Recent Posts

476

Living Room / Re: Old Rubik's Cube book rediscovered via the Internet. I love you Internet.

« Last post by Innuendo on February 20, 2014, 10:30 PM »

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you....

CubeStormer.

Solves a Rubik's Cube in three seconds.

477

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

« Last post by Innuendo on February 20, 2014, 10:11 PM »

If I didn't love Outpost so much I'd give it a try, but Outpost just does everything the way I want things to be done (for a change).

That reminds me, though...I think I have an used Eset AV key around here somewhere. It, too, was a $10 deal.

478

General Software Discussion / Re: Total Commander 8.50 final released

« Last post by Innuendo on February 20, 2014, 10:09 PM »

One of the most powerful, most reasonably priced programs available anywhere on any platform. If one is wanting a Norton Commander-style file manager, this is the one to get.

479

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« Last post by Innuendo on February 19, 2014, 10:49 PM »

Seems the Sticky Password problem has resolved itself. Sometimes problems resolve themselves, but often not in a way that you'd like. Seems the thread in the Sticky Password forum that I added to regarding adding more browser support has been removed without notice or reason. Censorship is a good reason to take my business elsewhere. I almost paid to upgrade from v6 to v7 the other day, too. Ah well...money saved.

-Innuendo (February 16, 2014, 02:24 PM)

Looks like I need to post a retraction. My post was held for moderator approval, but unlike most forum software, the software they are using removes the entire thread when someone posts & the thread re-appears once the post has been approved. What a strange design decision, but I wanted to make sure it's known that they don't censor their forums. However, they do take a long while to approve new posts....

480

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

« Last post by Innuendo on February 19, 2014, 10:47 PM »

There's been some positive statements about Bitdefender in this thread... I have an old, unused key for BitDefender AntiVirus Pro 2011 (3 PCs, 1 year). I have no idea how well it'll work today, but I think there's a decent chance that it will still work with a 2011 install (I can provide direct download links to the 2011 installer from bitdefender.com's servers).  I have no idea how their upgrade policy works, but I suppose there's a small chance that you'd be able to get a 2011 install upgraded to 2014 for minimal charge or maybe even free.

-mwb1100 (February 19, 2014, 01:57 AM)

Usually how keys for security software works is they are valid for a 1-year subscription that starts as soon as one uses the key & the key is not tied to any particular version. Theoretically, since the key has never been used, one could download the newest installer, plug in that key and be good to go.

481

Living Room / Re: Junk mail plus telemarketing equals new ISP account?

« Last post by Innuendo on February 18, 2014, 12:26 PM »

Yes, junk email is called spam. You remember correctly.

Where I live we have a do-not-call list on the state level that works on the one at the national level. I signed up for both & I get a call from a telemarketer maybe once or twice a  year. Life is good.

As for your last call, telemarketers have the technology to call from anywhere in the world and make it look like anything they want on your caller ID. Some of these calls go through weird relays that will make the call sound faint or far away.

482

Living Room / Re: Junk mail plus telemarketing equals new ISP account?

« Last post by Innuendo on February 17, 2014, 07:31 AM »

Oh, my mistake. 

I automatically went to the premise you were talking about email junk mail. Never mind. Nothing to see here.

483

General Software Discussion / Re: Beware the Samsung rootkit

« Last post by Innuendo on February 17, 2014, 07:24 AM »

....silently adds code to your media files without asking for permission first or notifying you afterwards. IMO that's inherently a threat.

-Vurbal (February 17, 2014, 05:05 AM)

That's text book behavior for a virus. I don't care what the program's called or what it's supposed to do, especially if what it is doing is for the benefit of someone other than the owner of the computer.

484

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« Last post by Innuendo on February 16, 2014, 02:24 PM »

I don't know what programs other than Sticky Password you feel you can't use in Pale Moon.  My experience has been that it works with everything I've thrown at it except 1Password (which I wasn't really all that interested in, since I didn't think it was as good as LastPass).  I've not been limited to the Mozilla-site add-ons: for example, I got both Linkman and Surfulater to work with Pale Moon.

-cyberdiva (February 16, 2014, 11:28 AM)

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying I feel anything other than Sticky Password won't work with Pale Moon. I was just offering an explanation as to why SP wasn't working & while I haven't checked into it, I bet 1Password doesn't work for the same reason. I'm relieved Linkman will work as I'm getting ready to install it & I was hoping I wasn't going to run into any problems.

Seems the Sticky Password problem has resolved itself. Sometimes problems resolve themselves, but often not in a way that you'd like. Seems the thread in the Sticky Password forum that I added to regarding adding more browser support has been removed without notice or reason. Censorship is a good reason to take my business elsewhere. I almost paid to upgrade from v6 to v7 the other day, too. Ah well...money saved.

For most people LastPass is absolutely free.  It costs nothing to use it in your computer's browser, and I did so for a while before deciding to send them $12/yr for Premium membership.

Ah, but I'm not most people, Ms. Diva, but you've probably known me long enough to realize that. I use my mobile devices quite a bit so I'd need access to that password database while I was on the move. It's good to see that LastPass no longer limits the number of passwords saved for free accounts any longer, though.

They aren't very transparent on anything regarding their company, but that's a personal qualm so I'll leave that out of the discussion.

485

Living Room / Re: Junk mail plus telemarketing equals new ISP account?

« Last post by Innuendo on February 16, 2014, 02:05 PM »

Just visited my phones web site and it could not locate any *service changes requested*.  This was definitely a scam but probably not by them.
This is what I suspected all along.  That the phone calls and maybe the junk mail were both phony. 

-crabby3 (February 16, 2014, 12:51 PM)

Then that should narrow down your list of suspects considerably. If you are like me, very few entities possess both my email address and my home phone number.

486

Living Room / Re: Junk mail plus telemarketing equals new ISP account?

« Last post by Innuendo on February 16, 2014, 11:09 AM »

Chances are if you had answered any of those calls you would have gotten a hard sell from a sales rep trying to sell you on their service.

With scummy marketing tactics like that I'd be looking for a new phone company.

487

General Software Discussion / Re: trying to combine antiviruses and firewalls

« Last post by Innuendo on February 16, 2014, 11:07 AM »

Some firewall programs can be combined with some AV programs, but you can't run two AVs along-side each other or two firewalls along-side each other. Also, one or both cannot be security suites.

However, even if you have a firewall-only program and an AV-only program, sometimes they will co-exist peacefully, but a lot of times they won't. Unless you have a really good reason for trying something like this you're best off just not messing with it. There's a lot of configuring & experimenting to get everything working properly.

Even if it appears everything is working fine something could be conflicting that's leaving your system unprotected.

488

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« Last post by Innuendo on February 16, 2014, 11:02 AM »

At any rate, if you continue to look for an alternative, you can skip 1Password.  It too does not work with Pale Moon.  It's the only program I've tried to use that does not.

-cyberdiva (February 16, 2014, 09:03 AM)

Looks like support for Pale Moon is going to be limited to solutions that use xpi-only code. I went over to the Sticky Password site to give them a nudge. I'm not too hopeful, though.

On the whole, I've been happy with LastPass, happy enough that several years ago I upped my membership to Premium for $12/yr just to offer support.

I'm not against paying, but subscription-ware irks me. It makes me feel like I'm renting, which in a way, I guess I would be.

489

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by Innuendo on February 16, 2014, 10:56 AM »

We then saw 1-2 (depending how MS counts them for support rules purposes) Win 8 and 8.1 releases. Yuck.

-TaoPhoenix (February 16, 2014, 09:45 AM)

Have you actually used Windows 8 and 8.1 or have you just seen it in stores and articles on the internet? Windows 8.1 is a joy to use and if Metro is your concern, Microsoft has made it so that 90% of the time you'll never see it or notice that it's there. Windows 8.1 Update 1 is going to make that even better.

There was a time when I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I wouldn't want to have to go back to Windows 7. Touch UI-oriented content aside, Windows 8 & 8.1 are more efficient and even quicker in some situations than Windows 7.

What if he went "back to basics" and stripped the 23% of cruft in the Windows code and made a lean mean copy of Win9?

Never going to happen. People want feature-rich operating systems these days that are very versatile and robust. Only way we'd be able to get the features we all demand in an OS that was also 'lean and mean' is if it was programmed in Assembler. I think the only person who knows Assembler who isn't dead or in a retirement home is Steve Gibson & with his, umm...eccentricities I don't think I'd want him designing my OS.

490

General Software Discussion / Re: What the Heck is Happening to Windows? Article on Windows 8 Disaster

« Last post by Innuendo on February 16, 2014, 10:50 AM »

I just had a lengthy email debate about this very article. I won't re-post my entire reply as it was very long, but Windows 8 was not a disaster. It presented a different way of doing things that people who had been used to doing things a certain way for nearly 30 years had trouble adjusting to the new way. People complained that Microsoft moved too far away from a work-flow that was suited to a desktop and Microsoft listened. The release of Windows 8.1 came out which addressed a lot of these complaints and most of the criticisms have melted away.

Come next month, Microsoft is going to be releasing Windows 8.1 Update 1 which offers even more goodies for desktop users (I'm running the leaked version right now & it's pretty nice).

Why do people take this Thurrott fellow seriously? Why is it that when a new Microsoft operating system is about to be released, he has nothing bad to say about it? Well, that's because any criticism would hurt his book sales, that's why. However, tech book sales are not like normal books. They wane over time as the market is saturated and people start looking towards the next version of the program or operating system. This is when tech writers have to drum up business if they want cash to keep flowing into their pockets. Best way to do that is to get traffic to your site to surge so you can get some of that ad revenue.

Hmm...what would cause a spike in traffic? Another article on how good Windows is? Or perhaps doing a 180 and try to incite some rage from the user base? Then these users will email their friends and post in forums to get more people over to the site to view ads. I wouldn't care, but it irritates me that people fall for this every single time. Yes, he's done the exact same thing with previous versions of Windows. About a year after the OS has released and sales are down, he tries to spark interest in his site again by raging against the Windows OS du jour.

491

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

« Last post by Innuendo on February 16, 2014, 10:20 AM »

Also - it looks like the free version of Agnitum's suite is at 7.1.1 while the paid version is at 9.0.  I don't know if the version numbers between the free suite and the paid suite necessarily correspond with each other (ie., does that mean that the free version uses the same basic technology as the 7.x version of the paid suite used?), but that's my assumption at this point unless someone corrects me.

-mwb1100 (February 15, 2014, 10:02 PM)

Yes, the version numbers do correspond. That's the trade-off. You're getting a commercial product for free, but it's an older version. Agnitum keeps making noises about updating the free version to be closer to their paid offering, but they haven't done it yet.

I don't think that's too huge of a deal, though, because a firewall isn't as dependent on updates as an AV is what with it having to rely on signatures and such.

492

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

« Last post by Innuendo on February 16, 2014, 10:16 AM »

From my standpoint, Eset has the best, most utilitarian and powerful user system, as far as user options and interface.

-mouser (February 15, 2014, 06:41 PM)

You should track down some screenshots of Agnitum's new UI. It's very modern and streamlined. Everything is minimalist until you go into the advanced settings. Then you're presented with every setting you'd wish to tweak, but it is still presented logically.

The options and alerts are excellent -- and they still have some firewall features that for some reason few have copied -- like when an alert pops up you can choose to ignore it for the current session (or once, or create a rule).

Agnitum has that as well. You can also set various settings that make the training of the firewall easier for you on first install.

There really needs to be a distinction between truly flexible controllable firewalls like Eset, Outpost, and Comodo, which are in a different class than the others, that just silently do their job and offer you little information or control -- and little help if something is being silently blocked which shouldn't be.  It does alert me when anything tries to connect in or out which I like to know.

Outpost is the only firewall that I know of that allows you to control how granular the firewall will be and how often it will alert you. If one just wants a 'quiet' firewall like AVG, you can configure Outpost that way. However, if you are a micro-manager and you want to be alerted any time a DLL on your system has changed, a program updated, or say, a program trying to access the internet through IE then Outpost can do that, too.

HOWEVER, I have recently dumped Eset despite being a paying customer.  I have confirmed that their firewall makes my computer unstable and causes programs to occasionally hang and require a reboot to terminate.

Eset used to be the best, but their AV was always better than their firewall. One could say the exact same thing about Kaspersky as well. They used to have an unbeatable AV, but it was always better than their firewall.

For the last week I've been trialing AVG internet security.  I tried a dozen others but AVG was the one that I found least offensive.  I might try outpost again, as I always liked Outpost, but right now AVG is doing pretty well by me.

It's been a long while since I last checked out AVG, but every time I have it never completely protected my system. Things were always slipping through.

493

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: again: lifetime key for Outpost Security Suite Pro

« Last post by Innuendo on February 15, 2014, 11:42 PM »

Problem is I have licenses for 6. Please don't let me build another computer.

-jadinolf (February 15, 2014, 01:50 PM)

You don't have to build another computer. Just buy a new laptop. 

494

Living Room / Re: WARNING! Linksys routers infected with self-replicating worm/malware.

« Last post by Innuendo on February 15, 2014, 11:41 PM »

40hz, well said. Some people just want something they can plug in that has no moving parts that will work quietly for years with no attention needed.

Others of us just love to build something from nothing just to see what we can accomplish.

495

General Software Discussion / Re: Photos that spontaneously change

« Last post by Innuendo on February 15, 2014, 11:38 PM »

Maybe you should try looking at the picture on a different computer & see if it still looks reddish to you because it looks fine to me.

496

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« Last post by Innuendo on February 15, 2014, 11:35 PM »

One person (username: Zkoumidlo) claimed he was using Sticky Password with Pale Moon, but that's the only message he ever posted, and it somehow sounded a bit off to me.  If you nonetheless want to contact him (he sent his message on Dec. 2, 2013) you can find the thread at http://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3487&p=20294&hilit=Sticky+Password#p20294

-cyberdiva (February 15, 2014, 02:54 PM)

Yes, I had seen that, but I think it's a dead end. He said he was using Sticky Password. He never said he was using it successfully with Pale Moon. Still...maybe I'll experiment with the config files and see if I can work up a kludge.

I'd just move to Keepass, but I can't get it to work with my college's web site.

497

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« Last post by Innuendo on February 15, 2014, 11:32 PM »

do you mean, "not compatible with Firefox 27"? Pale Moon should be but a Firefox.

-Curt (February 15, 2014, 12:57 PM)

Nope. I said what I meant. 

modifying:
I said it wrong. Of course PM 24.3.2 is not identical to Ff 27. However, I have not yet had any kind of troubles with extensions on Pale Moon.

The problem is that Sticky Password's extension isn't just an .xpi. There are some DLLs, too, and those are a lot harder to modify to work with different versions of Firefox. The developer said they were going to make Sticky Password work with Pale Moon, but that was 18+ months ago. 

498

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« Last post by Innuendo on February 15, 2014, 12:42 PM »

Well, that didn't last long. 

Sticky Password is not compatible with Pale Moon.

499

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« Last post by Innuendo on February 15, 2014, 12:27 PM »

Silly me. I thought Pale Moon was x64 only so I never paid it any attention as I *need* my extensions. Now that I see that it's offered in an x86 version as well I'm off to try it out.

(Pro tip: buried on the web site it's explained that Pale Moon version numbers do not equate to Firefox version numbers, i.e. Pale Moon v24.3.2 is not based off of Firefox v24, but rather Firefox v27.)

I've literally just installed it. I'll have more of an opinion once I get my extensions installed and set up.

500

Living Room / Re: WARNING! Linksys routers infected with self-replicating worm/malware.

« Last post by Innuendo on February 15, 2014, 11:48 AM »

For those who don't have the time to re-purpose a an old PC for router duties (or the money....PCs use a lot more electricity than those little router boxes), buy a router that supports open source firmware like OpenWRT, Tomato, and DD-WRT. You'll get a lot more powerful routing options in your router's UI and generally, much more secure code that will be updated long after your router has been taken off store shelves due to it being discontinued.

Lastly, don't look for any fixes from Cisco. They recently sold off their Linksys line to Belkin. Just in case some of you aren't in the know, Belkin proudly manufactures some of the worst routers on the planet with a level of customer service & firmware support to match.