert, but it is my understanding that CC licenses are generally aimed more at "works of art" like text, music, images, etc., and not software. You might want to consider picking a software license instead.

http://wiki.creative...ense_for_software.3F

Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software?

We do not recommend it. Creative Commons licenses should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative. Unlike our licenses, which do not make mention of source or object code, these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software. Furthermore, our licenses are not compatible with the GPL, the most frequently used free software license.

On a personal note I would probably not choose GPL, but that has been discussed extensively on these forums already .

495

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone testing Daminion Media Manager ?

« Last post by Jibz on February 16, 2013, 06:13 PM »

Looks to be a very nice program. But I personally can't justify taking the time to give it a thorough tryout because I know I'll never end up purchasing a license for it.

-40hz (February 16, 2013, 01:05 PM)

The standalone version is free ...

-joiwind (February 16, 2013, 04:56 PM)

My worry in this regard is that it has been mentioned that there will be a free and a pro version of standalone Daminion. Nobody knows what the difference between them will be, but it has been mentioned that the pro version might cost $149.

Now, I do not want to get locked into an image organizer (nice as it may be), if I end up in a position where I will need to spend $149 to keep using it. Please note that I am not saying the price is unreasonable or anything, Daminion really has a lot going for it, it's just way outside my DAM budget, and not knowing if I will be able to work with the free version makes it too uncertain for me .

http://daminion.net/...ructure-and-license/

496

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ? (All about Git, Mercurial-Hg and the like...)

« Last post by Jibz on February 16, 2013, 05:18 AM »

In related news, it looks like BitBucket has been porting their git/mercurial client (SourceTree) to Windows as well:

http://blog.sourcetr...windows-beta-signup/

497

General Software Discussion / Re: MS Office 2013 Home/Business - non-transferable (1 PC p.person) - Caveat emptor.

« Last post by Jibz on February 14, 2013, 05:21 AM »

There is also the possibility of using one of the smaller office suites like SoftMaker.

498

General Software Discussion / Re: It's official - Linux Foundation Secure Boot System Released

« Last post by Jibz on February 09, 2013, 02:57 PM »

I am not sure I quite understood how exactly this works yet, but off the bat it sounds like a compromise such that:

A) Techy people can go through some hoops to continue booting whatever Linux they like on their machine, stopping them complaining

B) Non-techy people have little chance to try anything but Windows on their machine, stopping Microsoft worrying

499

Developer's Corner / Programmers and Mathematics

« Last post by Jibz on February 09, 2013, 07:14 AM »

Via HN, I found this post well-written and interesting:

http://jeremykun.com...ics-for-programmers/

500

General Software Discussion / Re: DVCS ? (All about Git, Mercurial-Hg and the like...)

« Last post by Jibz on February 06, 2013, 02:03 AM »

Anyone tried GitHub's Windows client?