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5676

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of BetaClock

« Last post by IainB on January 23, 2012, 07:42 PM »

Does anyone in DCF know how I can get the BetaClock to change/override the default calendar/time display in the Start/Task bar?
It always worked fine in Windows XP, but I have been unable to get it to apply in Win7-64 Home Premium - even though I have it all configured right.

The BetaClock calendar works just fine - it's only the the calendar/time display in the Start/Task bar that is an issue for me.

5677

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 23, 2012, 04:10 PM »

No pun in ten did.

-Edvard (January 15, 2012, 07:50 PM)

Ten? I think you meant deci, mate!

-cranioscopical (January 23, 2012, 09:36 AM)

Argh! Har-de-har-har.

5678

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Calibre - e-Book (Personal Library/Document) Management - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on January 23, 2012, 03:37 PM »

...I've even set it up for a few clients, all of whom have given it rave reviews. And financial contributions...
...
One is currently experimenting with its webserver capabilities to see if it could function as their private corporate e-library system.

Also kudos for that mention of Qiqqa. That's another essential research tool that deserves to be much better known than it is.
 

-40hz (January 23, 2012, 12:33 PM)

Oddly enough, I am considering suggesting it for a client of mine (a property management company specialising in apartment block bodycorp administration) - along with Qiqqa. They have a huge library and a big DM (Document Management) problem, due to a lot of their output and company records being in .PDF format. Their current DM practices and use of IT are anachronistic (which is putting it mildly), and there will be a significant cost attributable to that - one which I estimate could be reduced by approx. 80% by the more intelligent application of technology and automation.

5679

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Calibre - e-Book (Personal Library/Document) Management - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on January 23, 2012, 03:23 PM »

(How large was the large library?)
See also here, on DC.

-cranioscopical (January 23, 2012, 09:42 AM)

Library size: (Apologies for omitting the library size) the one that "froze" Calibre is 1,174 files, 2.8Gb in total size. I do not know what proportion of those files Calibre would be able to translate/manage.
It was a relatively smaller part of my overall library, but I called it large because it seemed to be large enough to bring Calibre to its knees.

The link you gave was interesting - thanks. I had not seen that before. I usually try to scan DCF for prior reviews/references of any software that I am thinking of doing a review of, but I was being maddeningly interrupted at the time I was researching Calibre, and, this probably distracted me sufficiently to use the wrong search term (I probably used something like "Calibri") and thus I entirely missed the reference you gave.   

Interestingly, that thread also mentions CPU utilisation in a comment by J-Mac

5680

Mini-Reviews by Members / Calibre - e-Book (Personal Library/Document) Management - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on January 23, 2012, 08:32 AM »

Original post:	2012-01-23
Last updated:	2014-04-12

Basic Info

App Name	Calibre
Thumbs-Up Rating
App URL	http://http://calibre-ebook.com/
App Version Reviewed	v1.32 (64-bit)
Test System Specs	Win7-64 Home Premium
Supported OSes	Windows XP, Vista and 7 Windows portable OSX Linux
Support Methods	User Guide. Instructional videos. FAQ. User Forum. Change log (for all versions).
Upgrade Policy	FREE - as and when available (Calibre is open-source software).
Trial Version Available?	FREE. NO limitations.
Pricing Scheme	FREE (Calibre is open-source software.)
Screencast Video URL	Grand Tour introductory video

Screenshot of the main GUI pane:
(Click image to enlarge.)


Intro:
Update 2014-04-11:
Added note for Calibre v1.32  (latest).
Calibre now seems close to a Nirvana state in terms of breadth and scope of document library and reference management, and support for reading/viewing on various different reading devices.
The automation of document meta-data collection from across the Internet is superb.

See the list of new features by version: http://calibre-ebook.com/whats-new
This information is split into:

• Changelog
• Major new features

___________________
The full list of changes to Calibre is available here.
There is an excellent demo/video of Calibre in action - Grand Tour introductory video. (This is well worth watching.)

Calibre is a free and open-source library manager to view, convert and catalogue e-books. It runs across OS platforms (Linux, Windows and OS X).
Calibre organizes, saves and manages e-books, supporting a variety of formats. It also supports e-book syncing with a variety of popular e-book readers and will, within DRM restrictions, convert e-books between differing formats.

Formats: Calibre  supports the conversion of many input formats to many output formats. It can convert every input format in the following list, to every output format:

• Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, DJVU, EPUB, FB2, HTML, HTMLZ, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ
• Output Formats: EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, HTMLZ, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ

Devices supported: At the moment calibre has full support for the SONY PRS line, Barnes & Noble Nook line, Cybook Gen 3/Opus, Amazon Kindle line, Entourage Edge, Longshine ShineBook, Ectaco Jetbook, BeBook/BeBook Mini, Irex Illiad/DR1000, Foxit eSlick, PocketBook line, Italica, eClicto, Iriver Story, Airis dBook, Hanvon N515, Binatone Readme, Teclast K3 and clones, SpringDesign Alex, Kobo Reader, various Android phones and the iPhone/iPad. In addition, using the Connect to folder function you can use it with any ebook reader that exports itself as a USB disk.

There is also a special User Defined device plugin that can be used to connect to arbitrary devices that present their memory as disk drives. See the device plugin Preferences -> Plugins -> Device Plugins -> User Defined and Preferences -> Miscellaneous -> Get information to setup the user defined device for more information.

(From Calibre website "About - Features")
Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories:

•    Library Management
•    E-book conversion
•    Syncing to e-book reader devices
•    Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form
•    Comprehensive e-book viewer
•    Content server for online access to your book collection

Wikipedia - Calibre features:

• e-books can be imported into the calibre library by either adding files manually or by syncing an e-book reading device.
• calibre supports all the currently commercially relevant file formats and reading devices. Most of these e-book formats can be edited, for example by changing the font or the font size and by adding a auto-generated table of contents. Next to editing, printing is also supported.
• calibre helps organizing the personal e-book library by allowing the user to sort and group e-books by metadata fields. Metadata can be pulled from many different sources (ISBNdb.com, Google Books, Amazon, LibraryThing). Full-text search including the whole library is possible.
• Online content-sources can be harvested and converted to e-books. This conversion is facilitated by so called '"recipes"', short programs written in a Python-based domain specific language (DSL).
• E-books can then be exported to all supported reading devices via USB or via the integrated mail-server. Mailing e-books enables e.g. sending personal documents to the Kindle family of e-book readers.
• The content of the library can be remotely accessed by web browser if the hosting computer is running. In this case pushing harvested content from content sources is supported on a regular interval (subscription). If the hosting computer is not always on, a hosted calibre solution[1] can help. In this case the library is not accessible but the subscriptions are pushed to the reading device on schedule.

Who this app is designed for:
People who:

• Need a library manager;
• Require the library manager to view, convert and catalogue e-books;
• Require the library manager to manage the ebook deployement to various reading devices.

The Good:
Seems to be very effective in what it does (I am still putting it through its hoops).
I am using it together with Qiqqa, which has some overlap with Calibre, but the two generally seem to complement each other. (For more info on QiQiqqa - Reference Management System - Mini-Review)
Good GUI ergonomics, though I initially found it rather counter-intuitive (because I charged in and started using it before reading the user guide).

The needs improvement section:
The main observation I have here is that when I initially gave Calibre a very large library to start with, it locked up all of the CPUs in my Intel i7 processor, and the system seemed to freeze. Reboot time. (However, other subsequent comments in this discussion indicate that it is not a common problem.)
I have not yet figured out whether you can confine the CPU utilisation to (say) just one or two CPUs (as you can do in Qiqqa, which had a similar initial problem - now fixed).

Why I think you should use this product:
Seems to be an excellent product.
If you are looking for a decent open-source library manager to view, convert and catalogue e-books - and across platforms (Linux, Windows and OS X) - then I would suggest that Calibre could well be worth a look-see.

How does it compare to similar apps.:
I have no basis of experiential comparison, other than the Qiqqa reference management system (mentioned above).

Conclusions:

• An excellent piece of software, and well-supported by its developer.
• I was rather blown away with what this software did, and how well it did what it does.
• Seems very impressive, and I have kept it to manage my library from hereon.
• Ability to "pull" metadata from many different sources is very useful.
• Ability to "harvest" online content-sources and convert them to e-books is a brilliant idea (not yet tested by me).
• Ability to de-DRM ebooks and translate them into other, non-proprietary formats for reading on other eReaders/software is a real bonus.

Links to other reviews of this application:

• There are various reviews - one good one was CNET: CNET: Editors' review of Calibre
• Wikipedia: Calibre

5681

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 23, 2012, 06:36 AM »

I wouldn't categorize that under "Silly Humor," personally.

-Deozaan (January 23, 2012, 05:18 AM)

Eh? Really? Oops, sorry. I thought it was legitimate black humour being used to make a valid point. Quite clever/subtle. Made me larf anyway. Very difficult to refute it's statement too. Like checkmate.
Anyway, I thought it was quite a clever spoof of the Rosemary's Baby movie posters - and there was certainly something very wrong with that baby!   
Perhaps not as strong as the political statement made by that amusing Flash where you move the pepper-spraying cop to spray the faces of the signatories to the Constitution of the US - Pepper Spray Cop Interactive
(That also made me larf.)

5682

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 23, 2012, 04:47 AM »

Came across this the other day.

5683

Living Room / Re: Sorry, This Post Has Been Censored

« Last post by IainB on January 22, 2012, 09:44 AM »

I did a double-take when I read this: MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Aren't Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought

Hard to believe - this seems quite brazen.

I like this response from publicknowledge, in the link provided here: Public Knowledge Advises Movie Lobby To Stop Threatening Politicians

5684

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: [First look] Scrivener Beta 017 - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on January 22, 2012, 09:22 AM »

Are there any DCF members who have been using Scrivener since the Windows v1.0 was released and would they be able to comment on their experiences with using it?
I am considering trialling the thing - after surveying the market for a while - but would like to build on other users' experiences if possible, rather than starting from the ground up.

@tomos: Belated thanks for kicking off your review of this. Very informative.   

5685

Living Room / Re: Ripped off as a Google employee? "Free food" + the employment contract.

« Last post by IainB on January 22, 2012, 08:14 AM »

You have to also be willing to walk away.

-wraith808 (January 22, 2012, 06:33 AM)

+1 for what you said.    

"Be willing to walk away" is an absolute rule for negotiation though, but, from what she writes, negotiation skills would not seem to be amongst rachelbythebay's armoury - and the first of the guidelines I list is:

Take the trouble to learn about and understand useful negotiating skills/techniques.

I still find it incredible that anyone - let alone apparently a whole group of people as is suggested in the post - would be gullible enough to choose to enter into such a contract of employment with any employer - let alone Google - as rachelbythebay suggests would be the case. I have therefore made the subject generic to "employer" and amended my opening post on the first line:

IF what is written in her post is true in all respects, then I feel sorry for rachelbythebay. She's apparently been made a victim of.

5686

Living Room / Ripped off as an employee? "Free food" + the employment contract.

« Last post by IainB on January 22, 2012, 03:49 AM »

IF what is written in her post is true in all respects, then I feel sorry for rachelbythebay. She's apparently been made a victim of.
Perhaps not so surprising, really: Google's "free food" is not free
- but sad to see if Google's true colours have come out ($green$), as is suggested.

"Not so surprising" because - and I feel obliged to state this - allowing an employer to make so-called "free food" an item with an agreed fixed notional $ value in your employment contract would seem to be an incredibly naive (if not stupid) thing to do, but there we are.

Spoiler

From: Google's "free food" is not free
In the summer and fall of 2006, I went through a multi-month process to interview there. After a bunch of phone calls, a flight out to Silly Valley for on-sites, and even more phone calls, they finally offered me a job. Then we had to talk about money.

At the time, I had read nothing about negotiation, and didn't know what I was doing. They offered a sum which was in fact an improvement over what I had been making, but it wasn't the kind of offset I was looking for.

What I find interesting now is that they had a ready-made comeback: they'd "go away to calculate" for a bit, and then say that the meals alone were worth some amount of money. I think they told me 15 to 20 thousand dollars at the time. I've heard other values from other people who were told similar things during their hiring process.

The point is, they deliberately inserted the food as a part of the bigger picture in lieu of more money. They set it up so that you would be placated by it somehow.

At that point, I was still buying the hype of the early days, and I now regret to say that it worked on me. I took it hook, line and sinker and accepted their offer. My effective salary was some amount of cash plus the food as it was right then and there.

For a while, this worked. I was able to get a decent meal at regular intervals without having to hunt for it. There was a certain amount of consistency if you knew where to look for it. One cafe in particular was actually an import of a local chain of taquerias called Andale. You could be sure of finding certain foods there every single day, and not surprisingly, they saw me a lot.

Then something changed. It all seems to coincide with a certain new CFO coming on board, but I can't prove that's what happened. All I know is that certain things started being cut. Entire meals were eliminated from certain cafes. Some that were open for breakfast and dinner in addition to lunch were now lunch-only. Others slid their hours back. Still more wound up being underprovisioned so that even though they might have been open, they ran out of food well before closing time.

Similar things happened to the famous micro kitchens. Over time, many of them were either closed, drained of most items, or "temporarily shut down so as to become a media center which will link to another office". Well, they were shut down, but they were never turned into anything else.

The Friday morning bagel or donut supplies also were curtailed. Sure, they still existed, but you now had to go hunt for them. They were no longer set up in a microkitchen near your office. They would now appear only in certain cafes.

At first, the powers that be claimed it was "being green" or "supporting good nutrition", but enough people finally cornered them and got them to admit it was about the cost. All of that other stuff was just a cover story.

My snarky remark at the time was "sure, they're being green... money is green".

It really says something about a company when they use their own employees as their safety net. Sure, go ahead and screw the employees while the economy is bad. They'll stay on and grumble about it, because they can't go anywhere.

But what happens when the economy improves? Those wounds will never heal. Anyone with half a brain will say "hey, these guys are evil!" and will bail for greener pastures. And, not surprisingly, many did. The brain drain has been remarkable. It's not so much that other companies (Facebook and Twitter are the two obvious candidates) are pulling so much as Google has been pushing them out the door.

I learned a powerful lesson here. If you allow them to placate you with some kind of luxury, don't be too surprised when they take it away. They will conveniently forget that it was used as a bargaining tactic.

Or, worse, they'll assign blame to "rogue contractors" and say it was never their policy to do that. Right.

Now where have we heard that before? Rogue contractors?

I learned a powerful lesson here. If you allow them to placate you with some kind of luxury, don't be too surprised when they take it away. They will conveniently forget that it was used as a bargaining tactic.

No, that's not the lesson. The lesson is a set of rules/guidelines: (off the top of my head)

• Take the trouble to learn about and understand useful negotiating skills/techniques.
• Take the trouble to learn about and understand contract law - especially employment contract law.
• There is THEM (i.e., the employer) and there is YOU, and they are obliged (as good corporate psychopaths) to regard any contract negotiation as a confrontation where they know what conditions they want to meet in order to WIN. THEY (being psychopaths) lack empathy and don't care about YOU.
• THEY are usually going to be much bigger and stronger than you in any employment negotiation, unless you can catch them in a contractual error. (It's been known to happen - been there, done that.)
• RULE: Never allow yourself to enter into an employment contract where your cash benefit is reduced/substituted by an estimated fixed or variable notional dollar amount for a fixed or variable non-cash item or "perk", as a term of the contract.
• By all means get an estimate of the cash-equivalent of the item, and then say "No thanks, I'll take the cash" - whether a perk like food or a car. Cash is liquidity and readily convertible into something you can eat. You can't eat a car.
• The only exceptions to this would be where there was a significant dollar tax-benefit or cashflow benefit that you could gain by taking the cash-substitute. There are not many of these nowadays though, as the IR have been closing the loopholes on the tax-benefits, and usually only financial companies are in a position to be able to offer you perks that could give you a cashflow benefit (e.g., a loan or mortgage at a rate well below prevailing market rates).

In the above blog post, rachelbythebay has already been made a victim, and the victimiser is the employer.
But in the case of rachelbythebay, she unwittingly made herself a victim when she entered into that employment contract under those terms. She did that because she had the "wrong" paradigm to start with.

Protesting about it afterwards, or feeling hurt or feeling that you have been short-changed and then arriving at a wrong conclusion ("my lesson learned") is classic after-the-event victim mentality.
After being ripped-off in minor ways a couple of times, I learned years ago from a book entitled "How to be a non-victim" (or something like that), that you needed to maintain a non-victim state of mind before dealing with anyone - so you avoid being made a victim of in the first place.
From my experience, this isn't necessarily an easy thing to do, as it requires you to modify your behaviours and habits and to change your paradigms, and to fight back. But the important thing was that I did do it, and so could anyone else.
Perhaps even more importantly, as well as learning to be a non-victim, I learned to be a non-victimiser.

5687

Living Room / Re: How to obtain nearly complete anonymity while online

« Last post by IainB on January 22, 2012, 01:52 AM »

I just checked, and it seems that this is still only available for Mac OpenDNS users: DNSCrypt – Critical, fundamental, and about time.

Keen to get my hands on this for Win7...   

5688

Mini-Reviews by Members / EFF's "HTTPS Everywhere" (Firefox/Chrome add-on) - quick review

« Last post by IainB on January 22, 2012, 12:41 AM »

The EFF's Firefox add-on HTTPS Everywhere is available from here.
This follows on from:

Speaking of HTTPS I wan to suggest HTTPS Everywhere from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It switches to HTTPS for a lot of sites.

-housetier (February 01, 2011, 02:57 PM)

The recent and likely future changes to laws imposing censorship and diminishing the user's right to freedom/privacy make it prudent to consider using this kind of tool.
I have been using this add-on for a while now, and it seems to work faultlessly to do what it was designed for.

From the EFF webpage:
HTTPS Everywhere 1.2 has been released, and the project is out of beta. Version 1.x releases include support for over 1,000 new sites, a better UI, and performance improvements. Click here to install it!

HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It encrypts your communications with a number of major websites. Many sites on the web offer some limited support for encryption over HTTPS, but make it difficult to use. For instance, they may default to unencrypted HTTP, or fill encrypted pages with links that go back to the unencrypted site. The HTTPS Everywhere extension fixes these problems by rewriting all requests to these sites to HTTPS. Firefox users can get it by clicking here...

You will find more information if you go to the webpage. Its background is interesting.

EDIT: Note that there's now also a Chrome version of the HTTPS Everywhere add-on. (The subject title of this post has been changed to reflect that fact.)

5689

Mini-Reviews by Members / QuickFox Notes (Firefox add-on) - quick review

« Last post by IainB on January 22, 2012, 12:14 AM »

The Firefox QuickFox Notes add-on is available from here.
This add-on has been progressively improved until it is now a potentially very useful note-making tool, and it all seems to work rather well.
The notes can be saved either as a sort of bookmark in the Bookmarks system (the default), or as records in an Sqlite database.
The bookmarks can be:

• sync'd to the "Cloud" and/or other devices using either the built-in Firefox Sync or the Xmarks service;
• backed up as text files to the client hard disk;
• copied across to Google docs (there's an add-in to QuickFox Notes that does that, via a button on the QFN toolbar).

About this Add-on

Introduction: QuickFox Notes is a multi-tab note taking add-on for Firefox that uses the integrated bookmarks system or a single sqlite database to store notes. Therefore, if you already have either a bookmarks synchronization add-on (e.g: XMarks) or a file synchronization software (e.g: Dropbox, SugarSync, Syncplicity), your notes will be synchronized automatically.

*** It is highly recommended to use Xmarks to synchronize QuickFox Notes ***

Tutorial (Basic features): http://vimeo.com/17050814

Features: (many/most are user-selectable)
✓ Multiple tabs
✓ Auto-save
✓ Spell check
✓ Clipboard management
✓ Encrypt/Decrypt Notes
✓ Auto-copy and Paste on middle click
✓ Store to "Archive" (to free tab space)
✓ Pop-up after X seconds upon Firefox start
✓ Email notes
✓ Print notes
✓ Insert special symbols
✓ Google word suggestion/calculator
✓ Import and Export to Evernote, Google Docs, Simplenote, Dropbox or Sugarsync

5690

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on January 21, 2012, 11:57 PM »

Feedback on ß test:
Comments:

Spoiler

1. After reading today's comments in the above thread today, I downloaded and installed the .EXE file only (a 2nd time), from the link provided by Berry via email - just in case it was different to the one I downloaded earlier.

2. I have not so far noticed any Clipboard collisions/errors with/between NF or CHS, and have been unable to replicate the sort of issue described by oblivion. Thus, in my case, NF and CHS seem to be able to coexist OK.

3. I have not noticed the episodic frog-croak sound from NF that I had previously described, so it may have gone away. I will post a comment here if/when it recurs.

4. I keep getting an occasional exclamation "Ping" and the Comunication" box says I have a duplicate, when in fact I never did a Ctrl+C to create a duplicate.
    Example:

    17:59:31 Isduplicate NF and CHS clearly can't comfortably coexist
    17:59:31 newItem() duplicate - skipped

5. I have found the "Comunication" box (missing an "m" there) very informative for testing purposes. I think it could be useful to retain that function, to provide a background log and for the user to enable/disable it for monitoring/testing purposes. Having a Copy button on it is a good idea too, as you can choose whether you want to keep part/all of the current log in the Stack - arguably better than having it as a separate log file, at any rate. (Though there seems to be something slightly amiss with the "Comunication" box - see "Minor issues" , below.)

Major issues: None.

Minor issues:

Spoiler

1. There is no tooltip for the help, tools and utilities toolbar button - not sure if you wanted there to be one. (This is as per oblivion's comment.)

2. Though the position of the MAIN NF UI window seems to be remembered OK by NF (from its last opened position on the screen), some of the popup windows (e.g., Options) opened from the UI seem to open with their lower part truncated by (or "below") the bottom of my laptop screen. If I drag the popup window to where I can see it all, and then close it, the next time I open that popup window, NF evidently doesn't remember where I last moved it to - the window starts off again in the same truncated position. (This is as per oblivion's comment - sorry, though I had noticed this a while back, I had forgotten to mention it until I was reminded by his comment.)

3. The "Comunication" window (missing an "m" there) is intrusive - this seems to be because, the way it currently works, it sometimes steals window focus, which it probably should not be doing. (Similar to what was mentioned by oblivion.)

3. You sometimes/always (it's repeatable anyway) seem to have to force a Stack/viewer refresh (Ctrl+R) before a recently-copied clip with the search term appears in the search. It's in the Stack, but just not appearing in the search until you refresh. (Similar to what was mentioned by oblivion.)

5691

Living Room / Re: As a counter-point to the SOPA/PIPA demonstration

« Last post by IainB on January 20, 2012, 07:15 AM »

They will ram their police state legislation down our throats, and if they fail there, they'll ram it up our asses.

-Renegade (January 19, 2012, 10:10 PM)

Well, is it possible that that is all the nation (collectively) deserves?
I think you may find several examples of this sort of post commentary: Don't Trust Your Instincts

Look at this piece of instinctual wisdom: Everyone should vote. In the last big election, only 90 million people voted out of more than 200 million eligible voters. That's terrible, we're told. But it's not terrible because a lot of people are ignorant. When I asked people to identify pictures of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, almost half couldn't.

An implication of this is that some people might say, for example:

That if a public majority are unable - for whatever reason - to take the responsibility for understanding what they need to vote about, and then actually exercising that vote, then maybe they don't need to vote. Maybe it's just too much to expect of them, and maybe all they really need is to be told what to do, when to do it and how/what to think, and they'll be quite happy in that state.

Could that be a substantiation for your police state?
If moves towards becoming a police/totalitarian state have already been started by degrees, then maybe it's all over for you by now anyway.

For example, this discussion: Opinion — Mark Levin: You Cannot Have This EPA and a Constitution
- since the EPA is apparently riding roughshod over the thing.

Mark Levin says America cannot at the same time have a Constitution and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is doing what the EPA is doing today.
Levin made the observation in an interview with CNSNews.com about his new book, “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America.”

How about this? Is the EPA "The Very Definition of Tyranny"?

Spoiler

Is the EPA "The Very Definition of Tyranny"?
By John C. Eastman
Posted September 25, 2000

Next Monday the United States Supreme Court begins a new term. Already on the Court's docket are several significant cases testing the Court's recent federalism jurisprudence. Solid Waste Agency v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers considers whether the occasional presence of migratory birds in a wholly intrastate wetland is sufficient to confer jurisdiction in the Army Corps of Engineers under Congress's power "to regulate commerce among the states." In University of Alabama Board of Trustees v. Garrett, the Court will consider whether the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted pursuant to Congress's powers under the 14th Amendment rather than under the Commerce Clause, and thus whether suits against the states are permitted or are barred by the sovereign immunity doctrine the Court has derived from the 11th Amendment. And in Cook v. Gralike, the Court will again take up term limits, addressing whether it is permissible for a state to identify on an election ballot a candidate's position on the issue.

All of these cases raise important questions about the role of the states in our constitutional system. Our nation's Founders designed a system of government based on a division of the people's sovereign powers between the national and state governments, so that each level of government could serve as a check against the abuses of the other.

The separation of powers between state and national governments was only one-half of the Founders' constitutional vision, however. One of the chief "auxiliary precautions" devised by the Framers of our Constitution to protect the people's liberty lies in the very structure of the Constitution.

Drawing on the political theory of Locke and Montesquieu, the framers designed the new government so that the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government were separate from one another, out of recognition, as James Madison put it in Federalist 47, that the "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Our nation's Founders viewed this separation of powers within the national government as a complement to the structural federalism that the Supreme Court has in recent years revitalized to protect the people's liberty. Madison called the two structural components of our constitutional system a "double security" for the "rights of the people."

Our Constitution assigns its enumerated legislative powers to the Congress, and does not permit Congress to delegate its lawmaking function to the executive or the judicial branch. This structural protection had two purposes: it guaranteed that those who made the law were accountable to the people, and it ensured that the laws were made by the body best suited for deliberation.

For more than sixty years, however, this "non-delegation" doctrine has been honored only in the breach. This term, the Supreme Court will hear a case addressing whether that old principle, which our Founders thought essential to liberty, has any lingering vitality. At issue in Browner v. American Trucking Associations, Inc. is whether Congress improperly delegated its lawmaking powers to the Environmental Protection Agency when, in the Clean Air Act, it authorized the EPA to set national air quality standards at levels "requisite to protect the public health" with an "adequate margin of safety." How high the air quality standards should be, and at what cost, are quintessentially legislative decisions that constitutionally must be made by Congress alone. The Court of Appeals therefore held that the Clean Air Act is unconstitutional unless the EPA can offer an interpretation of the statute that confers upon the EPA only a gap-filling, and not a lawmaking, authority.

Browner is a highly complex case, but much more is at stake than just national air quality standards. In a way, the validity of the entire administrative state is at stake. Independent administrative agencies, run by government officials who are neither elected to their new lawmaking capacity nor answerable to the chief executive, combine the lawmaking, executing, and judging functions of government in a single place — the "very definition of tyranny," according to James Madison.

The repudiation of the constitutional separation of powers principle was no accident. The assault on this foundational component of the Constitution's structure was waged openly during the heyday of the Progressive movement, and greatly expanded during the New Deal movement in the 1930s and the Great Society movement of the 1960s. The Progressive vision, propounded by such devotees of the administrative state as Woodrow Wilson, viewed the separation of powers as a barrier to rather than a facilitator of good government. Under Wilson's theory, the government needed to be freed from the shackles of separation of powers so that a professional class of government bureaucrats could manage the government, the economy, and our lives with precision and efficiency. Government "gridlock" became an evil to be overcome rather than a means for fostering the kind of public deliberation that could ensure that the public good, rather than the transient will of temporary majorities or special interests, would be furthered.

After nearly a century of experience in this country with a partially centralized administration, and with the disastrous results of the former Soviet Union's purer form of centralized socialism, it is time to realize that Wilson's experiment has failed. The Supreme Court can take a major step in that direction by reinvigorating the non-delegation doctrine when it decides Browner.

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Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 20, 2012, 03:14 AM »

Another joke about the EU financial collapse - except it seems to be true:

Spoiler

Found at: Samizdata Quote of the Day
"They said it would never be agreed. Then they said it would never be launched. Then they said it would fail. When it was a success, the euro-haters still insisted that the single currency was a recipe for economic chaos and political instability. The phobes are proving to be wrong again. At a time when so much of Europe's political leadership is in flux, the single currency is the steadying point in an uncertain and worrying world.

Imagine that the recent turbulence on the continent had occurred when Europe still traded in pre-euro currencies. What would have happened to the French franc when neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen forced the Prime Minister to quit? The franc would have plunged. What would have happened to the Dutch guilder when an anti-immigration party with a dead leader impelled itself into government? The guilder would have plunged too. Before a German election too close to call, even the stolid old mark would be gyrating. And instability in currency markets would be fuelling even more political chaos: a vicious, downward cycle.

That this has not happened is thanks to the euro. The single currency has taken all this political upheaval in its calm stride."

- From an anonymous editorial in the Observer headed "A tolerant euro".
From 2002, in case you were wondering.

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Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on January 19, 2012, 01:30 AM »

Sorry - that's "CHS", for "Clipboard Help & Spell", a Donation Coder software by mouser.

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General Software Discussion / Search Google for references to a filename - from Windows Explorer "Send To"

« Last post by IainB on January 17, 2012, 10:09 PM »

I came across this rather nifty bit of code today here on the xplorer² website blog.
It is also discussed on the xplorer² discussion forum here.
By automating the process it is a potential timesaver, as it shortens the process that we might otherwise use to do the same thing manually (and sometimes quite frequently).

Post is copied here, together with simple VBA code:

Spoiler

From: the xplorer² website blog

[xplorer²] — Search online for a file
Sometimes you may be wondering what some file is doing on your PC. An easy way to find out if it is good or bad is to search online for it. For example Process Explorer has an online search menu command that will show information about any running process so you can be sure it isn't some malware infecting your computer.

To search for a file online the obvious solution would be to copy its filename, open your internet browser, and use the search box to start a search for it. But that is too much work; wouldn't you prefer a context menu command to google search a file selected in windows explorer or xplorer²? Surprisingly there is no such command available, so let's create one. The simplest solution would be to create a WSH script that accepts the filename as an argument:

Set objArgs = WScript.Arguments
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

' extract the filename from the full path
pos = InstrRev(objArgs(0), "\")
filename = mid(objArgs(0), pos+1)

WshShell.Run "http://google.com/search?q=" & filename

You can use notepad to type this script and save it as GOOGLESEARCH.VBS — or simply download it from here. You don't need to understand how this script works, but in essense it just launches a google search by running a suitably formatted URL that contains the filename to search. This will open your default internet browser.

How do we pass the filename to this script? One solution would be to save this GOOGLESEARCH.VBS on your desktop and drag-drop the file you want to inspect on its icon. But as we are looking for a convenient context menu approach we will save it in the system Send To folder, so that it appears in the SendTo submenu when you right click on a file — see the picture to the right.    send to google search

Commands that appear in the send to submenu are just shortcuts in a folder called C:\Users\someUser\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo (you can access this folder easily from xplorer² using Goto > Special folders > Send to menu command). For example if you paste a shortcut to windows Notepad in there, there will be a command to send a file to notepad (i.e. edit it as text). As our script is really small we don't put a shortcut to it, but store the whole file in the send to folder.

So in summary, to enable google search for files on your computer:

• Download the script and save it on your computer
• Copy this script in the SendTo folder using xplorer² Goto > Special folders menu
• Right click on any file you want examined and pick the google search command from the send to menu

I didn't find it having been discussed on the DCF, so I posted about it here in case it might be of help/interest to DCF members.

5695

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on January 15, 2012, 04:47 PM »

@berry: The frog-croak continues to sound episodically - e.g., once whilst keyboard is locked (Windows+L) and inactive,  and a few minutes ago 4 croaks in quick succession, then a 5th about 30 seconds later.
I wondered if there might be a conflict between CHS capture and NFP capture - because  I am running both processes simultaneously - but everything else seems to work OK.
I might be the only tester doing that - running them both at the same time. Maybe that is why I am the only one reporting the episodic croaking behaviour.

5696

Living Room / Re: Sorry, This Post Has Been Censored

« Last post by IainB on January 15, 2012, 07:34 AM »

This looks potentially pretty useful legwork: SOPA and PROTECT-IP: A Line-By-Line Analysis of the Bills We Must Kill

5697

Found Deals and Discounts / Giveaway of the Day - Retouch Pilot

« Last post by IainB on January 15, 2012, 07:15 AM »

Giveaway of the Day - Retouch Pilot
After a very quick play with this, it looks to be much more sophisticated than InPaint  - the simple picture "mender" touch-up proggy that was GAOTD a short time ago.
18hrs 40mins to go as at time of posting this.

Retouch Pilot is a photo retouching software that was designed for removing imperfections from a photo. It allows you to remove small technical imperfections (e.g. scratches, spots from dust particles and hair), that were found in the original image or that appeared while scanning the photo.

This program can be also used to enhance background outdoor scene by removing unnecessary objects from a photo. This photo retouching software allows you to change form as well. Retouch Pilot can be used as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop or another compatible program

5698

Living Room / Calculator 7 project at Codeplex to equal Win7 Calculator?

« Last post by IainB on January 15, 2012, 06:55 AM »

There's a new project started at codeplex.com called Calculator 7

Calculator 7 was developed keeping in mind that the Windows XP & Windows Vista Users are not able to utilize the Advanced Calculator present in Windows 7 OS. This calculator is built using latest microsoft .net framework 4.0.

The Win7 Calculator is a rather nifty and advanced calculator and conversion tool, so the Codeplex Calculator 7 might be worth watching if you don't have Win7.

5699

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on January 15, 2012, 06:27 AM »

No major issues to report with NFP ß 02.
The search and scroll operations still feel nice and fast with 1,927 items in the stack.

Minor problems:

• When I start NFP from the Quicklaunch icon, it shows up in the systray and closes as minimised to the systray - which is what I expect it to do. However, it doesn't seem to start with windows even though I have selected that option, and when I put it in my startup folder to force it on startup, it started OK, but did not show in the systray and disappeared on close (though the process was still active).
• After entering the Registration Code, the menu item "Go Pro - Purchase NoteFrog Professional" is greyed out, but when you restart NFP, the same item has been restored to black (i.e., is not greyed out).

5700

General Review Discussion / Re: Microsoft Security Essential - new Beta out 2011-11-30

« Last post by IainB on January 15, 2012, 05:30 AM »

Just an update on the ß trial: Absolutely no problems. Uneventful and trouble-free.
As for the previous version - no apparent hogging of CPU - seems to go to background processing if the CPU(s) has(have) other work going on.
I was reminded to update this thread after answering the 2nd ß trial survey I have had from M/soft.