Recent Posts

526

Living Room / Re: More Hilarity - "Can I have my spy plane back?"

« Last post by J-Mac on December 27, 2011, 04:16 PM »

It's probably still being referred to as being in there because the press hammered it home when the old wording was there. However since it was removed there hasn’t been much of a peep about it in the press. No longer exciting, I guess.

Jim

527

Living Room / Re: More Hilarity - "Can I have my spy plane back?"

« Last post by J-Mac on December 26, 2011, 08:44 PM »

Sections 1031 and 1032 originally had wording that did allow the detention of American citizens if they were suspected of supporting terrorists, and specifically denied any rights to US courts/justice system. That was what made the bill such a hot topic. The final bill, as voted on, did not have that wording. Still that doesn’t appear to be clear to everyone and seems to be at the root of continuing debate.

Jim

528

Living Room / Re: Adware is not freeware, right?

« Last post by J-Mac on December 26, 2011, 11:21 AM »

Oh, and Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory is nothing like a reak geek.

-Fred Nerd (December 26, 2011, 03:12 AM)

Geeks come in all flavors and sizes.  And I have a friend that's almost exactly like Sheldon, that identifies himself as a geek.

-wraith808 (December 26, 2011, 10:16 AM)

Fred might be referring to an older, earlier meaning of the word "geek", which is a circus or carnival performer - usually one who performed odd feats with his (or her!) body: fire-eater, wild man, piercing himself with large needles, etc. Basically someone biiled as a human freak.

True Fred? Or did you just mean a super-intelligent computer geek?

Thanks!

Jim

529

Living Room / Re: Adware is not freeware, right?

« Last post by J-Mac on December 26, 2011, 05:26 AM »

I just want to re-express my sentiments.  Although I have never produced any, I have nothing against adware as one option for software developers/users, and I don't think there is any harm in such software, in and of itself.  My objection is the gradual slide I see into a world where it is the *only* viable model for independent developers.

-mouser (December 24, 2011, 07:55 AM)

I have no problem with adware included with free software or any free service, as long as it is made clear and not slipped in  in a sneaky way. Perfectly legitimate imo.

However I hate when adware suddenly appears in a product For which I have paid. It's possible that the developer is trying to keep costs down; I'd rather pay more, though, than tolerate the inclusion of adware.

Thanks,

Jim

530

Living Room / Re: More Hilarity - "Can I have my spy plane back?"

« Last post by J-Mac on December 25, 2011, 09:00 PM »

I have a feeling that those 20 year old newsletters may have killed Ron Paul's chances in a general election. Also, the letter warning of coming "race wars". Sounded somewhat reasonable till they surfaced, I admit. Oddly enough, they originally resurfaced during the last presidential primary season in 2008.

Jim

531

General Software Discussion / Re: The Bat: Great program, terrible documentation and support

« Last post by J-Mac on December 22, 2011, 09:42 PM »

I'm beginning to think the Bat folk will never improve their editor features....  

....Let me tell you, over the past several years, the developers have done very very little to improve the program.  It's not as bad as I make it seem; the program still works and everything.  But you would like to see it "catch up" just a little bit with the times.  And I'm sure they have their own economic troubles, etc.  But the program really hasn't made many changes over even 5 years, hardly anything.  Changes for the Bat that took them 3 years to do, I've seen coding snack developers on these forums do in a matter of hours or days.  That's how slow they are.

-superboyac (December 22, 2011, 02:13 PM)

This sounds like me exactly when I was bitching loud about the same kind of slide I experienced with Pocomail! At one time it was way ahead of its time, with templates; their fantastic Quote Bar; skinnable with color options that made sense - you could use it to make filters more clear; and tight security left over from a time when A-V's ddidn'thelp much with infected email. However they just stopped all development and though they are still barely alive today, Pocomail still has no HTML support with forwarding or replies, virtually NO IMAP support (they still claim that IMAP will never catch on....    !!

Alas, I truly fear that the days of the email client are dead. Heck, email itself is barely surviving. I don’t think that any developer is going to pour much in the way of resources into an email client, so The Bat and Pocomail will go the way of Eudora.

Jim

532

General Software Discussion / Re: Make a music mix for burning on audio disc - software?

« Last post by J-Mac on December 20, 2011, 10:20 PM »

I have been using WMP12 as a player, but it does exactly what Techidave said - indexes so hard it locks the damn machine. When it does that I kill it in Task Manager. The service restarts it but by then the app itself is closed. If it didn't do that it would be great.

For ripping and burning I use Easy CD-DA Extractor. Can't beat it IMO.

Jim

533

General Software Discussion / Re: Does it exist? Sys tray app to generate text string from hierarchical listing

« Last post by J-Mac on December 19, 2011, 09:16 PM »

I agree in principle, but I have to say that, right now, LBC is a lot easier to add a menu-type structure to, compared to CHS...

-BillB (December 19, 2011, 06:02 PM)

Not that it would be terrible or anything... Just thinking that CH&S is programmatically already in that category. Hate to see a totally non-related feature added to LBC as it would most likely be feature bloat for those using LBC for its intended purpose - as a launcher. Perhaps mouser can replicate the code for LBC's "menu building" tasks to CH&S?

Thanks!

Jim

534

General Software Discussion / Re: Does it exist? Sys tray app to generate text string from hierarchical listing

« Last post by J-Mac on December 19, 2011, 12:42 PM »

Wait a minute... mouser, if you are considering adding such a feature to one of your apps, wouldn’t it be more suited to add it to Clipboard Help and Spell? Why try to add clipboard management features to a launcher? Especially when you already have a clipboard manager?

Just sayin'

Jim

535

Living Room / Re: More Hilarity - "Can I have my spy plane back?"

« Last post by J-Mac on December 15, 2011, 11:12 PM »

I reckon the Iranians would not consider this to be all that funny. It's probably a pretty serious business to them, never mind the US.
Déjà vu - 1960 U-2 incident

-IainB (December 13, 2011, 04:57 AM)

And yet another oldie but goodie...

http://en.wikipedia....i/USS_Pueblo_(AGER-2)

I did not realize until I went to fetch the above link that the USS Pueblo is  STILL being held by North Korea! Since 1968! Guess we showed them...   

Jim

536

Living Room / Re: Elvis Sighting

« Last post by J-Mac on December 15, 2011, 10:55 PM »

Where?!?!  Where??

            

Jim

537

Living Room / Re: my website hijacked

« Last post by J-Mac on December 14, 2011, 03:34 PM »

Domain parent and all internal links working correctly in Chrome here.  4:34 PM EST  (UTC-5 hrs)

Jim

538

General Software Discussion / Re: RANT: Google UI Developers should be SHOT!

« Last post by J-Mac on December 02, 2011, 01:17 PM »

I was talking about the Gmail main page. But I manually forced the update by adding a J-Script line or two.

Jim

539

General Software Discussion / Re: RANT: Google UI Developers should be SHOT!

« Last post by J-Mac on December 02, 2011, 01:09 AM »

Still have the black bar here...  rolling out slowwlyyy?

Jim

540

General Software Discussion / Re: RANT: Google UI Developers should be SHOT!

« Last post by J-Mac on December 01, 2011, 12:24 PM »

Which UI? And what is still in beta?

Jim

541

Living Room / Re: It's Dr. Brinkley, Rice is a university.

« Last post by J-Mac on November 28, 2011, 11:10 PM »

Oh man! Watch it again and pay close attention to what the Congressman (Can't see his name due to the graphic) says at about the 1:03 to 1:10 mark:  "...Nobody is perfect here. But to interrupt breaks the comedy of what we're trying..."

He has that right: comedy it is!

Thanks!

Jim

542

General Software Discussion / Re: Mike Halsey article on firmware upgrades/updates ...

« Last post by J-Mac on November 27, 2011, 11:31 AM »

Try asking about this in a support forum or on a support request for the particular hardware you're considering for a F/W update!

As an example, my Mobo - an ASUS - is two F/W updates behind, but ASUS told me that both address specific problems and that if I wasn’t seeing those problems I should not update the F/W. Yet Nvidia support naturally asks me for my system info and sees that my Mobo F/W is not updated to the most current. They tell me I must update it; I ask what the Mobo F/W will fix on my graphics card. They say they don’t know BUT my Mobo must be updated for them to help me. I tell them "No" and why, but they cry out, "Aha! If you won't update your Mobo F/W, then you are a buffoon and we cannot help you!"

OK, it didn't go exactly like that, but you get the gist of it. Typical hardware maker finger-pointing crap.

I don’t upgrade ANY of my hardware's F/W unless it is for a problem that I know the updated F/W is designed to fix.

Thanks!

Jim

543

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Scrivener for Windows Discounts for November 2011

« Last post by J-Mac on November 24, 2011, 11:24 AM »

Ouch! I didn't notice I had the discount code screwed up. Sorry about that to all who tried it. Oddly enough as I mentioned above my second attempt at purchase worked fine, so I guess I must have input it incorrect and then correctly.

Thanks wraith for the catch!     

Jim

544

General Software Discussion / Re: lightweight software for organizing notes offline? [Stickies, StickySorter]

« Last post by J-Mac on November 23, 2011, 08:55 PM »

Ouch! I haven't used it much - not as much as I thought I would actually - but it did work on the few where I did.

Thank you.

Jim

545

General Software Discussion / Re: lightweight software for organizing notes offline? [Stickies, StickySorter]

« Last post by J-Mac on November 23, 2011, 12:05 PM »

One nice feature of Notezilla that I should mention is that you can apply a sticky note to a window and have it associated with that window or web page. IOW, you create a note about a particular web page and associate it and then whenever you visit that web page that sticky note will appear there. Pretty cool - I've used it and it seems to work! (I say that because I doubted that it would for some reason!)

Thanks!

Jim

546

General Software Discussion / Re: lightweight software for organizing notes offline? [Stickies, StickySorter]

« Last post by J-Mac on November 22, 2011, 09:15 PM »

I'm presently using Notezilla but I have donated to Tom in the past and used Stickies for years.

-J-Mac (November 20, 2011, 11:39 PM)

J-Mac, why the change?  Superior organisation features?

-rjbull (November 22, 2011, 02:54 PM)

In sopme ways, yes. Though I do miss Stickies and may jump right back to it. I got Notezilla at a hefty discount plus it was getting a lot of positive comments here on DC, so I decided to give it a try. Of the thre apps I have purchased from Conceptworld, Notezilla has been the most stable and consistent. Piky Suite has since been abandoned and RecentX has some serious CPU usage issues IMO.

Jim

547

General Software Discussion / Re: lightweight software for organizing notes offline? [Stickies, StickySorter]

« Last post by J-Mac on November 21, 2011, 09:03 AM »

Yes, totally love it so far! 

Nice feature is sending notes over a network.

-J-Mac (November 20, 2011, 11:39 PM)

...to spam stuff on unsuspecting colleagues' desktops? 

-brotherS (November 21, 2011, 07:07 AM)

Well.....  only if you really want to...   

Jim

IIRC you can also send Stickies to others designated as Friends; if not on your network they are emailed.

548

General Software Discussion / Re: lightweight software for organizing notes offline? [Stickies, StickySorter]

« Last post by J-Mac on November 20, 2011, 11:39 PM »

Tom Revell has had skins for Stickies for at least the last five years. I'm presently using Notezilla but I have donated to Tom in the past and used Stickies for years. Excellent program and very well developed over the years. Nice feature is sending notes over a network.

Jim

549

Living Room / Here's a New Wrinkle in Chrome: A Silently Install Method for Extensions

« Last post by J-Mac on November 20, 2011, 11:24 PM »

See this link:  http://adblockplus.o...e-installed-web-apps


So there are extensions - and web apps - that can be silently installed in Chrome. Apparently this capability has been there for a while, though only a couple of Google extensions have done it so far. Still, it's a little disconcerting. Quote from the last paragraph of the article:

Don’t get me wrong: Google Chrome is a great browser and it is easy to get excited about it, argue about benchmarks, brand-new standards and such. But sometimes you get a reminder: this is a Google product and it has to benefit Google. It isn’t merely about making the web better, it is also about promoting Google products and giving them an advantage over competing services. Google may speak out for net neutrality but with their browser the own services get prioritized. Even if it requires violating your privacy.

Jim

550

General Software Discussion / Re: Gmail annoyances - can they be fixed using add-ons, Stylish and Userscripts?

« Last post by J-Mac on November 19, 2011, 11:07 PM »

No problem Iain. I do find your quoted posts a little difficult to read at times though. But... that's my problem.   

Thank you.

Jim