Recent Posts

5826

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by Darwin on April 26, 2007, 10:24 PM »

When did you purchase your licence, Carol? As I mentioned, I purchased in October and am *convinced* that I would get the upgrade to 2.0 Plus for free when I did so. I note that they are now offering the upgrade free to people who purchased in December, taking advantage of an offer that they were running at the time... Also, as noted, I've already paid for the upgrade so this is just vapid curiosity on my part...

5827

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use 7-Zip files?

« Last post by Darwin on April 26, 2007, 10:16 PM »

OK... thanks for the clarification of NO and NEVER. I didn't notice the choice for never when I voted - can I change my vote?!

5828

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use 7-Zip files?

« Last post by Darwin on April 26, 2007, 06:02 PM »

Thanks superboyac! I didn't want to be the only one going "Blue? What the hey does that mean?!"

Also, NO and NEVER seem to be the same thing... so why are they both on the list of choices?!

5829

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use 7-Zip files?

« Last post by Darwin on April 26, 2007, 09:12 AM »

Two points... First the second one  : I use zip ONLY because I tend to be archiving things to send to other people via e-mail. Occasionally, I use Rar to create an SFX file but that adds to the PIA factor because I then have to explain to the recipient not only that they have to change the extension in order to open the file but also that they need to run an exe file to get to the actual file that I am sending. Every so often this is too much for people.

My first point is that the poll has two choices which, to my mind are identical: NO and NEVER... Unfortunately, I can't remove my vote to check how the poll was originally worded - was a distinction made? I can't remember 

5830

General Software Discussion / Re: Don't call it "the tray"!

« Last post by Darwin on April 26, 2007, 09:06 AM »

60 minutes as in http://www.cbsnews.c...nutes/main3415.shtml - there's always this old guy at the end who's doing a funny monologue

-f0dder (April 25, 2007, 05:40 PM)

Aah...! Andy Rooney.

5831

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you backup your files?

« Last post by Darwin on April 26, 2007, 09:04 AM »

I made the mistake of upgrading from Acronis TrueImage Home to the Workstation with Universal Restore precisely for this reason...If you are not using a server with multiple machines to administer centrally then the TrueImage Workstation edition offers nothing over and above the Home Ed. and is not worth the upgrade price - plus with the Workstation version you have to pay an annual fee to download updates.

-Carol Haynes (April 26, 2007, 04:44 AM)

I'm in the same boat - I took advantage of what appeared to be a great deal to upgrade and can't see that it was really worth it (NB I haven't had occasion to actually TRY Universal Restore, but Carol's comments mirror those posted liberally on the Acronis forum). I wish I'd saved the price of the upgrade from Home to Workstation and Universal Restore and applied it to upgrading to Home version 10 Especially as they keep contacting me to extend my subscription for a reasonable price (far less than the cost of an upgrade from Home 9 to 10) but NOTHING ever comes of it. I've had two phone calls with the promise of a sales rep contacting me via e-mail to confirm the quote ($17.95 US for Workstation w/o UR), I reply to the e-mail (which asks only for info about which Acronis products I want the quote for - WTF? didn't I just do that on the phone?) - and then a yawning black hole of nothing punctuated only by my intermittent e-mails back to the rep asking for an update and their promise to get right back to me, which never happens. We're talking about a timescale of months here, not days or even weeks. Months. I gave up playing that game after dealing with the second rep and have ignored the second phone call, though I did blast the poor fellow making the call. Didn't seem to light a fire under anyone in sales at Acronis, though...

The only good thing is that Universal Restore cost me nothing... but it appears that you get what you pay for in this case!

5832

General Software Discussion / Re: RANT: High Software Prices!

« Last post by Darwin on April 26, 2007, 08:38 AM »

Mouser wrote:

I do think however that there are some ramifications for this kind of pirating that are non-obvious but quite important to think about.  And one of them is the open source market.  For example, does piracy hurt the open source community?  If people couldn't pirate photoshop, would that make programs like the Gimp and Paint.net more and more important, more and more used, and perhaps more and more supported, funded, and developed?  If MS Windows and OSX were never pirated, would it funnel more energy into developing and developing for linux?  These are the issues that really make me think twice about pirating..

Now THAT is an interesting and astute insight! I had never thought of this issue from that perspective before.

5833

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« Last post by Darwin on April 26, 2007, 12:02 AM »

Quote from Nudel:

I'm trying to ration my time spent venturing outside of this thread to the weekends to avoid not doing anything else but chatting here.

Sound thinking! I should probably try to do the same, but am hopelessly addicted to being here, even if I lurk most of the time.

5834

General Software Discussion / Re: Don't call it "the tray"!

« Last post by Darwin on April 25, 2007, 05:35 PM »

The above example with "slut" was meant for dramatic effect. I thought that was obvious in the context.

Yup - it was obviously meant for dramatic effect, I just read it as having changed over the course of your life, that's all.

Thanks for the clarification - I wasn't aware of that!

5835

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by Darwin on April 25, 2007, 01:03 PM »

Hmmm.... merge catalogues. I'm not sure I see the point of this as with WhereIsIt? I can have as many catalogues as I like open at the same time and search across them. However, having said that, I'm far from a power user wrt disc cataloguing...

5836

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: IdeaMason to be featured on Bitsdujour

« Last post by Darwin on April 25, 2007, 12:54 PM »

Just downloading a trial now... Post back later this afternoon (PST) or this evening...

5837

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« Last post by Darwin on April 25, 2007, 12:53 PM »

The Australian dollar has lifted in the last several weeks from approx 75USc to 83c.

Thanks for the heads up - I'll have to practice due diligence when buying DOpus 9 on Friday (Thursday night here, he writes hopefully...) - The Universal Currency Converter is my friend!

5838

Found Deals and Discounts / IdeaMason to be featured on Bitsdujour

« Last post by Darwin on April 25, 2007, 09:32 AM »

Haven't tried IdeaMason, but it looks interesting as a research tool and possibly as an expensive notetaker and will be available on BitsduJour on Monday April 30th.

I'll give the trial a blast and report back here before then...

5839

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.76 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - APRIL 9, 2007

« Last post by Darwin on April 25, 2007, 09:15 AM »

Anti-capitalist Kananaskis  . Really rolls of the tongue, doesn't it?!

5840

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by Darwin on April 25, 2007, 09:10 AM »

i'm in a catch-22 situation, since all these CD catalog programs involve putting in the CD/DVD and ejecting..

I'm not sure I follow this? If you mean that you have to insert the CD/DVD, have whatever app you're using index it and then eject the CD/DVD, then we're on the same page (and I'm not sure what the alternative would be!). If you're suggesting that you need to insert the CD/DVD to access the index that you've already created, then you're either suffering under a misunderstanding and/or the software you've tried (CDVista?) is odd! I'm using WhereIsIt? and once it's created an index, that's it. I can open and search ALL of my indeces and locate whatever it is that I am looking for without ever going near a CD/DVD. If only WhereIsIt? would keep track of where I've actually put the physical media... 

5841

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« Last post by Darwin on April 25, 2007, 08:58 AM »

I just wanted to say a BIG thank you to Jeff for posting about exifPro - I'm not sure that I've done so before. Wonderful find. I'm still living mostly in PhotoCollector land because I am not yet able to index my complete collection with exifPro, but I love where exifPro is going.

tomos - I always buy in US dollars. It's a bit of a gamble but with the Canadian/US/Euro exchange being so volatile, but I am better off paying in US dollars in the long run. This has only dinged me once - I RMA'd something (PaperPort?) and lost $2 Cdn. courtesy of the exchange rates, but on balance on another occasion I made money doing the same thing!

5842

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« Last post by Darwin on April 25, 2007, 08:47 AM »

Quote from Nudel:

Quote from: DonL
: If DOpus is Godzilla then XYplorer is T. Rex — it always depends what suits you best for your current task.
As we've seen, though, the memory usage of the two programs is very similar and nobody so far has mentioned a way in which Opus is slower than XY.

If it's significant that Opus uses a few meg more of HDD space then I must be living in a different era of computing to everyone else.  Otherwise, I don't get the analogy.

  I took Don's analogy more in the spirit of XYplorer and DOpus are both at the top of the food chain in their respective niches and that he was basically saying "different horses for different courses". If he had likened DOpus to a Brontosaurus and XYplorer to T.Rex, then my readig would the same as yours...

Thanks for the link to the manual for DOpus 9 - I hadn't noticed that being available. And abterix, as to the licensing, I've never had a problem moving my DOpus' licences from machine to machine so imagine that doing the same with a USB licence will not present any issues, either.

Anyway, Nudel, nice to see you posting here, and in other threads. Welcome to donationcoder!

5843

General Software Discussion / Re: Don't call it "the tray"!

« Last post by Darwin on April 24, 2007, 11:05 PM »

How about hoovering up a xerox of a kleenex that someone has written all over with a biro?

OK, so two of my two examples are common in British English... I don't care!

5844

Living Room / Re: Free Download A Day

« Last post by Darwin on April 24, 2007, 11:01 PM »

I got a couple of things from there, but its very unclear what you can do if you take a freebie and then have to reinstall it later

Cough, cough, nudge, nudge, wink, wink... er, there are ways around this...

5845

Living Room / Re: Latest Apple Mac vs PC Commercial: PCs suck because of all the software choices

« Last post by Darwin on April 24, 2007, 05:19 PM »

I'm with you 100% - though the one that makes me laugh every time (even now when I'm just thinking of it) is the "How 'bout I calculate how much time we just wasted?" line.

-mwb1100 (April 24, 2007, 05:11 PM)

Yeah, that's the one that kills me as well... especially when it occurs in the flashback.

5846

Living Room / Re: Latest Apple Mac vs PC Commercial: PCs suck because of all the software choices

« Last post by Darwin on April 24, 2007, 01:32 PM »

Am I a traitor for thinking these commercials are hilarious?  That little mac guy is such a smug bastard!  I love it!  He reminds me of Dr. Evil's son.  The one where PC needed to have permission from the secret service to talk to the Mac guy was classic.

By the way, Macs suck in general.  I shouldn't say that, they have their place in society.  But for me, they suck.

-superboyac (April 24, 2007, 10:34 AM)

No, I think they're funny too - even as I'm throwing my cookies at the tv!

Also, Zaine - I'm a PC guy with OS 9.2 on a geriatric iMac and OS 10.2 on a slightly newer iBook and I am distinctly unimpressed by either OS. Funny how if I gripe about 9.2 MacHeads scream at me about how it was an unmitigated pile of pooh (so comparing it to Windows is unfair), yet six years ago all I heard was what a superior OS it was compared to either Win 98 or Win2k. At the time I had machines running both Windows OS's and thought that I was a complete idiot or something because I simply could not see how OS 9.2 compared in any way to Win2k. On balance, it was probably on par with 98 (but at the time I found 98 to be much more robust and versatile) but I feel right at home on a 98 machine if I have to use it and beat my head against a wall trying to do anything on the OS 9.2 machine. Yes, I admit that this probably reflects the fact that I spend 95% of my time on Windows machines and things seem intuitive because it's all learned behaviour. I don't care.

OS X in general leaves me a bit cold, too. I recognise that it's lightweight and visually pleasant (though I actually quickly tire of the interface, but that's just me) but I really don't find using it to be much more intuitive than OS 9.2. I really have to dig (admittedly less so than in 9.2) for information, and that pisses me off. Also, despite claims to the contrary, I've had far more networking issues with Mac OS's than with Windows...

5847

Official Announcements / Re: Power Supply on my PC just exploded: i'll be mostly offline this week crying

« Last post by Darwin on April 24, 2007, 05:15 AM »

 

How the hell can such a thing happen from blowing compressed air? Darn, I thought that was supposed to be safe >_<. Did the PSU literally explode, as in causing damage to other components? Or are you "just" afraid that it might have overjuiced the harddrives?

Crossing my fingers for you!

-f0dder (April 24, 2007, 03:41 AM)

I'm guessing a big dust bunny got blown into something "hot" and shorted something. Very technical assessment...

Mouser, condolences and hope that you are up and running again VERY soon.

5848

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Archivarius

« Last post by Darwin on April 23, 2007, 09:05 PM »

Wow! I e-mailed Archivarius' author LATE Friday night/early Saturday morning PST and had an exchange of e-mails with him that culminated with him sending me a fix for the error message that I was receiving earlier today! That kind of support is PRICELESS. Colour me very, very impressed... 

5849

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by Darwin on April 23, 2007, 09:02 PM »

Ah spit! emerald's avatar is a painting (or a portion of a painting?) by Salvador Dali.

Anyway, the courses I teach are first and second year and I have taught the Plains culture area in the past - fascinating stuff! But my area of specialisation is physical anthropology (as opposed to cultural anthropology and archaeology) the Neanderthals (so I'm on the wrong continent altogether!), who occupied Europe and the Middle East 130,000 to 28,000 years ago. I'm off to Belgium for five weeks in June and July to excavate a Neanderthal site so won't be around here much, if at all, during the summer. Getting pretty excited, too...

5850

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by Darwin on April 23, 2007, 10:16 AM »

You made that too easy! The answer was on my short list of "guesses", and I now realise why the painting is familar (I had an art history major as a flat mate in university) but I'll leave it to someone else to expose the painter to extend the fun!