Recent Posts

551

Living Room / Re: Moving up to ESET NOD32 v5

« Last post by J-Mac on November 19, 2011, 02:46 PM »

Yeah Tux, but most here at DC are pretty savvy about software/adware/malware, etc. and still get burned every once in a while. Think of the poor newbies who don’t have many clues at all regarding safe software! Like many members' Moms for example. If someone isn't watching over all their installations, they are pretty much SOL!

Jim

552

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, 01:59 PM »

If you prefer copy/paste with bold and colors to show your quotes, you can still do it like that but add the following:

Whatever you want to show as quoted, surround it with [ quote ] before the first word and [ /quote ] after the last word. (Note: I added spaces between the bracket and the word "quote" so that the code would show. Eliminate those spaces when actually quoting something).

For example, if you want to show "Well, YouTube is arguably the only decent Google interface now," as a quote, then do it like this:

[ quote ] Well, YouTube is arguably the only decent Google interface now, [ /quote ]  (without the spaces, remember!)   to get...

Well, YouTube is arguably the only decent Google interface now,

HTH!

Jim

553

General Software Discussion / Re: Photo managers with face recognition?

« Last post by J-Mac on November 18, 2011, 11:35 PM »

Didn't see it mentioned above, though I may have missed it in some of those long posts! Picasa insists on creating a contact for every recognized face, which IMO completely ruins the already sucky Google Contacts. Back when they first introduced facial recognition/labeling this wasn’t made abundantly clear and after going through a lot of face labeling I found that my contacts list was overflowing with tons of new junk. All my "real" contacts had been doubled, tripled or more; my dogs all had multiple contact listings; I really hate the feature! I then immediately turned off the facial stuff and deleted ALL my Google Contacts and re-imported them fresh.

I don’t know if they have changed this so-called "feature" cause I never tried it again.

Thanks!

Jim

554

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

« Last post by J-Mac on November 18, 2011, 11:26 PM »

Oh, please don’t get me started...

The Archive/Spam/Delete icons at the top of the message list are terrible - the trash can for Delete is the only sensible one there. And they no longer have matching icons at the bottom of the list so you have to scroll up to the top all the time.

Worst though was removing a few other helpful links/buttons, such as "Remove Highlighting" and "Mark as Read"... Notice they are missing? They're now in a dropdown menu, which totally sucks.

Needless to say, I don’t like the new interface.

Jim

555

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

« Last post by J-Mac on November 13, 2011, 08:53 PM »

I bought it earlier today. First attempt to buy got an error message saying I didn't meet a pre-qualification or something like that. I went back and re-read the offer and finding nothing amiss there I tried again and it worked just fine! $32.00 total.

So if you at first get a weird error message just try it again - and don’t forget the discount code - and it'll work.  

Thanks!

Jim

556

Living Room / Re: National Novel Writing Month Has Started!

« Last post by J-Mac on November 13, 2011, 04:10 PM »

Hey! Anyone interested in using Scrivener for Windows for their NaNoWrMo entry - or for that matter anyone who just wants to purchase Scrivener for Windows at a discount - Literature and Latte is offering a 50% discount to NaNoWrMo winners and a 20% discount for anyone at all during NaNoWrMo 2011. For the 20% discount you just have to enter "NANOWRMO" - without the quotes naturally - in the coupon box during checkout. That brings Scrivener for Windows down from $40.00 USD to $32.00.

I decided to post this in the NaNoWrMo thread here but maybe I should also post it in the "Found Deals" subforum too.

 

Thank you.

Jim

-J-Mac (November 13, 2011, 03:55 PM)

Hmm..  I tried to purchase it with the discount and it returns an error saying I needed something to qualify. So I re-read the discount wording, then tried it again, this time successfully without any errors. Not sure what the problem was, other than the fact their eCommerce site is Esellerate, which can be weird at times.

Jim

557

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

« Last post by J-Mac on November 13, 2011, 03:57 PM »

Anyone interested in using Scrivener for Windows for their NaNoWrMo entry - or for that matter anyone who just wants to purchase Scrivener for Windows at a discount - Literature and Latte is offering a 50% discount to NaNoWrMo winners and a 20% discount for anyone at all during NaNoWrMo 2011. For the 20% discount you just have to enter "NANOWRMO" - without the quotes naturally - in the coupon box during checkout. That brings Scrivener for Windows down from $40.00 USD to $32.00.

Jim

558

Living Room / Re: National Novel Writing Month Has Started!

« Last post by J-Mac on November 13, 2011, 03:55 PM »

Hey! Anyone interested in using Scrivener for Windows for their NaNoWrMo entry - or for that matter anyone who just wants to purchase Scrivener for Windows at a discount - Literature and Latte is offering a 50% discount to NaNoWrMo winners and a 20% discount for anyone at all during NaNoWrMo 2011. For the 20% discount you just have to enter "NANOWRMO" - without the quotes naturally - in the coupon box during checkout. That brings Scrivener for Windows down from $40.00 USD to $32.00.

I decided to post this in the NaNoWrMo thread here but maybe I should also post it in the "Found Deals" subforum too.

 

Thank you.

Jim

559

General Software Discussion / Re: The confusion about the term "lifetime license"

« Last post by J-Mac on November 03, 2011, 02:56 PM »

+1 to all Carol said.

Jim

560

General Software Discussion / Re: The confusion about the term "lifetime license"

« Last post by J-Mac on November 03, 2011, 04:57 AM »

All the crappy developers aside, we should soeday honor the developers who have sold true lifetime licenses. I think the only ones I have are from Slysoft and Elaborate Bytes with AnyDVD, CloneDVD, and CloneCD. I've used these since 2003 and they have never, ever reneged on their "lifetime licenses". Oh, I also have Ad Muncher's lifetime license and so far it has survived through more than one major upgrade, so perhaps that one is "real" also.

Thanks!

Jim

561

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extension "Download Statusbar" Now Adware - Maybe Malware

« Last post by J-Mac on November 02, 2011, 01:42 PM »

Also don’t forget one of my favorites, especially on a cell phone: Goog411, which was a voice recognition information directory. You could call it and it would ask what city; you tell it; then it asks what you are looking for and you tell it. It then returnedwith the name, address and number and asked if you wanted it to connect. Google stated last October that they conceived of that service in order to get as many voice samplings as possible to improve their voice recognition capabilities, and since they had more than enough samples they dropped the damn service. Well, at least they were honest about it, even if only after the fact.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/10/google-shuts-down-goog-411.html

Thanks!

Jim

562

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: USB Safely Remove, 50% discount on January 17th

« Last post by J-Mac on November 02, 2011, 01:34 PM »

Thanks Mike. At first I thought I might have uninstalled it but it's still here, so I fired it up and changed that setting.

Jim

563

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extension "Download Statusbar" Now Adware - Maybe Malware

« Last post by J-Mac on November 02, 2011, 05:11 AM »

No longer wonky. Back to normal again Nov. 2, 2011.

-bobholm (November 02, 2011, 01:58 AM)

Yeah - but I don’t trust him now.

Jim

564

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 24-Hours Giveaway - VX Search Pro

« Last post by J-Mac on November 01, 2011, 12:34 PM »

Got it.

Thanks Erik!

565

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extension "Download Statusbar" Now Adware - Maybe Malware

« Last post by J-Mac on October 31, 2011, 09:27 PM »

-it is a little tiring to read all those hard words. Download Statusbar was developed and maintained freely by the trustworthy Devon Jensen. By the 20'th of September the addon suddenly belonged to a "C.J."; identity unknown. We don't know what happened, but we do know that shit happens. Get on.

-Curt (October 31, 2011, 03:27 PM)

So, what do you mean by "Get on"? Shouldn’t have notified anyone about the hijacking behavior of the new version that was current then? Why not? I don’t know who Devon Jensen is and I doubt many others do either. He might very well be trustworthy since Download Statusbar was such a great extension for such a long - and I do mean LONG - time. However it went bad sometime yesterday once all users were updated to that crap release!

Did "Devon" sell the extension or hand it over to this "C.J."? What is so trustworthy about that?     Or was it hijacked away from him?  Whatever the case, I don’t trust whomever the developer is now after receiving an auto-update of the junk that was installed yesterday.

Jim

566

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extension "Download Statusbar" Now Adware - Maybe Malware

« Last post by J-Mac on October 31, 2011, 02:42 PM »

I think he did remove the "bad" version, though since he tried to sneak that in I won't use anything from him again. Screw me once,,,

Thanks!

Jim

EDIT:  It is possible that the revised extension didn't pass Mozilla review; it definitely didn't pass user review!

567

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: USB Safely Remove, 50% discount on January 17th

« Last post by J-Mac on October 31, 2011, 02:14 PM »

Just to show they have a sense of humor - I guess - they just sent me another upgrade email!

Jim

568

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: USB Safely Remove, 50% discount on January 17th

« Last post by J-Mac on October 31, 2011, 05:48 AM »

Ath,

That is probably what is happening. Happens pretty fast here; actually very fast. Quite annoying when it is that fast. Should be configurable as you can't stop it as is.

Thanks!

Jim

569

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: USB Safely Remove, 50% discount on January 17th

« Last post by J-Mac on October 30, 2011, 10:49 PM »

cyberdiva,

That sure sounds close enough to my issue. USB Safely Remove was never in the visible systray, but was always up in the pane where the hidden tray icons reside. So the arrow to open that pane shouldn’t have affected any icons within the pane itself, or so I thought. Now I wonder if they somehow have the area around the icon set too large. I'm not sure of the correct term for that offhand, but I do know that clickable icons have an area, a "halo" of sorts, configured so that clicking anywhere within that area is the same as clicking directly on the icon. It's particularly helpful for very tiny icons! But if that clickable area around an icon is set too large I imagine that it would consider clicks on the surrounding icons to be clicks on itself. (Am I making any sense at all??)

Unfortunately I don’t know exactly how to check that; I think it is in the coding for the icon. Have to look into it a bit deeper I guess.

Thanks!

Jim

570

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 24-Hours Giveaway - VX Search Pro

« Last post by J-Mac on October 30, 2011, 11:31 AM »

Though I missed the free license promo, the Pro version is certainly priced reasonably. Please post more reviews if you can DCers; if this search is that much better than Windows Search and Everything then I will definitely pick it up!

(Not that I don’t believe your proclamation of "a million times better than trying Windows search", Renegade.... but I have a feeling that you might have been using hyperbolè...      )

Thanks!

Jim

EDIT:  I do like the fact that the developer committed to making shell integration configurable in November's update. Too many programs don’t offer that and become major nuisances because of it. Two examples are Ad Muncher and Surfulater; between them thay added 9 separate items to the IE menu! Ad Muncher seems to have finally fixed this and now has only one submenu instead, but Surfulater still has four entries there. I can remove all via the registry or utilities like Toolbar Cop but the next time IE is open and I start either app the entries all return.
 

571

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: USB Safely Remove, 50% discount on January 17th

« Last post by J-Mac on October 30, 2011, 11:14 AM »

I got USB Safely Remove during the free giveaway in August. The version offered, 4.7, is frozen, meaning I cannot get any updates without upgrading. That's OK - perfectly acceptable since the giveaway was surely meant to attract interested people who would hopefully become permanent customers. However after downloading and installing the giveaway version I received a flurry of emails trying to get me to upgrade immediately. When I say "flurry" it was more like a blizzard! Maybe a dozen emails in the first three days. It died down quite a bit after that to a more acceptable level of maybe three a week, then the emails stopped altogether.

I do understand that they gave away the program in order to draw paying customers but I would think that people need a little time to decide whether or not they really like the software before barraging them with solicitations. IDK, maybe I have it all wrong and the first few days are critical from a marketing standpoint. It just seemed like overkill too soon to me.

As it stands I no longer have this program start with Windows. I was running it on Windows 7 and it went a little bonkers on me a few times. Anytime I clicked on the little "Up" arrow that opens the system tray's hidden icons I would get one or more USB Safely Remove windows open telling me it was safe to remove, well, just about every USB device I had connected! I admit I didn't take the time to troubleshoot it because I don’t connect and disconnect devices to my PC that often so it was easier to just disable the auto-start and use the old-fashioned Windows utility for safely removing USB devices.

I'm surprised because so many DC members praised this program. Has anyone else seen similar issues with USB Safely Remove? Any thoughts on what kind of conflict could be behind the weird behavior I saw?

Thanks!

Jim

572

Living Room / Re: Private Censorship of the Internet? Seriously... Like WTF?!?

« Last post by J-Mac on October 29, 2011, 05:22 AM »

Or even...

...all the lawyers...

...would probably cover all you really need!   

Jim

573

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extension "Download Statusbar" Now Adware - Maybe Malware

« Last post by J-Mac on October 29, 2011, 01:23 AM »

Some folks are recommending a similar extension called Download manager Tweak, though I haven't taken a good look at it yet. Looks like it just tweaks the UI and functionality of the regular Firefox download manager.

Jim

574

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extension "Download Statusbar" Now Adware - Maybe Malware

« Last post by J-Mac on October 28, 2011, 10:39 AM »

Jim, what did Download Statusbar do when it was functioning properly?  I'm just curious, since I had never heard of it.

-cyberdiva (October 28, 2011, 10:18 AM)

It put the status of current downloads on the status bar. If you look at its extension page there is a series of photos that show it.

Jim

EDIT: Here's one pic that shows it well:

[attachimg=#1][/attachimg]

575

General Software Discussion / Firefox Extension "Download Statusbar" Now Adware - Maybe Malware

« Last post by J-Mac on October 28, 2011, 09:58 AM »

Oh well. I have used this extension since I installed my first Firefox beta, way back whenever the heck that was... my initial post at the Mozillazine Firefox forum was in July 2004! But one of my "must have" extensions has finally gone rogue: Download Statusbar.

When I started Firefox today a new tab opened announcing an update to Download Statusbar had been silently installed and, oh yeah - it nonchalantly mentioned in the body of the update notice that there is a "new sponsorship supported" option. But it's not really an option; if you don’t enable it, it enables itself after a few days. It apparently also adds a referrer string to certain URLs plus something to do with Yahoo and YouTube. No explanation; the developer's home page - which had been located on the MozDev web site - is gone without a trace. There is a new home page that is a one-page site with only a link to install the extension; nothing else there. Bad news all around. Better to ditch this extension before you get bit!

Another user posted the following at the Download Statusbar page at Mozilla Add-Ons:

I am not a Javascript expert, but I looked at the source code and
* If you have the sponsorship enabled, it does something with Yahoo and YouTube (couldn't figure out what exactly, looks like displaying ads).
* If you haven't, it will be automatically enabled again after 7 days.

Edit: it also looks like the add-on adds a referrer string to the URLs of certain websites.
I found the following comment in the code:
"Determines if this is the first run of the day, if so the calling function appends the request with a querystring variable." (pluginnetwork/pluginnetwork.js:450)

I don’t understand all of that post, but I get enough of it to know I don’t want any part of Download Statusbar anymore! Gotta find me a safer replacement. Anyone know of one?

Thanks!

Jim